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By BILL COATS
WIMAUMA, Fla. — Typically, these students spend their nights in poverty, with hard-laboring parents who can’t speak English and can’t read any language at all. The children begin their education the same way.
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| Juanita Santana, a teacher aide at Wimauma Academy, demonstrates a maraca to her pre-kindergarten students. From left, they are: Rosalinda Segoviano, Alexis Navaro, Daisy Lopez, Anahi Morales, Jesus Sanchez.
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Some arrive late each school year — and leave early — heeding the rhythms of the farms. Some live life in the shadows, because their parents lack proper papers.
These are the kids who earned an “A” on the FCAT this year for RCMA Wimauma Academy.
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| Barbara Mainster, executive director, Redlands Christian Migrant Association, the Immokalee-based child-care chain that operates Wimauma Academy. |
“We don’t have a lot of A students,” acknowledges Mark Haggett, the Academy’s director. “We have students who make significant gains the longer they stay with us.”
Haggett’s charter school, run by Immokalee-based Redlands Christian Migrant Association, caters to poor, rural children, primarily those of Hispanic immigrants. Despite the disadvantages, Wimauma Academy succeeds by tapping wholeheartedly into the migrant culture.
The Academy teaches classes in English, but conducts parent meetings in Spanish. Teachers visit every home. The fundraiser is a soccer tournament. The Christmas dance is “La Posada.” Menus are Mexican.
Generally, the children stay in school as long as their parents stay in the fields. Teachers’ aides work a late shift so students whose day officially ends at 3 p.m. are nurtured until 5:40.
Classes average 18 students, and in a school of only 185 kids, the academic needs of each child become common causes for the faculty.
“There’s a lot of room for everyone to know everyone,” marvels Morgan Roberts, a retired Presbyterian pastor who tutors at the Academy as a volunteer several days a week. “There’s a lot of very real affection.”
Beets, cucumbers, USF
Wimauma Academy uses these tools to seize a rare advantage. Unlike nearly any public school, the Academy shares a crystal-clear mission among all teachers, parents and students: The children must learn their way out of the fields.
“The parents are eager to push their kids,” says 2nd-grade teacher Irasema Scheirer. “They don’t want their kids to be illiterate.”
As a child, Scheirer hoed sugar beets in Minnesota and picked cucumbers in Michigan. As an adult, she graduated from the University of South Florida.
She first taught in an affluent Hillsborough County elementary school. There were problem parents. “It was never their child’s fault,” she says.
That doesn’t happen at Wimauma Academy, she says. “The parents, they see us as role models.”
The school becomes so familial to its students that culture shock awaits them in public schools.
“They’re going to go into these big middle schools, and not know anyone, and sit in the back of the class, and not know their teacher, and possibly take a turn for the worse,” worries Haggett, the school director. “That’s when they start to get lost.”
“They leave here,”says Scheirer, “and they’re in tears.”
That’s why RCMA has raised some $600,000 of $1.6-million needed to expand the Academy into middle-school grades. Architects are drafting plans, and a capital campaign is under way.
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| Mark Haggett, Wimauma Academy director. |
“Middle school is such an emotional time for kids; it’s a crossroads,” says RCMA’s executive director, Barbara Mainster. “The kids we serve particularly need us, and we want to be there for them to ensure they will succeed when they hit high school.”
Email from Immokalee
Public school students take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test annually, beginning in the third grade. It’s administered in English, so nearly all Wimauma Academy students must take the test in their second language.
Two factors produce a school’s overall grade: First, how many of its students were “proficient” in reading, math, science and writing; and second, how many of the non-proficient students improved since the prior year.
Improvement has been Wimauma Academy’s specialty
Mark Haggett was confident his school would bounce back from the disappointing C of the year before. The fifth grade, in particular, seemed to be rallying.
Haggett set his alarm for 6 a.m. on June 18, the morning the state posted all FCAT school grades on its website. But when the scores appeared, Haggett couldn’t access them. Maria Jimenez could.
From her home in Immokalee, Haggett’s boss emailed him: Wimauma Academy had leaped to an A.
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| Wimauma Academy second-grader Giovanni Trejo shows off a page he created for his scrapbook. |
Even more noteworthy, the school had met a battery of federal standards to achieve 100-percent Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Only 23 percent of Florida schools achieved that.
Haggett began spreading the news — and good cheer — to his teachers.
“I think there was a huge sense of accomplishment,” he said.
What follows is a public comments section. This is not from the Observer News staff - it comes from other people and contains their opinions and theirs alone. The Observer News does not control the material that follows. We do, however, reserve the right to remove objectionable material at our discretion. By that we mean that we will edit or delete any content that we deem is inappropriate. By posting your comments, you are stating that you agree to these terms.
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Comments
Alta Haggett
01 Oct 2009, 17:16
Wonderful and inspirational story!! I may be a slight bit biased, but, I believe Mark Haggett is the perfect director for the academy. His love for children along with his desire to help improve their lives is evident. Keep getting A's Mark!! .......... Alta :)
Alta Haggett
01 Oct 2009, 17:16
Wonderful and inspirational story!! I may be a slight bit biased, but, I believe Mark Haggett is the perfect director for the academy. His love for children along with his desire to help improve their lives is evident. Keep getting A's Mark!! .......... Alta :)
Alta Haggett
01 Oct 2009, 17:15
Wonderful and inspirational story!! I may be a slight bit biased, but, I believe Mark Haggett is the perfect director for the academy. His love for children along with his desire to help improve their lives is evident. Keep getting A's Mark!! .......... Alta :)
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