Thread: Tuition-paying Mexican kids could enroll

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/164525

Tuition-paying Mexican kids could enroll
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.14.2007
advertisementSASABE, Ariz. — The concrete is down and the steel framing is up for this tiny border town's new crown jewel: a $1.5 million dollar elementary school.
The school — funded by the Students FIRST program through the Arizona School Facilities Board — may end up benefiting Mexico as much as the United States.
The 4,600-square-foot kindergarten through eighth grade San Fernando Elementary School will have space for 57 students when it's completed this March. With only 18 students currently enrolled, the school board is considering opening it up to tuition-paying Mexican students, which would be within state rules.
And while the board says all of the school's students have shown proof of U.S. residency, locals in neighboring Sasabe, Mexico, say a handful of students who live in Mexico already attend the school, which is not within state rules.
While federal law mandates a public education for all students regardless of their immigration status, school districts can require evidence that shows their legal guardian lives within its boundaries.
The one-school San Fernando School District requires three months' rent receipts, an electric or water bill and some other form of proof of residency such as U.S. birth certificate, driver's license, voter registration card, income tax return or a recent paycheck stub from the legal guardian.
Arizona School Superintendent Tom Horne called the method "pretty thorough."
"We are pretty super-careful about that, and we make sure our students are United States citizens and that they reside in Arizona," said Melissa Owen, San Fernando School Board president and owner of a ranch north of Sasabe.
Yet, on a recent afternoon, at least one mother crossed over from Mexico into the United States in her vehicle to pick up her daughter at the school and take her back to their house in Sasabe, Mexico.
At least four or five cars conduct the same morning and afternoon ritual, said Gabriel Martinez, a mechanic who has the first house south of the Sasabe Port of Entry and a bird's eye view of the traffic.
At least a handful of students at the San Fernando School live in Mexico, he said.
The issue of students crossing the border to attend U.S. schools has long been a part of life along the border.
School officials in Nogales, Ariz., have been trying to prevent the practice since the late 1990s.
In May 2005, a private investigator sent by Arizona school Superintendent Tom Horne found that students who live in Mexico regularly attend public schools in Ajo at the expense of state taxpayers.
The state office has never received a complaint about San Fernando School, said Arizona Department of Education spokeswoman Amy Rezzonico
As long as students pay tuition and Arizona taxpayer money isn't used, Horne supports the education of Mexican students, he said.
Schools in Nogales, Ajo and Yuma have accepted tuition-paying Mexican students before, Rezzonico said.
The board knows that many of its students have extended family in Mexico and often visit them, Owen said. Beyond the extensive residence requirements, the tiny school district says it really can't do much else to confirm residency, Owen said.
"That is about as much as we can ask anybody to produce," said Owen, who isn't paid for her work on the board and runs a 600-acre ranch and vineyard. "I can't go to every residence and make surprise visits at the house to make sure a student is living there."
The San Fernando School Board is considering the tuition program to offer a legal avenue for Mexican students to study at the new school, Owen said.
"It's good for all of us on the border to have children who have had a good education," said Owen about the tuition-paying program. "It will benefit Sasabe, Arizona, to have well-educated kids with good skills whether they are in Sasabe, Arizona or in Sasabe, Sonora."
Immigration law pitfall
Owen said she has talked with lawyers and immigration officials about the idea and hopes to have the program operational by the start of the next school year.
But, U.S. immigration laws could put a crimp in the board's plans.
As a public elementary school, San Fernando School would not be eligible to accept foreign students, said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Marie Sebrechts.
Under those guidelines, attendance would be limited to children living in Mexico who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
Residents of Sasabe, Mexico, say there are plenty of such children. Some parents had their children while living illegally in the United States, and others were transported to hospitals in Tucson due to complicated pregnancies.
At least 12 of the 204 students at the Juan Escutia Elementary School in Sasabe, Mexico, are U.S. citizens, said school Principal Martha Arce Burgos.
About 2,500 people live in Sasabe, Mexico, compared with about 30 in Sasabe.
While Arce Burgos boasts of the quality education the school offers, which includes a computer room with 16 Dell computers, Internet and interactive blackboards in classrooms, she believes some parents would jump at the chance to have their children learn English.
Osmar Bustamante Figueroa, 10, is one of the U.S. citizen children in Sasabe, Mexico. Born in Tucson while his mother was living there illegally, he attended kindergarten and first grade at Davidson Elementary School in Tucson before the family returned to Sasabe, said his mom, Serena Bustamante Sotelo. The Juan Escutia school is good, but she said her son learns more slowly than he did in Tucson.
"The schools in the United States are better because they teach more," she said. "They have more practice in teaching than they do in Mexico."
Question of money
Even though Bustamante Sotelo would rather have her son in school in the United States, she said she wouldn't be able to pay tuition.
Many parents in Sasabe, Mexico, echoed her thoughts, saying that they would be interested in the opportunity to send their children to the new San Fernando School but were concerned about tuition prices.
The San Fernando School Board members want to determine the cost of educating a child at the school before they establish a tuition rate, Owen said.
The board can set the tuition at what it wants as long as it is reasonable, said Tina Norton, chief financial officer at the Pima County School Superintendent's Office.
Most likely, it would be between $4,000 and $13,000, she said.
"If the student pays for the full cost of that education, it's perfectly legal to go to our school," she said.
A private bilingual school in Mexico usually costs about $2,000 a year, which seems reasonable, said Karla Garcia Field, a mother of three and treasurer on the parents association at the Sasabe, Mexico, school.
Tuition that surpasses $4,000 would likely be too much for many parents, she said. She estimated that about 15 families could afford that.
"Maybe I can pay it, but there will be mothers that this price will be too high," said Garcia Field in Spanish, who owns the Super Coyote with her husband and has a college degree from a university in Hermosillo and studied at the University of Arizona.
Costly and lengthy project
The new San Fernando Elementary School is expected to be completed in March, five years after the School Facilities Board approved money for the project.
The delay was caused in part by the discovery that the existing school was built on land owned by Pima County, and the board and county couldn't reach a deal to transfer the property to the school, said Norton, of the Pima County School Superintendent's Office.
In 2004, The state School Facilities Board paid $45,422 for a four-acre parcel of land east of the current building, said Kristen Landry, spokeswoman for the board.
At $1.5 million, the new school cost three times as much as the original budget approved by the board in 2002 and five times as much as the original estimate to upgrade the old building.
The increase is due to inflation and the time it took to complete the project, Landry said.
The new building will be the township's first new school in 80 years, and one of the only buildings in the town built after World War II.
The current school is a one- room adobe structure built in the 1920s. A modular trailer was later added to serve as an additional classroom and office.
The new school will offer students a better learning environment, school officials said.
It will have two classrooms, a science and art room and library in one half of the building. The other half will be a multipurpose room with a climbing wall. In between there will be be administration offices, bathrooms and a nurse's station.
Yet, for all the school's assets, some of the focus will continue to fall on the residency and immigration status of its students, whether townfolk like it or not.
That puts the San Fernando School Board in a difficult position, Owen said.
"We know that some of the students go back and forth across the border, and we are trying to address that," Owen said. "This happens all of the time, and that's a reality on the border, and that's one of the things we are trying to address."
● Contact Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.

This is situation is really transparent and shows the kind of morality that breeds illegal immigration. After all why pay the school district when for a discount you can have a cousin or friend declare that your chld is their ward. Why pay should they pay some American taxpayers for the cost when by paying Tio Jose they can keep the money.