LULAC center cuts staff, seeks survival funds
http://www.caller.com/ccct/local_news/a ... 96,00.html
LULAC center cuts staff, seeks survival funds
By Israel Saenz Caller-Times
August 31, 2006
Donna Deleon-Torres worked through manila folders stacked on her desk Wednesday - each representing a student she has served as an academic mentor.
An adviser with the LULAC National Education Service Center, she only has today to submit final reports on each student's progress to the U.S. Education Department.
After she is done, she will gather up her belongings and clean out her desk.
Deleon-Torres is one of about 65 advisers in the League of United Latin American Citizens' 16-city program out of a job after the organization's application for a $3.4 million grant failed to pass federal standards early this month.
After today, the Corpus Christi center, which served about 1,200 high school and middle school students annually, will trim its six-person staff to two - a director and his secretary.
Feliberto Valdez, the center's director, said he will continue to solicit funding from any possible sources, but without the federal money, the center likely will shut its doors at the end of September.
The center, which opened in 1974, provided students at 12 area middle school and high schools with on-campus, one-on-one study skills development, financial aid and college entrance exams information, and campus tours at Texas universities.
"Everyone is very disappointed," Valdez said. "We have been around for 33 years - each year we have been able to assist students. This may be the first year we will not be able to do that."
Valdez said the center's computer lab, which also is open to adults, will stay open through September but is suspending on-campus visits. He said the center needs around $229,000 to sustain full operations for one academic year.
Matt Looney, LULAC National Education Service Center development coordinator, said the situation is similar at the program's 15 other facilities, with staff being cut at each to a director and possibly an assistant.
The Education Department met with Looney and other LULAC officials Aug. 23 to discuss the department's decision to deny the grant request.
"Essentially we brought our issues to the table, and they stood by the application process," Looney said. "They apologized to us and told us there was nothing they could do."
Education Department spokesman Trey Ditto said LULAC's grant application fell below the cutoff score necessary for funding, making the organization ineligible for Talent Search grants for the next four years. Ditto said three independent volunteers reviewed applications and based each on the group's stated objectives, community support, personnel quality, evaluation plan and budget.
The reviewers graded each application on a 100-point scale. Each applicant had to score above 98.6 to be awarded grant money. The center scored below 60 on all three reviewer's evaluations, Ditto said.
Nationwide, 753 applicants sought a share of the department's $136 million in Talent Search funds, 450 of which were approved.
Among the recipients were Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Coastal Bend College, which each received first-time, five-year Talent Search grants. A&M-Kingsville received a $220,000 annual grant to go toward counseling Hispanic and low-income students, while Coastal Bend College's $700,000 annual grant will be used to help the school develop a video and Internet conference program on its Alice campus.
Jim Manning, the Education Department's acting assistant secretary for post-secondary education, said Wednesday in a statement the department would like to continue to work with LULAC on the issue of education for Hispanics. The statement did not go into detail about how the federal government would work with the organization.
In an e-mail, Ditto said the department recently had formed partnerships with national organizations La Raza and The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund to assist Hispanic students nationwide.
Deleon-Torres said that each year she visited with an average of 600 students at Moody High School. She also visited other Corpus Christi Independent School District high schools.
Moody counselor Mike Whitmire said the impact of the program's absence at the school probably will not be fully realized until a full school year passes without a LULAC adviser.
"Basically, there's no way to do that job unless we hire new personnel, which the school district is not going to do," Whitmire said. "The kids who will have the problem are the ones whose parents never went to college. They're not going to know where to go and what questions to ask."
Contact Israel Saenz at 886-3767 or HYPERLINK mailto:saenzi@caller.com saenzi@caller.com
