Re-Interviews Show Need For Care in Qualifying Migrant Students

By Editor Ken Harvey

Initial re-interviews have found that some of the 393 migrant students randomly selected in Washington state do not actually qualify, according to the Migrant Student Data and Recruitment office (MSDR), meaning some school districts are receiving more funds than the law allows.

MSDR Director Lee Campos told migrant record clerks, home visitors, federal program directors and other educators at the Statewide MSDR Conference in August that Washington fared better than many states but still has some room to improve.

"One school district on the East Coast reported 1,000 migrant students, of which only 45 turned out to qualify," Mr. Campos says. "Another district also on the East Coast improperly claimed a large number of migrant students, and that person is in jail for fraud."

The federal Office of Migrant Education (OME) required MSDR to make re-interviews to audit the certificates of eligibility (COEs) for at least 381 families that were served by the Migrant Education Program (MEP) in the 2003-04 school year.

In his memorandum directing state directors to begin the Re-interview Initiative Project, OME Director Francisco Garcia explained: "OME has become increasingly concerned that not all states are implementing quality control procedures that are sufficient to ensure that the migrant child counts they annually report to OME are correct. … Preliminary results in several states … indicate that ineligible children have been recruited, counted, and served. … Most significantly, these defective determinations appear often attributed not to difficult eligibility questions, but rather to clear errors, fraud, or abuses in the program."

In Washington, auditors are finding some families that were not technically classified as migrant, Mr. Campos says. "But no one is going to jail. We found no evidence of fraud."

The MSDR director says the number are not finalized, since districts have an opportunity to challenge the auditors’ findings, but there appears to be some families that do not qualify because:

• Some had not made a move in the previous three years.
• Some now say they moved to obtain housing rather than for work.
• Some now say they moved to find work that was not agricultural or fishing related.
• And, while some moved for an extended period of time, such as to Mexico for the winter months, it appears to have been for vacation purposes rather than work.

"We are still looking at those school districts who are appealing the findings," Mr. Campos says. "If a district appeals, we go and re-interview the family again."

Nevertheless, he says, "We need to be very careful. We are getting into a very hazardous area here. It seems inevitable that some families will not qualify and we may get a budget cut, unless larger states find even bigger problems with eligibility. It could come back to hurt us.

"OME wants to know what we are going to do about it. We are going to re-interview more families, especially those in districts where we find a consistent problem with ineligible COEs," he says.

Retraining of recruiters and home visitors is also important, Mr. Campos says.

"We are placing emphasis on problem areas, on eligibility exercises to train people on the problems we are encountering," he says.

But to qualify families is not always as simple as it may sound, however. Some, for example, travel to Mexico in the winter and do some work, but that does not automatically qualify them as migrant.

"A return from a vacation is not a qualifying move," Mr. Campos says. "I know this is a gray area. Did they move to work or vacation?"

Experts leading the two days of conference workshops provided additional details. Recruiters and home visitors must consider several key issues in qualifying migrant families, according to MSDR recruiter/trainer Ramiro Segovia.

• Agricultural or fishing activity must represent a "principal means of livelihood" (PMOL) for the family. "Children whose parents do not rely on this work for their livelihood are not migrant children under the MEP [migrant education program] and, therefore, may not … receive program services," says Mr. Segovia. "The child is not eligible for the MEP unless the qualifying work plays an important part in sustaining the family."
• The family must move specifically "to obtain (or seek) temporary or seasonal employment in agricultural or fishing work," according to federal law. "A recruiter must use sound and reasonable judgment to determine whether … the worker moved with this intent," says Mr. Segovia, noting that the move qualifies even if the worker fails to secure work. On the other hand, just because someone is working in agriculture does NOT mean he moved with that intent. "If the recruiter finds that the primary purpose for the move was to permanently relocate to a new area, the move does not qualify, even if the worker is engaged in qualifying work," Mr. Segovia notes.
• A family must have made a "qualifying move" at least once during the previous 36 months. To be a qualifying move, it must cross school district boundaries, involve a change of residence, be with the intent of obtaining qualifying work, and be with the purpose NOT to relocate permanently.
• The recruiter must determine that the employment was intended to be temporary, even if it turned out to be longer-term.

In another workshop session, MSDR recruiter/trainers Gustavo Gonzalez and Rachel Carrera posed a series of scenarios for home visitors to consider.

Is working as a mechanic on a hops farm a qualifying employment? OME says no, the trainers said. Even though it is on a farm, the work itself is not agricultural, they explained.

Is driving truck carrying produce for an orchard considered qualifying employment? If primarily in the fields, yes, but not if it is long-haul trucking from farm to packing plant.

Is caring for horses a qualifying employment? Not if they are race horses, the trainers explained. It is, however, if they are draft horses used for agricultural purposes.

"I don’t always agree with the guidelines. My supervisor doesn’t always agree with them. But these are the guidelines from OME," says Ms. Carrera.

"It’s important that we understand the guidelines and what OME is trying to tell us," says Mr. Segovia. "But different scenarios, different situations come up. Give us a call. If we don’t have an answer, we will get you one."

Israel Hernandez, MSDR’s quality assurance coordinator, led a three-person auditing team to review the COEs typically filled out by the school districts’ migrant home visitors. Working with Mr. Hernandez were former MSDR recruiters Carlos Maya and Yolanda Moya.

He says Washington has had good quality control in the past.

"We have been doing re-interviews, but it was only 30 to 60 a year," he says.

Now, after the statewide re-interview project, expanded quality control efforts will be expected every year, he says.

Mr. Hernandez recommended to MSDR that they should interview families within one month of the time that their COE is filled out.

Since so much is determined from "intent," he says, "let’s do it while it’s fresh in their minds."

Other MSDR officials have agreed, so future audits will emphasize recently interviewed families.

Mr. Hernandez assured home visitors that he wants to make the quality control process a positive experience.

"We want to work with you as well as we can," he says. "You are welcome to come out with us to do the re-interviews."

He notes that in some states the auditors act like FBI agents, they set no appointments and many of them don’t speak Spanish.

"The process is way too harsh," Mr. Hernandez says.

"We want to work with you," he adds, "but it’s going to happen now every year."

To meet with the randomly selected families, the three re-interviewers had to make repeated visits. Some families seemed to avoid their visits for fear that there might be some negative impact on them. "But when we finally met with them, we never had an upset family. We always had a good time," Mr. Hernandez says.

But to meet with all the families, he says, "We met with families from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on some days."

Mr. Hernandez noted some unusual circumstances.

In one family, the father worked as a bartender, but his family worked in agriculture

"If agriculture plays a big role in their livelihood, you can qualify them," Hernandez says. "It doesn’t have to be the primary job."

He said some families go out on weekends to pick huckleberries to make a few pies. That’s not enough.

But Native Americans sometimes travel to the river to set their fishing nets, then go into the mountains to pick berries, returning to work the river.

"If it is an important part of their livelihood, then it counts. But somehow they need to let the school district know," Mr. Hernandez says. The very same activity may be vital to one family and insignificant to another. That will determine qualification.