New State Migrant Director Determined to Extend Benefits of Student Leadership Conference

By Editor Ken Harvey

Washington State Migrant Director Alfonso Anaya says he wants to make sure the award-winning Student Leadership Program survives the challenge of shrinking migrant education funding and wants to actually expands its effectiveness.

He met with 17 state and local educators in August to brainstorm how these goals might be achieved.

Dr. Ken Fox, an educator and therapist for 40 years, helped create the Student Leadership Program (SLP) 20 years ago and has been involved as a volunteer ever since.

“It’s one of the few things I’ve seen in my 40 years that really, really works,” he says.

Raul Sital, principal of Pasco High School, has also been involved in SLP since the beginning – initially as a college student.

“It helps kids throughout the state, and it changes lives,” he says. “It gives hope, connections, a vision of what can be, a road to help migrant students achieve their dreams. I’m here because I followed that road.”

Lupe Ledesma, federal projects director for Brewster School District, says it was a returning SLP student participant who opened her eyes.

“He helped me see the power of the Student Leadership Program. He came back changed. SLP has been life-changing for me, too, in that it has shown me the potential of our students,” she says.

David Rodriguez became an SLP program facilitator about five years ago.

“It has been a journey I hope will never end for me. It is a life-changing experience for adults, as well as students. I see it as my wake-up call,” he says.

Inspired by the very program he has helped conduct, he has gone back to school with the goal of becoming a teacher and school administrator. He wants to use the skills, insights and inspiration he has gain through SLP in a school setting.

“To see students transform from one day to the next is incredible,” he says of SLP.  Rodriguez provided an overview of the program during the brainstorming session.

SLP CHANGES LIVES

Each year the state conference has brought migrant students from across the state together on a college campus to learn important leadership skills, team-building, goal-setting, problem-solving and much more – all in a fun, inspiring and stimulating environment.

Students who come with a shy, cautious, reluctant or sometimes even negative attitude, leave four days later with tears, embraces and sincere gratitude as visible evidence of the dramatic change that had occurred.

The positive results have been shown statistically. Of the mobile, disadvantaged migrant students who have attended the state leadership conference, 77.5 percent have graduated from high school, compared to a rate among migrant students nationwide of only 50 percent.

Roberts, the director of the Office of Secondary Education for Migrant Youth (SEMY), which administers Student Leadership Program (SLP), notes the comments received from students as each year’s conference comes to an end, such as: “Why can’t school be like this?” “I learned to set goals and, for the first time in my life, I know I will graduate.” “I want to share my talents with others.” “I learned that I am not alone.”

Besides the state conference, SLP has helped organize, train local student and adult leaders, and oversee numerous local and regional leadership conferences. Over 400 students were involved in some level of SLP last year, Rodriguez says.

Students who went through the leadership training also made presentations last year to the National Migrant Education Conference, the statewide Promising Practices Conference, and at a parent leadership conference that Brewster students helped organize.

SLP FACING NECESSARY CHANGES

Despite all the positive accomplishments, the program has failed to reach enough students and has failed to become a self-sustaining program, according to Anaya.

“Migrant money is going away,” he says. “What we’re doing is good, but it’s not sustained. In the next 5 years or 50 we need to institutionalize the program all the way to the bottom. Perhaps regional conferences. But within 3-5 years we want it to come from the bottom.

“We’re changing the process. We’re looking at a positive change so it goes from the bottom up,” the state migrant director says. “We have to educate people, and we have to do it with less money.”

To solve this apparent conundrum will be a challenge, Anaya admits.

“Everything has to change. We have to set higher standards,” he says. “But if we don’t change the paradigm, we won’t have the resources to maintain it.”

Brainstorm participants discussed how the SLP can take root locally.

Sital, who leads one of the largest high schools in the state, notes that sending just one or two students to the state conference does not provide enough support to maintain a “critical mass” when they return to their own high school.

“I can’t say enough about how important SLP has been for the kids, but it’s hard to lead in a school of 2,000 when there are only one or two students,” he says, noting that his school has 500 migrant students who would qualify for the program.

“What they come back with is hope. But in order to have influence when they come back, you have to have four or five students. If you send only one, they have too many barriers to overcome,” Sital says.

The problem is that funding has only allowed SEMY to pay for about 80 students per year to attend the state conference – which is why each high school can only send one or two students.

The brainstormers discussed the challenges and opportunities of providing more local support.

One idea was to establish four regional leadership conferences where high schools can send 5-10 students, plus several faculty members, to be trained and inspired by the program – then challenged to return home to organize their own local leadership program at their own high school.

Over the last few years SEMY has worked with several school districts to set up their own programs. Some seem to have become somewhat self-sustaining, such as the Skagit-Whatcom Migrant Youth Conference held at Western Washington University in Bellingham, the Yakima School District student leadership conference held at Heritage University in Toppenish, and additional local leadership programs in Sunnyside and Brewster.

“When SLP came to work with me on an individual basis, things started happening,” says Brewster’s Federal Projects Director Ledesma. ”We started working with more students and with parents. We empowered the students. We didn’t spoon-feed students. We gave them meat.”

Among other things, Brewster students initiated a club that meets regularly and organizes conferences and service projects.

However, similar investment of time and resources by SEMY did not create self-sustaining programs in many other school districts.

Anaya would like to actually enlarge the state leadership conference to 100 students or more and continue to explore how to extend the program more effectively into local communities.

AMBASSADORS TO EXTEND SLP INFLUENCE

Anaya also envisions selecting about 20 student leaders to represent migrant education around the state throughout the year.

“It’s not fully developed, but we are trying to fast-track it,” he says. Some of the particulars include:

·             About 20 migrant/bilingual students would be selected from four or five parts of the state.

·             Students would agree to work with the migrant program for two years as juniors and seniors in high school, plus some continuing commitment as they proceed into college. Indeed, they would commit to help middle and high school students the rest of their lives.

·             They would dress sharp and assist in training and presentations.

·             Anaya’s office would connect with universities to arrange early admission for the students.

·             Ambassadors would visit and make presentations to elementary, middle and high school students. They would take leadership roles in local, regional and state student leadership conferences.

·             They would take leadership roles in their own high schools.

·             They would make presentations before local school officials, the state Legislature, the State Board of Education and other government bodies.

·             Anaya’s office would seek private funding to augment state funds committed to the program.

 “They would become key leaders at the State Leadership Program. They would be on fire,” Anaya says. “The key part is that these will be true leaders, and it will filter down.

“We have to build this concept. We have to light the fire and work on the transition. They will serve as a catalyst.”

Anaya says as the Ambassadors make presentations before school boards, superintendents and legislators, they will be able to accomplish more than OSPI staff.

“I don’t think the leaders will be able to turn them away,” he says. “They can help change the paradigm and get local districts committed to the Student Leadership Program.”