Initiative aids immigrant students
By Brenna GothThe Republic | azcentral.comSun Jun 30, 2013 10:25 PM
Education officials who have long addressed how to incorporate immigrant students into Arizona schools are tackling a new challenge: how to help those returning to Mexico.
Families have always crossed between Arizona and Sonora, said Ralph Romero, deputy associate superintendent for the Arizona Department of Education. But in recent years, educators have seen an increase in students returning to Sonora from the U.S. and getting lost in the paperwork process they need to complete their educations.
Officials in both countries say the registration process can be lengthy and frustrating for transnational students — and the population is growing. Parents who are deported or make a quick decision to leave the U.S. often arrive in Mexico without the documents their children and teens need for easy enrollment.
An initiative led by the Arizona-Mexico Commission aims to simplify the process for Arizona and Sonora students by validating some records electronically. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Sonora Gov. Guillermo Padrés Elías signed an agreement in June allowing the commission to develop protocols and prepare to launch the program in the fall.
The impetus for the project came from the trouble students are having entering preparatoria, which is equivalent to U.S. grades 10 through 12, Romero said. Kindergarten through ninth grade align academically between the two countries, but preparatoria is considered the start of higher education and comes with more stringent requirements for transferring.
U.S. high-school transcripts need an apostille seal of authenticity to be considered valid for transfer to preparatoria, based on a 1961 international convention on the validation of public documents. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office can issue the seal, but a parent — or the student, if he or she is 18 or older — must start the process.
Families may arrive in Mexico without these documents, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents extended family and friends from accessing the records. Students whose parents cannot cross back into the U.S. are left in limbo, said Aura Patricia de Jesús Lara, director of Sonora-Arizona affairs for the Secretary of Education and Culture in Sonora.
“A lot of people go into the workforce,” said de Jesús, who is a member of the Arizona-Mexico Commission Education Committee. “These people are roaming around the country without a way to get an education.”
As many as 1.4 million Mexicans moved from the United States to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, according to a 2012 study from the Pew Research Hispanic Center.
About five years ago, in the middle of that period, Romero noticed a large number of Arizona students leaving for Sonora, he said.
Researchers in Hermosillo, Sonora’s capital, estimate about 10,000 students have transferred from schools in the U.S. to Sonora in the past several years, said Gloria Ciria Valdéz Gardea, a professor and researcher at the College of Sonora. Exact numbers are hard to come by because those returning are not systematically tracked, she said.
Valdéz is leading a study interviewing families of returned migrants to determine the effects on students.
Students raised in the U.S. can struggle with classroom participation and social integration upon moving to Sonora, she said.
Her research focuses on children, but Valdéz has seen the problems older siblings have in the administrative process, she said.
“It’s not adapted to or adjusted for the returning of families,” Valdéz said.
The education departments in both states work to help students who do not have the right documents, but the average wait time for a certified transcript is three to sixth months, de Jesús said. Students can miss a year of school completing the process.
Under the new system, these documents can be verified electronically within a few days, said Romero, who co-chairs the commission’s education committee. The records will only be accessible on one computer, and the committee is still developing protocols to ensure glitches in the system do not violate student privacy, Romero said.
Arizona and Sonora are the first states to capitalize on an agreement signed by both countries on a national level allowing for the electronic validation, Romero said.
Education officials from other states expressed interest in the system when Romero presented the plan at a binational conference earlier this year, he said.
The Yuma Union High School District is discussing piloting the program, said Superintendent Toni Badone. The population of the district’s six high schools is about 27 to 30 percent “mobile,” with students transferring to other states and countries, she said, making an effective transcript-transfer system a priority.
“We always want to make sure kids get credit for what they learned,” she said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130630immigrant-students-initiative-transer.html