United Way offers to aid Hispanic education

COLUMBUS -- New partners may be teaming up with Columbus Public Schools to encourage Hispanic parents to participate in their children’s’ education as well as encourage Hispanic youth to advance their education and leadership abilities.

During the CPS Hispanic Advisory Committee meeting held Thursday, Pat Heimes, executive director of the Columbus Area United Way, offered assistance from United Way and its partners to help advance education and involvement from the Hispanic community.

“We are all partners in Columbus,” Heimes said. The United Way would like to know if “there is anything we can do to enhance knowledge, parent involvement in school system (and) encourage minority youth to become leaders. We would like to see if there is anything we can to do to become partners.”

Ken Curry, a member of the Columbus Public Schools Board of Education, agreed, stating the district wants all children to succeed and that extra effort should be made to enhance that opportunity for students.

“We want all kids to continue to succeed,” Curry said, and that includes the parents’ understanding of “the education process, to grow value of education and getting that ingrained so all our kids continue to grow.”

Dee Condon, English as a second language and migrant reading coordinator for CPS, said the district detailed the current effort to reach out to Hispanic families -- Connect Ed, personal phone calls, mailings, flyers, calendars -- and said CPS is open to other ideas that may be more effective.

Doug Kluth, Columbus Middle School principal, said three-fourths of the messages to middle school students go out in both Spanish and English.

Curry said he understands CPS is reaching out to the Hispanic community, but “there has got to be some better way to reach out and get involvement. We do a lot of things but I don’t know if we are actually reaching out yet.”

District Superintendent Paul Hillyer said only 20 percent of the telephone numbers requesting messages in Spanish are good.

“If the number changes we don’t get the change unless parents notify us of the number change,” Hillyer said, and that problem may be exacerbated by the lack of voice mail or answering machines for numbers.

Hillyer also reiterated an idea to bring CPS presentations to work places with a high concentration of Hispanic parents.

“We have talked about getting into jobs instead of holding (presentations) at schools,” he said. “I think we have to get to where they are.”

Also during the meeting, Jolene Hake, director of the Platte Valley Literacy Association, reported GED classes, in English, are being offered at Cargill Meat Solutions and will be available to residents of Schuyler and Columbus as well as their employees. The English Language Learning classes also being offered at Cargill’s learning center are open to area residents as well.