AMHERST — Despite changes and enhancements at the Amherst Family Center designed to better meet the needs of all students, including more direct support provided at the elementary and regional school buildings, some families and community advocates are expressing concern.
“The staff of the Family Center were the voice of silent, invisible and marginalized families in our town,” Martha Toro, a retired teacher and principal, told the Amherst School Committee during public comments Tuesday. “Latinos are the second largest group represented in the district and are the group with the least support, and have suffered dearly trying to improve their lives.”
Toro was among individuals who presented comments, both orally and in writing, responding to an article in the Gazette this week outlining the adjustments being made to the Family Center and a focus on addressing absenteeism among students.
Manuel Diaz, who has a child in the schools, said absenteeism is coming down across the board for all students, including those from marginalized families, based on pre-pandemic data.
“My point was in firm support of Amherst Family Center, which does serve Hispanics, Latinos, people of color, LGBTQ and everyone else,” Diaz said.
Diaz said that he learned about the “invisible people” concept through the Family Center, that some of those who live in Amherst and have children in the schools aren’t seen because they work two or three jobs or are immigrants.
Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman walked the School Committee through the reimagined Family Center, where the hope is to shift to a more direct-impact model.
The center, she said, will continue to provide various tiers of support services, but restructuring will affect and benefit hundreds of students and “expand the services to meet the needs of our students.”
The center’s student and family engagement liaison is spending three days at the Amherst elementary schools and two days at the regional schools each week.
Herman also provided data showing that among Hispanic students, more than 50% are chronically absent, missing 10 or more school days, and while there have been improvements, dropping from 60.5% in the 2022-2023 school year to 57.7% last school year, those numbers are much higher than the overall student population, where 41.3% and then 37.8% were chronically absent.
The absences may also be tied to lower scores on MCAS tests.
Other parents urged the school committee against the changes.
“Given the concerns I’ve been hearing from families who use the Family Center, I would encourage the school committee to do more fact finding before making any changes to the way the Family Center is run or changing its funding or staffing,” wrote Amber Cano-Martin.
“The dispersal of the Family Center is also confusing and negatively impacts our most marginalized students,” wrote Allegra Clark.
Toro told school committee members that Herman’s plan is not workable.
“The plan is unrealistic and an impossible task for one person in one school a day, and another person a couple of days in a school,” Toro said.
Jaime Davila, a parent of a former public schools student, asked the school committee to address “historic and systemic issues of the marginalization of Latino/a/e/x students and their families in our schools. Such issues are serious and longstanding and require sustained analysis.”
Davila also appealed for the public release and discussion of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s inclusion of the Amherst schools on a list of districts across the state with an over-representation of Latino students in special education, also known as “significant disproportionately” in special education.
“There are many more steps to be taken in analyzing the marginalization of Latino students,” Davila wrote.
He said criticizing specific programs in the media, and singling out the Caminantes Program for cuts and public criticism are not productive avenues to pursue. Caminantes is the dual-language program at Fort River School.
Herman said equity means providing what children they need and noted that any changes to the Caminantes program are not intended to regress it, but to strengthen it and ensure student success.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
