The choice for 18-year-old Elizabeth Maldonado wasn't as easy as it would seem. She could keep her job sorting bad cucumbers from good at a pickle plant, standing for hours until her legs grew swollen. Or she could finish high school and prepare for college.
A complication: Elizabeth is the youngest of six children in a migrant farming family that could use her income, no matter how meager. But Elizabeth is fortunate. Her family members "don't want me doing the same thing they're doing, so they all support me."
Now, Elizabeth is acting on her dream to be a nurse. She's a student in the Academic Migrant Summer Institute at the University of South Florida, preparing for the reading portion of the FCAT and planning her future. She is joined by about 200 migrant teens earning high school credits and improving their performance on the FCAT. (Three other Florida universities offer similar programs.)
The institute provides a room and meals for the students chosen, and keeps them to a tight schedule that begins with breakfast at 7 a.m. and ends with tutorial sessions until 9 p.m. The day is long but not spent in the fields or on the production line.
"We bring them to the university campus and let them explore the wealth of learning, culture and arts, and life experiences that many of them had not had before," said Laura Ellenburg, director of the Department of Conferences and Institutes, which administers the program.
It works. Migrant students are often set back by moving from school to school as their families follow the crops. But students who complete the institute have a significantly higher graduation rate, often going on to learn trades or attend college.
This is USF's 18th year holding the institute, yet despite such success, it found itself guessing until the last minute whether it would be funded again this year. The state Department of Education, which administers the federal grant money, didn't confirm USF's grant until June 2. The program was scheduled to begin three days later.
The educational success of migrant children is a sensible investment for the state. USF deserves reliable and adequate funding for its summer institute.
