Farmington Education Co-Op Takes Over Migrant Student Services

The Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative is making room for a new position focused on migrant student services, the result of a significant shift in the state’s resources.

Jonathan Warren, former co-principal at Prairie Grove Elementary School, began as migrant specialist at the cooperative in Farmington on July 1.

The federally funded migrant program provides supplemental instructional and support services to children of migrant workers — those who seek temporary or seasonal work in agriculture, fishing and other industries.

Arkansas receives about $6 million each year for migrant education and serves about 5,400 students through the program, according to Arkansas Department of Education officials. Benton and Washington county schools serve nearly 800 migrant students, Warren said.

The state until this year maintained four migrant centers, including one at the Boston Mountain Educational Cooperative in West Fork. Others were in Branch, Hope and Bald Knob. It was a long-standing practice to send all migrant money to those four centers, which in turn distributed about 40% to schools.

That practice began to change last year, when the state opted to send more than one-third of the $6 million to the school districts.

The state implemented a larger change this year after concluding the money wasn’t being equitably distributed and the percentage of money getting to schools wasn’t adequate, according to Stacy Smith, the department’s assistant commissioner of learning services.

The state now is sending 75% of the migrant money to 69 school districts. The other 25% will go to six educational cooperatives to better serve their respective regions and schools receiving migrant money, Smith said.

“We feel like we have a much better structure,” Smith said.

Using existing educational cooperative staff for finance and office management and eliminating migrant director positions has resulted in savings for the program, she said.

The other educational cooperatives chosen to host migrant programs are in Harrisburg, Gillham, Branch, Monticello and Beebe.

The Boston Mountain Education Cooperative had run the migrant program in West Fork for more than 30 years, Director John Selph said.

“It’s a loss for us. It was one of our bigger programs,” he said.

Selph has adopted a waitand-see approach before judging the state’s decision to move the program about 15 miles away.

“We felt like we had a really good program. But, hopefully, it will be a really good program over there, too,” he said.

Charles Cudney, the Northwest Arkansas cooperative’s director, said the state’s decision to reorganize was a surprise and his office was given short notice to decide whether it would accept the responsibility of serving as the migrant specialist’s base.

“I, of course, agreed to be the host, because I wanted to keep the services close to our region,” Cudney said.

The federal program recognizes migrant students need extra support, which may be tutoring or noneducational services such as medical attention, he said.

Charles Alexander, recruiter for the Northwest Arkansas cooperative, said migrant workers such as vegetable crop harvesters who work all over the United States often find work in Northwest Arkansas food processing plants to fill gaps between work elsewhere.

He wouldn’t feel comfortable estimating the average time of their stay, Alexander said of the migrants.

“You cannot tell who is a migrant worker by looking at them,” he said. More than one-half are native-born Americans and more than one-third are white, he said.

“It’s not so much the case anymore, but many of them used to be Amish or Mennonites,” he said. The common factor for all of them is they have to move to find work.

“In the past, we had to convince more of the parents of the value of an education,” Alexander said. “Kids dropping out of school used to be more frequent because the family believed they needed more hands in the fields. That is not the case as much anymore.”

Finding space for Warren was a bit challenging because the cooperative is running out of room, Cudney said. As of Thursday, 93 people work there, an office spokeswoman said.

Warren worked for the Prairie Grove School District for 16 years. The migrant specialist job appealed to him because he gets a chance to meet new people and observe how different schools operate, he said. He’s responsible for eight counties, including Benton and Washington.

“And then, professionally, it was an opportunity to kind of step out of my comfort zone and grow a little bit,” he said.

He oversees two migrant recruiters and a third is soon to be hired, Warren said. Recruiters are responsible for assisting with the identification and recruitment of migrant students and families.

Identification is a big part of the cooperative’s duties because sometimes parents don’t know they qualify for migrant program services, Cudney said.

Most of the roughly 1,200 migrant students in his eight-county area are concentrated in Springdale, which has more than 300, then Berryville and Green Forest, which both have more than 100, according to Warren.

“Project” school districts have at least 25 migrant students and are the ones receiving money directly from the state. The Northwest Arkansas cooperative’s project school districts are Berryville, Decatur, Fayetteville, Gravette, Green Forest, Harrison, Huntsville, Lincoln, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale. Each one receives at least $15,000.

Warren is helping project districts obtain the money they’re seeking. He also works with nonproject school districts by making sure they get the services they need, he said.

Warren