BRADENTON (Florida) HERALD November 17, 2006
McNeal redistricting option concern for Myakka farmers
MYAKKA CITY - Hortenzia Lopez works and lives at Falkner Farms on State Road 64 and makes her living picking cucumbers that are made into pickles. The light of her life is her 6-year-old son, Jose Guerra. Jose attends Myakka City Elementary this year, but under one of the three redistricting plans being proposed he would move to McNeal Elementary School, along with 71 other students whose parents are workers at Falkner Farms. Lopez does not like the prospect of her son going to McNeal. "I feel very comfortable here and trust the teachers," Lopez said after a redistricting meeting Thursday at Myakka City Elementary. Lopez' Spanish was translated by Angela Sutherland, a Myakka City teacher. Sutherland also translated for two other Falkner Farms parents who shared Lopez's opposition to the move. "My daughter only speaks Spanish and she needs someone who understands," said Anna Guadalupe, whose daughter, Abril, 5, is a Myakka City kindergartner. Lopez doesn't want Jose to feel uncomfortable, she said. "I will not be happy if I know that they might look at my child as if he were different," Lopez said. Of all the decisions Manatee Schools Superintendent Roger Dearing will make involving the redistricting for two new elementary schools set to open next August, whether to move 72 Falkner Farm students out of Myakka Elementary's zone might be his hardest, Myakka teachers, administrators and parents agreed. Myakka parents Cheryl Mathias and Lisa Brown were on Committee A, which recommended the move. They said they feel if the children of the migrant workers go to McNeal or to the new B.D. Gullett Elementary on Pope Road in Lakewood Ranch, it would expose them to experiences they may not get in Myakka. But longtime Myakka teachers Vickie Parker and Joann Kinyon, who have 20 and 17 years experience at the school, respectively, have gotten to know the migrant families and adamantly oppose moving the children. "This is not just our school, this is our home, our community and these kids are part of us," Parker said. "We've been serving them for decades, and I think we have done well." Sometimes a child of a migrant worker will see a picture in Parker's classroom of a relative who attended years ago, Parker said. The continuity makes the students feel comfortable, Parker said. "Do you think a teacher from one of these other schools will drive out to a bean field to find a child who needs to be on a field trip?" Parker said. "I've done that. I've gotten lost in a bean field, too. We do it because we love these children." After the meeting, Diane Nichols, Myakka City's principal, said she can see advantages and disadvantages on both sides of the Falkner Farms issue. But Nichols said if Dearing decides to move the children to balance numbers, they should be moved to Gullett, not McNeal. "They wouldn't feel so lost at Gullett because they would be experiencing a new beginning with other children," Nichols said.
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