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Migrant Education
Migrant Education Program
What is a Migratory agricultural worker?
What types of services are available to these students?
What is the role of the Migrant Education Program Coordinator?
What is the goal of the Migrant Education Program in Ashe County?
The Migrant Education Program (MEP) is a federally funded program through the No Child Left Behind Act that identifies migratory children and their families. A migratory child/family is defined as a child/family under the age of 22 that has not graduated from high school and migrates from one region to another based on the growing/fishing season. This migratory lifestyle affects children because their education is being periodically disrupted due to the family following the different growing season of various crops. The MEP program helps ensure that children are not penalized in any way by the disparities among states in curriculum, graduation requirements, or state/student academic achievement standards. These funds also help ensure that the child receives appropriate educational services to address special needs and also that the child receives any and all opportunities to meet the high standards put in place by the different state and county education boards.A child must be younger than 22 years old and not have high school diploma or high school equivalence.The child is a migrant agricultural worker or migrant fisherman or has a parent, spouse, or guardian who is a migrant agricultural worker or a migrant fisherman.The child has moved within the preceding 36 months in order to obtain or to accompany (or join) a parent, spouse, or guardian to obtain (or seek) temporary or seasonal employment in qualifying agricultural or fishing work.Such employment is the principal means of livelihoodThe child has moved from one school district to anotherA person who has moved from one area to another in order to obtain temporary or seasonal employment in agricultural activities and their many sources of income is a migratory agricultural worker.Some of the services available in Ashe County to these students are: Comprehensive Needs Assessments, after school tutoring, in-school tutoring, summer and spring camps, a fully bilingual Migrant Education Program Coordinator and La Plaza (which helps Hispanic youth ages 16 and older to obtain their GED from Mexico).The role of the Migrant Education Coordinator in Ashe County is to…- Serve as a liaison between the student, their family and the new school administration to help in the enrollment process and also help with any questions that the family or school might have at the time of enrollment.
- Serve as a community recruiter
- Translator/Interpreter for all Ashe County Schools at meetings or functions for the parents of Hispanic children that do not speak English and educators or administration that do not speak Spanish.
- Assists the Hispanic family in completing any application in English that the child and family are required to complete.
- Accompany the pre-school teachers to the homes of Hispanic students to ensure effective communication between the Spanish speaking parents and the teacher during the state mandated home visit for all pre-school students.
- Assist all schools in Ashe County to initially test all newly enrolled Spanish speaking students and assist in administration of the annual testing of all Limited English Proficient students to measure the progress and proficiency levels that those students are achieving.
The goal of the Migrant Education Program is to ensure that all migrant students reach the challenging academic standards and graduate with a high school diploma (or GED). This prepares the student to be an asset to their community, access to higher learning and better employment and wages in their community.
Contacts
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Taylor, Julie
Phone: 336-246-7175
Email: julie.taylor@ashe.k12.nc.us -
Pelayo, Michelle
Email: michellepelayo@ashecountygov.com
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