Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Why the Migrant Work Survey?

I’ve had several people ask why we had parents complete the Migrant Work Survey during registration. So, I thought it was time to pass on some information that I learned this summer.
The state receives federal dollars for the Title I, Part C Migrant Grant. We receive money from this grant to help pay for migrant education during the school year and the summer. This year the amount of money that Indiana received from the federal government decreased from the amount of money we received last year even though we have more students. Why? Well, as a state, we are not doing a good job of documenting the migrant students in our schools.

By definition, a migrant student is one whose family moves to a new community looking for or securing a job in the field of agriculture. By this definition anyone who moves to Plymouth for a job at Del Monte, Pioneer Seed, Dean Pickles, or Ready Pac could qualify for migrant grant dollars.

Since Plymouth has hundreds of employees working in agricultural businesses, our migrant numbers should be higher than they are. Hopefully, the completion of the work survey will help identify students who qualify.

So, why does the federal government give money to schools to help educate migrant students? Migrant students often start the school year in one school and move to several other schools throughout the same year. This disruption in education is a looming factor in poor grades, retention, failure, and drop-outs. Identifying these students and helping them make this transition from one school to the next is costly, but very important for their educational needs.

As state support decreases we have to look for every possible source of income that we can find. If we can do a better job of identifying migrant students in our school, we can look for additional dollars in the future.

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