Cuyamaca College is expanding a six-year partnership with the Mountain Empire Unified School District to offer English language and child development classes to residents of East County’s backcountry community. Beginning in April, college-level child development classes will be offered in Campo that are open to all backcountry residents. The school and college districts are planning to offer ESL and child development classes this fall in Campo and in Potrero.
Since 2018, students at Mountain Empire High School in Campo have been able to take college-level English as a Second Language classes taught by high school teachers who are hired on as adjunct professors at Cuyamaca College.
“We’re not just looking at educating a student who just graduated from high school,” said Jessica Robinson, president of Cuyamaca College in a press release. “We are looking at educating families.”
The ESL classes offered at Mountain Empire High School allow students to earn high school and college credit at the same time. More than 29% of the students at the school are English learners. Instead of textbooks, students in the classes read texts such as non-fiction articles or classic literature such as “Fahrenheit 451.”
Patrick Keeley, superintendent of the Mountain Empire Unified School District, said the college classes provide access to education to residents who otherwise would be unable to travel 40 miles or more to attend Cuyamaca College.
“The more opportunities you create for the entire community helps raise the opportunities for the kids in the community,” Keeley stated.
ESL classes give students confidence in their other studies, leading to high graduation rates. About 72% of English learners at Mountain Empire who took an English language proficiency test increased at least one level from 2021-2022 to 2022-2023 compared to 47.5% statewide. All the students in the ESL classes graduated in 2018, and 95.8% graduated in 2019.
The eight-week child development course being offered in April will be held at the Camp Lockett Learning Lab in Campo and online. Keeley said the school district now runs four preschools and is planning to open two more toddler preschools, so the need for child development workers is great.
Manuel Mancillas-Gomez, a Cuyamaca College ESL instructor and Academic Senate president who lives in Potrero, is an enthusiastic supporter of the classes being offered for backcountry residents. He will be taking a sabbatical in the fall to research the feasibility of creating a backcountry satellite site for Cuyamaca College that could offer a wide range of college courses.
“It’s a community with huge needs,” Mancillas-Gomez said. “They are totally underserved.”
Robinson said Cuyamaca College is exploring what programs could be offered at a backcountry site and how to best offer the classes to the community.
“We are just in the beginning stages of what this could look like,” she said. “We care about them and we want them to be our students.”
