Ohio mobile schools help migrants when work ends

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — A growing number of northwest Ohio school districts with migrant education now offer a program that allows teachers to put their classrooms on wheels to help students at nights and on weekends.

They’re teaching preschoolers whose parents pick vegetables, children who watch younger siblings during the day and teens working full days picking crops in the fields.

Districts hope the program will stress the importance of education among older children who too often would rather work than continue their schooling, said Jose Salinas, director of the Ohio Migrant Education Center in Fremont.

The program began sending teachers to migrant camps a few years ago, and most migrant education programs in the area are participating, Salinas said.

“If the children can’t come to us, we can come to them,” he said.

Migrant children are allowed to work full days in the fields once they turn 12 and so they stop going to summer migrant school, he said.