Program works to bridge gap for migrant children

By KEVIN ABOUREZK / Lincoln Journal Star

Heading north from McPhee Elementary School, the children walk by the Capitol in hot, muggy weather.

It’s a big day for the dozens of students in the Lincoln Public Schools Migrant Education summer program.

Today, they’ll visit the Celebrate Lincoln ethnic festival downtown and crawl over obstacle courses and climb towers.

Not that they really need any education in diversity.

The 82 students in the summer program represent eight countries, including Syria, where Bayan Hadji lived before moving to Lincoln with her family nearly nine years ago.

“I like how they painted my hair, spray-painted with blue and pink,” the 12-year-old says of the festival.

These kids have spent the past three weeks of their summer vacation at McPhee, studying math and practicing their English language skills.

They come from Sudan, Mexico, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar and Thailand. They are in grades kindergarten through eight.

What they have in common is this: They are either refugees or children of migrant workers.

For the children of migrant workers, moving at least once a year is a fact of life as their parents look for new agricultural jobs.

“We try to help them close the gap of education that these constant moves have on their lives,” said Pablo Cervantes, a recruiter for the program.

The program had 115 students this past school year and has served about 250 students over the past four years.

In addition to its summer program, it offers students and their families English classes, translation services and bilingual liaisons who can help them with such needs as housing, health care and employment.

The program began in 1966, primarily as a way to serve children of Hispanic migrant workers. Most of the students’ parents work in such industries as meatpacking, fishing or dairy.

As the migrant working population has diversified, the program has shifted to serve children from many countries, said Josh Cramer, LPS supervisor of federal programs.

It also serves fewer children.

In recent years, lawmakers hesitant to serve children of possible illegal immigrants have made eligibility criteria more stringent, Cramer said.

As a result, the number of children has dwindled, he said. But program recruiters have worked to increase those numbers.

“We don’t think the numbers have gone down,” Cramer said of the number of children of migrant workers. “We just think we need to work harder to recruit.”

On Monday, the students clapped and sang “It’s a Small World” as Antonio Almazan played an acoustic guitar.

Almazan knows a lot about the program’s roots. Its predecessor, the Bracero Program, brought Mexican workers to the United States starting in 1942 to work in agricultural fields.

That’s how Almazan’s father came to Lincoln.

“We became American citizens,” he said.

Now, Almazan is teaching English to children of migrant workers.

During the summer program, which began June 9, two teachers from Lincoln and two from Mexico and other staff focus on improving the children’s English writing and speaking skills.

Unlike during the school year, the summer program brings children of migrant workers together with refugee children.

Margarita Gutierrez, a teacher from Pachuca, Mexico, said she has worked to remind the Hispanic children of Mexican culture and identity.

She and another teacher from Mexico, Claudia Huitrado, are here as part of a teacher exchange program. This summer, they have taught children about Mexican costumes and crafts, including beadwork, flags and clay whistles.

Almazan said he hopes the program will help integrate students into American society and give them skills they need to succeed.

“This is the new face of Lincoln,” he said. “If we don’t do a good job, we’re going to have problems later on.”

Reshad Abdul-Basir, 12, is glad to be part of the Migrant Education summer program. If he wasn’t here, he says, he might be at home watching TV.

Instead, he’s wielding a gigantic soft tube at Celebrate Lincoln, trying to knock his partner off a pedestal.

“It was pretty awesome,” he says of the field trip. “We had a lot of fun, and we ate.”