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news
Grant money boosts
paraeducator program
By Larry W. Brunson
Jr.
On-line Forty-Niner
Fifty paraeducators
from the Santa Ana Unified School District have received a
college education free of charge thanks to a $885,000 grant
provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
The grant is being
provided through the ESCALERA project, which was founded by
Ron Raya, director of the project. According to Raya,
the program lasts five years, and provides paraeducators in
the SAUSD with an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree
and a teaching credential at no cost to the student.
Paraeducators usually
work with special education students. They assist the teachers
in these programs with instruction, Raya said. This
program prepares these students to become teachers.
"We recognize
that there's a shortage of teachers," Raya said. "We
have to hire 300,000 teachers in 10 years, and we have over
200 paraeducators in the SAUSD, and most of the teachers are
on emergency credential."
Raya and his colleagues
recognized the need for teachers, and decided to do something
about it.
"Dr. JoAnn
Aguirre and I wrote a grant, along with a colleague from Santa
Ana College," Raya said. "The three of us
live in the Orange County area, and we are familiar with the
school district there."
Since legislation
was passed to have a 20 to 1 ratio in K-3 classrooms, there
is a great need for teachers, especially bilingual, Raya said.
Twenty-five paraeducators
without associate's degrees were selected and 25 with associate's
degrees were selected, Raya said.
Within the SAUSD
there are 58,000 students, 97 percent of them are Hispanic
and 88 percent have limited English-speaking proficiency,
Raya said.
The five-year ESCALERA
program, which means "ladder" in Spanish, requires
students to follow the same general education and major course
patterns as other students. However, students are required
to finish the program in five years to get the funding.
"The students
have the choice to major in whatever bilingual educational
field they want," Raya said. "We pay their
tuition each semester, and we give them $200 each semester
for books, supplies, and child care."
The SAUSD is not
the only school district with a program like this one. The
Long Beach, ABC, and Bellflower Unified School Districts also
have programs like ESCALERA, according to Cynthia Hutten-Eagle,
director of the Paraeducator training program in the department
of occupational studies.
The ABC and Bellflower
Unified School Districts have a program called the Paraeducator
to Educator program, which has been in existence for three
years. The two districts have a grant close to $600,000, and
was the first district to receive this grant, Hutten-Eagle
said.
The LBUSD program,
the Long Beach Partnership Project, has a grant for $796,628,
Hutten-Eagle said.
"There have
been several paraeducators that have finished our program,
and are now teaching," Hutten-Eagle said.
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