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Clackamas County Head Start caters to migrants' kids
Nearly 40 children attend the new program
FACTBOX

• Head Start
Monday, August 11, 2008
SU-JIN YIM
The Oregonian Staff

BARLOW -- Maestro Juan Quintero alternates easily between Spanish and English as 17 smiling faces turn into 17 loud voices. Some boys want to go play with the pink, homemade Play-Doh. Two girls, arm in arm, yearn for the puzzles.

Quickly, he shushes the children, some of whom started their day at 5 a.m.

"No voy a mandar nadie mas," he says in the sunlit room adorned by student art and photos. "I'm not going to send anyone else."

The room quiets, and Quintero begins again.

A year ago, Clackamas County had no Head Start program for the kids whose parents pick cherries, apples and nuts, and cut down Christmas trees. The nonprofit Oregon Child Development Coalition started the center outside Canby this summer for nearly 40 children of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers.

The coalition, which receives most of its nearly $35 million annual budget from federal grants, chose to expand into Clackamas County because the state's "highest agricultural population and agricultural community is in Clackamas," says coalition Executive Director Donalda Dodson. "We have migrant families coming and going almost year-round because of the types of products that are grown and harvested and produced."

Miguel Almanza says his son, Luis, benefits from the program while his parents work at a blueberry farm and cannery. Almanza immigrated from Mexico in 1990 and graduated from Woodburn High School, hoping to make a better living than growing corn on his family farm.

It's been a good decision, he says, even though he works as many as 100 hours a week during harvest time.

Two-and-a-half-year-old Luis already is speaking better, both in Spanish and English, his father says, eager for his son to be ready for school. Thanks to this program, Luis and his classmates "won't be, on the first day of school, like 'What's this?' " Almanza says. "They will be prepared."

The Clackamas County program is the coalition's first expansion since 2005, when it built a center in Madras. The nonprofit runs 10 other migrant and seasonal workers programs statewide, serving about 2,600 children. Statewide, 150 to 200 children in the migrant programs enroll in kindergarten each fall.

Part of $1.5 million in extra federal money that funded the Clackamas County center also expanded services in Marion County. Multnomah County already has a similar program.

Head Start is a federally funded pre-kindergarten program designed to help low-income children prepare for school. The program for migrant and seasonal workers serves children from 6-weeks-old to age 5, with no proof of citizenship required. It also connects the families to other resources, including legal aid, parenting classes and health services.

The Oregon Child Development Coalition, which runs all of the migrant Head Start programs in Oregon, started 30 years ago after a child died in a farm accident.

Research shows children who go to high-quality, pre-K programs graduate from high school at a better rate, repeat grades less often and function better socially. Nationally and statewide, Latino students shoulder a disproportionately high dropout rate. Some point to Head Start and other preschool programs as a sensible opportunity to save money in the long run by fostering self-sufficiency.

But the program reaches only a fraction of the 104 children the coalition says are eligible in Clackamas County. Other children may attend part of the state-funded migrant education program, administered by the Clackamas Education Service District.

The majority of children in the Barlow center live in Molalla. A bus picks them up every morning in time for the center to open at 5 a.m.

(now mind you all, my grandson is going into Head Start, and they my college student, American citizen daughter almost was turned down for him, and still I have take him there and pick him up every day, no free rides)

Word spreads through the community of workers, who tend to follow a "migrant stream" up from California or Mexico, through California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho, Dodson says.

Nationally, funding for migrant Head Start programs hasn't expanded much in recent years. But the national group that represents state organizations doesn't blame the potentially explosive immigration issues, says Yvette Sanchez-Fuentes, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association in Washington, D.C.

"People really look at it as kids," Sanchez-Fuentes says. "These are the kids in this country who are probably the neediest of all children in Head Start."

Next year, the coalition expects to move its Barlow program to Mulino, where the coalition has bought land to build its own facility and expects to serve about 100 kids.

In 2009, migrant and Native American Head Start programs could get an additional $10 million each from the federal government. That may sound like a lot of money, but Sanchez-Fuentes says it makes room for only 1,200 more children nationwide.

Until then, Quintero, a physician by training who's pursuing a degree in early child development, listens closely to understand the kids' Spanish. Most of the children are from Mexico, where the language differs from his Colombian Spanish.

Quintero explains the next step in building a mobile for their rooms.

Do you like this? Quintero asks in Spanish.

"Si," the children reply.

"No oigo," Quintero says, cupping his ear.

"Si!" the preschoolers cry out louder.

"They are like sponges," Quintero says later, as the kids work on art and other projects in small groups. "They learn everything."

Su-jin Yim: 503-294-5927; suyim@news.oregonian.com[/b]