Thread: Gift card or a vacation to attend school?

Chicago's Hispanic families have been the targets of a massive CPS campaign that has included grocery store gift cards, rent and mortgage payments, and vacation giveaways as incentives to get kids to school every day of the year.

'It's gotten better, but it's bad'
CPS works to raise attendance rate among Hispanics

January 15, 2007
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter

In schools with high concentrations of Hispanic students, it has long been common to see empty seats in class the week or two before and after Christmas, when immigrant families take their kids to visit relatives back home.

But parent outreach efforts at the Chicago Public Schools, turmoil in Mexico and Latin America, and increased border security have meant fewer kids are missing days this school year, say teachers and administrators.

Claudia Gutierrez, an Albany Park mother of two Newton Bateman Elementary students, thought it was too violent in her home state of Michoacan, Mexico, to take the kids this year. Daughter Alexa Espino is a sixth-grader and son Jnnese Espino is in seventh.

"We were scared, to be honest, but even when we do go back, we're very careful the kids don't miss school," she said in Spanish.

Chicago's Hispanic families have been the targets of a massive CPS campaign that has included grocery store gift cards, rent and mortgage payments, and vacation giveaways as incentives to get kids to school every day of the year.

Poor attendance rates harm learning -- and funding levels. And even though some schools have seen an improvement in attendance, others still have a long way to go.

Kids 'don't like to miss'

"It's gotten better, but it's bad," said Veronica Iturralde, assistant principal at Thomas Kelly High in the Brighton Park neighborhood. "The entire week before [Christmas break], an eighth to a fourth of the school is gone and same after break." She said the parent outreach is showing slow returns, "but now at least the parents tell us."

Spotty attendance -- at Christmas and at the end and beginning of the school year -- is a problem that teachers in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods have dealt with since the first influx of migrant workers brought their kids to school.

"I've had children enrolled as late as that last week of school before break and others pulled out in October and re-enrolled in spring," said Myriam M. Romero, principal at Rosario Castellanos Middle School in Little Village.

Bateman Assistant Principal Antonio J. Jimenez agreed. "Parents are taking education a little more seriously," said Jimenez, whose school gives students trophies and pizza parties for good attendance.

Gutierrez, a volunteer at Bateman, says she has seen a change in parents and kids.

"Everyone is realizing that without studies, the kids aren't going to get far," she said. "And the kids take it upon themselves; they, more than anyone, don't like to miss."

ecepeda@suntimes.com

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/ ... 15.article[/quote]

This is such a farce! These

poor

immigrants who can't afford to live a quality standard of living. But!, they can afford to go back to Mexico every year? Not to mention all the Mexican businesses popping up all over the country. As a business man I cn confirm, it takes money to open a business.

The amount of B.S. we are handed form our "leaders" sickens me.

Knowing people who work for schools, it all has to do with money. If schools do not maintain certain enrollment figures, they could see their budgets reduced. Like someone posted earlier, they have all this money to take the entire family back to mexico, but many of their kids are on the free luch program.