LODI, Calif. (Tribune News Service) — The Harney Lane Migrant Housing Center in Lodi hasn’t changed much since Lorena Perez Guzman arrived in 1998.

Most afternoons, work pants still hang on the clothes lines, dusty boots rest on doormats and children playfully run across the grass between the units. The center has been renovated over the years, but the overall layout remains the same.

Perez Guzman arrived at age 12, when her parents began working in the Central Valley and living in the state-subsidized housing from April to October. Each year, when the growing season ended, the center would close and the family of eight would return to their home in west central Mexico.

Migration took its toll on her education. She did not graduate from high school or learn to speak English fluently.

“We didn’t study,” said Perez Guzman, a third-generation migrant farmworker. “We just got (to Lodi) and were almost immediately on school break. And sometimes stayed working through the year and never went back to school.”

Perez recalled her early years, standing in the kitchen of her unit alongside her two youngest children. Back then, Perez Guzman dreamed of becoming a doctor or owning a business. It didn’t really matter. She just didn’t want to be a farmworker.

Now, at age 40, she still lives at Harney Lane with her partner and four children of her own. She spends most days in fields picking grapes and cherries.

California requires migrant farmworkers to leave state-funded housing centers every year at the end of the agricultural season. The centers close and remain empty for three to six months, the same way they have for decades, even though most farmworkers no longer migrate.

Perez Guzman’s kids, and thousands of others living in the centers, must continue bearing the brunt of the annual moves. Most bounce from one school to another every few months and receive instruction in two different languages.

This week, Perez Guzman and her family moved out of the center for the fifth straight year.

Farmworker families say they want to stop moving and create better opportunities for their children. Educators who work with migrant students say one proven strategy helps them achieve their potential: encourage families keep their children settled. But California continues to perpetuate migration by closing the housing centers every year.

“The single greatest risk to academic success is non-attendance,” said Sarah Norrbom, a Migrant Education Program regional director who oversees Northern California counties. “You can’t learn if you’re not there. And so the biggest risk to migrant students is the amount of cumulative instructional loss.”

Moving away from migration

Perez Guzman’s modest unit is one of 94 at the Lodi housing center, which is 57 miles south of Sacramento.

Her apartment has a living room, kitchen area and three bedrooms, where her sixth-grader and eighth-grader complete their homework after school.

Chips and snacks are stacked up in one corner of the unit, and kitchen countertops are lined with baking pans and trays. The exterior is gray and well-kept, with a small bed of flowers and a towering weeping willow nearby.

Farm work shaped the lives of Perez Guzman and her family members back in their hometown of Tacícuaro in Michoacán, Mexico. That has not changed in the U.S.

She hopes her children can be among the first to break from that legacy.

“The desire for my kids is for them not to work under the sun and for them to graduate,” she said. “Because that paper counts for a lot here.”

The Sacramento Bee visited seven migrant centers around the state and surveyed 150 residents about their experiences migrating and its effect on their kids’ schooling.

Nearly 70% of those with school-age children said moving hurts their kids’ education in some way, but the high cost of living in the communities where they work contributes to their decision to leave every year. Most also said they would stay at the centers if they were open year-round.

Perez Guzman continues to move her family back to Mexico largely because they lose their housing every December. The state operates Harney Lane seasonally, along with the 23 other complexes it maintains for farmworkers who pick, tend and package crops. The centers are open only from April through November or December.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development owns the apartments, and local housing authorities, nonprofits and growers’ associations own the land and manage the centers.

The state operates the centers on a budget of $16.95 million — the only housing program it funds in such a direct way. The federal government mostly pays for California’s other forms of affordable housing.

To qualify for the housing, most farmworkers living at the centers must move at least 50 miles away when they shut down during the winter and early spring. The distance rule was established to ensure those living in migrant housing were truly migratory.

But the 50-year-old system was set up for a vastly different migrant population, one primarily made up of men who were single or whose families remained in Mexico, according to Ed Flores, faculty director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center.

Most of the state’s farmworkers no longer migrate. About 92% were settled during fiscal years 2019-2020, up from 57% in 1989-1990, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

The reduction reflects governmental and demographic changes. Flores said women with families, like Perez-Guzman, are now also part of the farm labor work force.

Immigration policy and other factors have also tamped down migration. Yet seasonal farm jobs, and California’s $15.50 minimum wage provide workers with better pay than they would receive in Mexico or other places in the United States.

Even so, the state’s expensive housing sends workers back across the border or to places such as Arizona, Texas or Oklahoma at the end of the agriculture season.

This sustains a damaging cycle for thousands of school-age kids in migratory families that can’t find affordable places to live.

Perez Guzman would need to pay upwards of $2,000 for a market-rate apartment in Lodi to accommodate her family, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. She pays $387 per month to live at the center, one of the few affordable options on the minimum wage salary.

As an adult, Perez Guzman initially settled in Stockton. A 2018 divorce prompted her to return to the migrant center and begin traveling between Mexico and the U.S., like she did as a child. She brought along her four children, ages 11, 13, 18 and 22.

Her two oldest, Michelle and Yajaira, graduated from high school after spending nearly all of their education in the Stockton area. Michelle works as a nurse’s assistant, which is also a goal for Yajaira, who now works at an athletic apparel store.

Migrant student struggles

On an October afternoon, Perez Guzman’s daughter, Karla, and son, Miguel, took a break from their homework to answer the door. A young neighbor had stopped by for an afternoon snack.

A few years ago, they started their small business selling snacks to the center’s children, with the money going to their mother.

Karla, a chatty 11-year-old, handles the cash transaction. Miguel, a reserved 13-year-old, pours the hot sauce on the tortilla chips.

California has more migrant students than any other state. Karla and Miguel are among the 72,257 California students ages three through 21 who are eligible to participate in the federal Migrant Education Program, according to state data.

The initiative, established in 1965, is intended to help them with supplementary after-school and summer programs. Participating students must have a parent or guardian who works in agriculture or other qualifying industries and has moved during the past three years.

The program provides Karla and Miguel with three weeks of summer school, which they said is a combination of reviewing previous material and preparing for topics from the upcoming year. Students in her summer class are all from Harney Lane, said Karla.

Both Karla and Miguel said the summer program is beneficial, particularly when it comes to math curriculum. The two children are fluent in English, benefiting from early years spent settled in the U.S. But the yearly moves still make keeping up in school a challenge.

Other children, particularly those who start school in California at an older age, struggle to learn English, according to Norrbom. Most importantly, they leave school partway through the year and must come back and catch up with their peers after missing months of classes. High school students then have difficulty earning enough credits to graduate on time.

Migrant Education students had a 2020-2021 four-year graduation rate of about 79%, lower than the nearly 84% statewide rate, according to California Department of Education data.

They also score consistently lower on state standardized tests schools administer in third through eighth grades and again in eleventh grade, according to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress.

During the 2022-2023 school year, about 47% of all students met or exceeded English/language arts standards, while only about 24% of migrants did. Nearly 35% met or exceeded math standards, with about 15% of migrants reaching that threshold.

Norrbom said many underserved children, including migrants, need more years of instruction than districts provide. This puts them at a disadvantage when they reach the end of their school careers and they’re not passing the classes they need to graduate.

Karla and Miguel said the constant moving makes keeping up with their schoolwork tough, especially because they spend so little time in class during the late summer and fall before they return to Mexico.

Most migrants arrive at the centers in March or April and leave in October or November. That leaves only a few months of class time split up by a summer break.

“It’s hard,” Karla said. “Because (we’re), like, going to Mexico and coming back not knowing what subject we’re in and what we’re learning.”

Failed legislative measures

No program can fully replace the class time students miss through migration.

Norrbom said students can take up to a month to re-enroll in school once they return to California, “and that depends on how much time it took them to move and get settled, before they even think about getting themselves enrolled back in school again.”

No liaison helps students return to class, said Norrbom. Some schools will not re-enroll migrant students, forcing them to switch to another site for classes when they come back to California.

In 2019, Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, authored a bill meant to ensure migrant children can return to their original school. But Perez Guzman and dozens of other parents told The Bee schools are still refusing to re-enroll their kids after they return to the state.

“If the law isn’t being implemented as intended, I will work with the state Department of Education to tighten the language to make sure AB 1319 achieves its full objective,” Arambula said in a statement.

Sarah Santana — principal of Live Oak Elementary School in Lodi, where Karla attends sixth grade — was open about the school’s practice of sending “overflow” students to another site.

“In some cases, unfortunately, their spot may have been filled,” she said. “And then we don’t have space when they do return, and that’s always hard on the family.”

Another recent measure didn’t have its intended effect, either.

A 2018 bill from Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, provided an exemption to the 50-mile rule for families with school-age children, which was meant to prevent the annual forced moves when the migrant centers close.

Last year, only nine families from two centers opted to use the exemption, according to HCD data.

A Bee investigation showed some families never heard about this change and did not apply for exemptions. Advocates and some lawmakers question whether the state properly conveyed the option to residents.

“There has been a lot of misinformation about that exemption,” Caballero said. “It’s not clear to me whether it came from staff from the Department of Education or staff from the housing authorities.”

Lindy Suggs, director of the Office of Migrant Services, said HCD informs all center operators about the exemptions each year. They are then expected to share the information through resident councils that tenants elect to publicly discuss issues and concerns.

Most families, even with the exemption, simply cannot afford to remain in the communities where they work during the months when they lose their affordable housing.

“Rent is too high for us to stay for the kids to stay in school,” Perez Guzman said.

The exemption sunsets in January, giving families one last season to use it. Arambula and Caballero have committed to legislative efforts to extend it in the coming year.

Struggling to settle

The decision to stop migrating is life-altering for some families.

This was the case for Manuel Nuñez and Ricardo Perez. Nuñez serves as the director of migrant education for the San Joaquin County Office of Education. Perez is an associate superintendent of instructional services at Woodland Joint Unified School District.

They are sons of farmworkers, and the annual migrations from California to Mexico and back are vivid in their childhood memories.

But, eventually, both men’s parents made a simple, yet difficult decision.

“Our parents made that sacrifice and said we need to stop this migratory lifestyle,” Nuñez said.

For Nuñez, the change happened in the second grade while living in seasonal housing near Salinas. A school official contacted Nuñez’s parents and convinced them that migration was harming their child’s learning.

At first, Nuñez and his siblings stayed with his grandparents while his parents returned to Mexico. Eventually, his parents stopped going back.

The family would save up enough money working in the fields to scrape by during the off-season. Often, Nuñez’s parents and four siblings would squeeze into a one-bedroom apartment.

“We made it through,” Nuñez said. “I think because we did establish roots that did help us to do better in school.”

Nuñez said his story is what many farmworkers parents strive for — to stop the cycle of migrating so their children will benefit from a U.S. education.

“What would happen if you planted a tree and you kept moving it every year?” asked Perez.

With that in mind, Perez’s parents stopped migrating when he entered kindergarten. He recalled time spent sleeping in cars and garages so the family could stay rooted in their Woodland community.

“My parents would say ‘it’s worth it, we need to survive,’” Perez said.

A future without farm work?

Perez Guzman grew up in the Harney Lane center with her five siblings. One by one, they eventually made their way to the fields to work alongside their father.

Now, as adults, four of Perez Guzman’s siblings live in the center. On some weekends, the family will gather outside Perez Guzman’s home for a night of karaoke and reflection on another week spent under the sun.

But that’s not a future Perez Guzman wants for her children — three have already worked in the fields. She regrets the years she missed months of school and wonders what could have been.

For now, Perez Guzman wants to stop worrying about the disruption of her children’s education. She wants them to stop saying goodbye to their friends every year. She wants them to set up their rooms permanently in their Lodi home.

And she wants her two youngest children to graduate from high school and attend college. Maybe they will become doctors, sell homes or own bakeries.

It doesn’t really matter. She just doesn’t want them to spend their lives working in the fields and moving each year.

“I’ve taken my kids to the fields,” she said. “But (only) for them to realize the difference between the fields and school.”

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