DOWAGIAC — As another summer begins, the Dowagiac Union School District is beginning another year of its Summer Migrant Program, this time with new director Kara Cox.

A staff of 20 teachers and other educators help teach students in the program, who attend class Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Dowagiac Middle School, 57072 Riverside Dr., Dowagiac.

Historically, migrant children have been at a disadvantage when it comes to academics. There are holes in their learning because they have moved around a lot, said Cox, who started as a counselor with the program 15 years ago and was appointed as the director this year. During the school year, Cox is the Pathfinder’s adult/alternative education coordinator.

The Summer Migrant Program was established in the state of Michigan to support and provide remediation as well as enrichment for eligible migrant students so they could attend summer school and fill in those gaps of their education, Cox said.

“Because when you leave Texas and move here so your parents can work, and you come to Michigan, you miss travel time,” she said. “Plus, when they get here, our curriculum is not always aligned with the other states’ curriculum. All of a sudden, you have to meet all new friends so that’s transition time too,” she said.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact year the summer migrant program was created, but John Lehigh, who served as the director in 1979, said he was told it was not until 1977 that the school had a formal and traditional program established.

The program follows the same curriculum as the state of Michigan and uses a math program called math matters and a reader, writers, worship for all students, Cox said. The math matters program is chosen because that is also used by schools in Texas, although most of Dowagiac’s migrant families now come from Florida, she said.

“It used to be the pattern was way more from Mexico and south Texas, and it just presented a different challenge,” Lehigh said. “When you have all three of those combined, you are trying to educate three different groups. It’s always a challenge to match up everything you try to do in a way that is beneficial to the kids.”

The program has seen a decline in the number of students who are eligible to participate, Cox said. When she first began working with the program, it had about 150 students. Last year, the numbers were in the 60 to 70 range, but the program evolves as circumstances change with the farms and farmers, she said.

“Part of qualifying as a migrant family, there has to be a move for agriculture purposes of a family member across school districts within a three-year window,” Cox said. “These are families who are moving for work.”

There is a problem with that, Lehigh said. There are still many families who live in the area and work in agriculture the same way they always have, but they do not make the move, and the district cannot serve them, he said.

“It’s not that we have less people out of this population, it’s that we have less by the federal governments terms of who we can serve,” Lehigh said.

Recent changes in visas have also caused a decline in families and increase in solo migrants, Cox said.

“H2A is the name of a type of visa which allows people to get a visa to come here to work,” Cox said. “Instead of having families at a lot of our camps, we just have young men who are recruited and hired by different companies. They get their H2A visa, and then they come here and work for a period of time. Instead of the farmers having families on the farms, they are just bringing up workers to work for a certain period of time. We’ve seen a decline in the number of younger students that we see and now our shift has to be out of school youth between the ages of 16 to 22 who haven’t finished their education.”

“This is a new area for us in the last few years,” Lehigh said. “Now we have Mexico citizens coming with Mexican educational background, and they are wonderful guys to work with, but it changes the direction and focus of what you do. It’s still a lot of fun to work with this group.”

Despite the program going through several changes, there is one part that always stays the same, Cox said.

“Our students and our families are the most gracious, hardworking and humble,” she said. “They want their children to get the best absolute education. I just pulled up high school transcripts, and when I first started, there was a focus on helping students catch up with credits. So many of our migrant students are doing very well academically.”

Being in the program sucks educators in, both Lehigh and Cox confirmed.

“I started about 15 years ago, but many of our same families return, and now we’ve been able to watch kids grow up,” Cox said.

“It is definitely that kind of program that once you work here, the culture, the people, the situation just draws you in,” Lehigh said.