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Educators Provide A Good Start For 678 Highlands Children

KATHY WATERS/HIGHLANDS TODAY

Teacher Lizmary Fonrodona reads to three and 4-year-old preschoolers on Wednesday at the RCMA Hope Villa Center in Sebring.

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: January 6, 2008

AVON PARK — The name is all wrong, confesses Matt Bokor.

Redlands Christian Migrant Association is no longer just in the Redlands migrant labor camps of Homestead. It's expanded beyond its Christian upbringing into secular education for 21 Florida counties. It's not just for migrants anymore; any low-income family is served. And it's a charitable non-profit corporation.

"The Mennonites started us," said Bokor's boss, Barbara Mainster. "They're 'love thy neighbor' Christians, and we're still that kind of Christian."

So exactly what does RCMA do? Mostly, it prepares children for school, and teaches their moms and dads how to be better parents.

How RCMA Began

RCMA was founded 41 years ago in south Miami-Dade County, and it reached out to Highlands County in 1979, said Bokor, director of community relations for the Immokalee-based organization.

The Rev. Leroy McGahee offered an abandoned building to RCMA, which was renovated and became the South Highlands Child Development Center in 1979. He and Rev. Major Callahan were concerned that the children of migrants were being taken into the groves, and not receiving proper care while their parents worked. Today, the Highway Park center serves 100 children, Bokor said.

RCMA opened nine more centers in Sebring and Avon Park, and in the 2006-07 school year served 678 children, Bokor said. There's a regional business office in Avon Park, which oversees 151 full and part-time employees and a Highlands County budget of $4.3 million.

Grass-Roots.org lists RCMA as one of its Groups That Change Communities.

In 1965, a group of Mennonites had a compassionate idea: Homestead-area volunteers would open child-care centers at the Redlands and South Dade farm labor camps, where adults could safely leave their children while working in the fields.

It didn't work out. Only a handful of migrants took advantage of RCMA's services.

The Mennonites approached farm worker advocate Wendell N. Rollason, who defined the problem: middle-class white Anglo Protestants had neither a culture nor a language in common with the people they wanted to serve.

There was a deep family reluctance to leave their children with strangers, Rollason wrote in an organizational report. They saw their children as being safer with them in the fields.

"Our challenge was to change this," Rollason said. "Fields and groves were and are dangerous places."

His solution: hire migrant mothers to work on the staff, bringing their knowledge, language, culture, and experience living with poverty. They would team up with RCMA's trained professionals.

Today, RCMA serves more than 6,000 individuals from field offices in 21 Florida counties with a staff of some 1,600. More than 85 percent are former farm workers or live in the communities they serve. The annual budget approaches $55 million a year.

Much of RCMA's funding comes from Head Start and USDA nutrition programs, but it also looks to foundations, funding agencies, United Way and individual donors inspired by fund-raising projects.

"For every $1 donated, RCMA can generate $16 in matching funds," said Matt Bokor, an RCMA spokesman.

Pre-Kindergarten

Decades ago, children learned fundamentals like numbers and letters in kindergarten.

Today, they learn all that in pre-school, said Karin Doty, assistant principal at Avon Elementary.

"With any pre-school, like RCMA or the private ones, they are allowing kids to be so much more ready, socially, emotionally and academically. They're ready to hit the ground running. They're already working on colors, shapes, numbers and letters before they get to kindergarten.

"That allows us to kick the curriculum up a notch for kids, who are ready to get going when they come to us," Doty said.

Barbara Mainster, RCMA's executive director, quoted a study which shows children from low-income families have a 500-word vocabulary. Upper income kids know 1,100 words. What that means, she said, is that even at age 3, reading is connected to success.

Imagine starting school in a room full of children who are miles ahead, and speak a different language. A few children never catch up.

If they don't learn English at RCMA or another pre-school, migrant kids at Avon Elementary are placed with a Spanish speaking kindergarten teacher to bring them up to speed.

"If a child gets to the second or third grade, and they haven't been conditioned to learn, they're going to have a real tough future. They are at a disadvantage," Doty said. "It's very important to try to accommodate those students."

Personal Experience

Twenty years ago, Maryrur March, 23, attended RCMA home study courses at Florida City.

"I spoke Spanish until the RCMA program," March said. "Both of my parents are Cuban."

At age 3, she became an English speaker in seven to nine months.

"It did a lot of good for me," said March, who is now attending South Florida Community College. She's already in the insurance business with Aflac, but when her biggest dream is answered, she'll be a manager.

March's daughter, Amanda Cruz, is 4.

"She's been in RCMA since she was 3," March said. Amanda is in Head Start and Voluntary Pre-K at Sebring Child Development Center on Martin Luther King Blvd.

"She does a lot of things," March said, a tinge of pride in her voice. "She knows her knows her ABCs, she knows her 123s, she knows her colors, she knows her shapes."

"I have a son who didn't get to attend RCMA," March said. Amado Cruz is 6. "And my daughter already knows everything he knows, and more."

She is an RCMA advocate. "Not every program that you take your child to is going to teach the fundamental things."

She's even more impressed that RCMA feeds children a family style breakfast and lunch, and teaches children to be thankful for their food.

"It's more like their home," March said.

The school even suggests activities that parents and children attend. "Any activity that we can take kids to, that's great."

The class sizes are smaller than most pre-schools, she said.

When her second son, Manuel Berrones, now 18 months, is old enough, he'll attend RCMA, she promised. "Why put them in day care when you can put them in RCMA, who is going to teach them, something? That's just like, priceless, you know."

Low-Cost

The payment is geared for low-income parents, said Carmen Esquilin, coordinator for Hope Villa, located in a subdivision. Some pay as little as 50 cents a day. Hope Villa has 50 students, with room for a dozen more. At the Sebring center, there are no migrants, but there are lots of children whose Hispanic parents work in the horticulture and citrus industries. At least 10 of the students spoke no English when they enrolled.

"Now they they are talking English, and they understand everything," Esquilin said.

But one of Esquilin's greatest success stories was a child, just a few months old, who was listless when she was enrolled.

"She started walking at nine or 10 months, and now she's a lovely girl who gives me a kiss and a hug and calls me 'Carmen, Carmen,' all the time. And she's very happy.

"It's our kids," added Yvonne Colon, a data specialist who works outside Esquilin's office. "Sometimes the parents are mad at us because their kids don't want to go home."

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