TIGARD, Ore. — For decades, the Tigard-Tualatin School District has used an innovative approach to help at-risk students succeed. The CE2 program works with students who are struggling in school, and utilizes internships and hands-on class time with teachers to get students back on track. Often, students gain a better understanding of what they want to do as a career.
Now, that program is facing budget cuts. Across Tigard and Tualatin High Schools, four teachers work in the alternative education program. There is support staff as well. However, the school district informed staff that two of the four teachers would be cut, staff told KGW. There are concerns support staff jobs could be slashed, too, as the school district plans to cut its budget by $8.8 million.
"A year ago, I was really bad in school,” Lesly Sanchez, a high school senior, said, “and I had a lot of problems, like drug-wise."
Sanchez was far behind in credits before transferring to the program when she got pregnant. In December, she gave birth to her baby.
By transferring to the CE2 program, she also joined her boyfriend Fredy Samayoa, who was already enrolled.
"They kind of understand that my situation is different from everybody else,” Samayoa said, of teachers in the program. "That it's kind of harder to balance it out."
Last year, Samayoa said he was struggling in school. Now, he’s close to graduating while also working as a mechanic.
"Things just kind of sorted themselves out," Samayoa said.
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For more than 50 years, the program has helped kids get back on track.
"When I first joined, I had just gotten out of a car crash,” Dalila Mendez Hernandez said, “so that made me fall really behind in my credits."
When Mendez Hernandez enrolled in CE2, she said she didn’t have a plan for the future. Now, she’s graduated high school and learned through an internship through CE2 that she’s interested in working with children with special needs or becoming a midwife nurse.
She hopes to soon enroll at the Oregon Health & Science University.
Students and teachers are worried budget cuts will detrimentally affect the program.
"It's sad that we'll have that taken away and that opportunity for many students that need to have that post-secondary, kind of like push," said Krystal Evans, an alternative education teacher at Tigard High School. "We're taking away opportunities for the most at-risk, high-needs students in the building."
"They're supposed to be able to give that individual attention," Samayoa said. "So if one teacher is gone — it puts all the pressure on the other teacher."
KGW reached out to the Tigard-Tualatin School District for an interview. They declined our request, though they sent us a statement saying that like schools across Oregon, the Tigard-Tualatin School District is facing budget cuts. Due to that, they had to make budget reductions across the district. However, they did so without having to eliminate any programming.