In the San Gabriel Valley, teachers are working with the Census Bureau to spread the word that every person counts. The message is crucial, since an accurate population count is vital to the well-being of public schools and communities.
Because Californians were undercounted by almost 1 million people a decade ago, the state lost out on billions of federal dollars that could have been spent on programs in schools. Federally funded education programs include Title I and Title VII, Head Start and Healthy Start. Cities also missed out on federal funds for transportation, health care and other vital services.
"We don't want to see that happen again," says Jim Weidner, president of the Garvey Education Association. "California is a minority state, and it must have an accurate population count to get its fair share of funds from the federal government."
The Alhambra/Garvey UniServ Unit is providing office space for the Census Bureau to test and train census workers who will follow up after the questionnaires have been distributed. The goal is to recruit and hire people to work in the neighborhoods where they live - people who speak the same language as the residents. Schools, which serve as the center of many communities, make ideal bases for such recruiting.
The Alhambra/Garvey UniServ Unit also helped set up a Census in the Schools program for the San Gabriel Valley Coalition for Education. The coalition, which meets monthly, includes 30 CTA chapters in 32 school districts in the county, along with superintendents, board of education members, PTAs, and the California School Employees Association.
The idea blossomed at a November coalition meeting when guest speakers from the Census Bureau Committee discussed the relationship between the census and school funding. Census representatives included speakers from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Foundation (MALDEF) and the Asian American Legal Coalition (AALC).
The program includes distributing census curriculum materials to school sites in the Alhambra and Garvey districts.
"The Census Bureau has an excellent curriculum package of materials that can be given to individual teachers," says Alice Clement, executive director of the Alhambra/Garvey UniServ. "The curriculum from Scholastic Publishing is accompanied by a large, durable U.S. map."
The hope is that such curriculum will eliminate the "fear factor" that makes residents, especially immigrants, reluctant to fill out census materials.
"The curriculum explains that there is an enormous emphasis on confidentiality, and that individuals need to be guaranteed that the Census Bureau will not share its information with any other agency," says Clement. "Teachers can communicate that to children, who can then tell their parents. No one needs to be afraid of this. The information is only used to get an accurate number of people and households."
The curriculum materials, designed for appropriate grade levels, are intended to help teachers integrate census information into regular curriculum. For example, fourth-graders are encouraged to do math equations based on census projections. Other classes may incorporate census information into social studies.
Also available to teachers are posters and videos in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and other languages, thanks to coordinated efforts by MALDEF and the AALC.
"We have a district with mostly Asian and Hispanic students, and many languages are spoken here," says Steve Kornfeld, president of the Alhambra Teachers Association. "Our needs are great. Teachers see our students' needs going unmet. When people don't cooperate with the census, we lose federal funding and it hurts everyone."
"Teachers have the education and expertise to do this," says Weidner. "It's natural for us to talk with students, try to ease their fears and their parents' fears. We even show the students how to fill out the forms so the students can assist their parents in completing them correctly."
The curriculum materials, grouped for grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12, have already been distributed to all schools in California. Teachers who have not received their materials should check with their school offices to see if they have arrived. If they have not, call the Census Bureau at (818) 904-6355 to request packets.
Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
