SACRAMENTO — A controversial California rule was lifted last week, allowing migrant workers with children to remain in one location during the school year.
The “50-mile rule” of the California Department of Housing and Community Development had required farmworkers to leave state-subsidized housing provided to migrant labor and move at least 50 miles away at certain times each year in order to be eligible for housing the following year.
The law was made at a time when migrant workers were primarily young, single men — but today, the state’s agricultural workers are a vastly different demographic, including families with approximately 3,500 children, according to research by Kaveh Danesh, economics PhD candidate at UC Berkeley.
Families eligible for housing in the state’s 24 housing centers were obligated to leave their school districts in November, two months into the K-12 academic year, and return in May near the end of the year, often too late for standardized testing.
This disruption “contributes to academic failure and a persistent cycle of poverty,” said Ann López, executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families. “Mexican-American children of farmworkers represent the only targeted minority group in the state of California that is deprived of consistent childhood education.”
The exemption was sponsored in Sacramento by Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.), a food justice organization that addresses inequities in the food system, and Center for Farmworker Families. Assemblywoman Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) authored the exemption.
“The arbitrary 50-mile rule has long forced migrant families to move at the end of the agricultural season and take their children out of school mid-year, causing children to fall behind,” Caballero said. “Now, after months of working with stakeholders and the Administration, this wrong has been corrected. School-aged children and their families will now be allowed to reside at [migrant] centers year-round, so children can stay enrolled in the same school. There is no question that education is vital to a child’s future success. Housing and school stability will allow the children of migrant farmworkers to focus on their studies and on learning, not on the anxiety of moving to a new school mid-year.”
The 50-mile rule was changed when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a budget trailer bill, SB 850, last week.
Along with allowing families to stay in one location for a longer period, the exemption additionally requires up to 50 percent of all migrant worker housing to be exempt if it is needed by families with children in K-12 schools.
“The 50-mile regulation was a violation of the basic human right of education, and intentionally harmed the children of farmworkers,” said F.E.P. Executive Director Lauren Ornelas. “The people who feed all of us sacrifice so much for their children, and this unfair hardship was an added oppression.”
The exemption is in effect until Jan. 1, 2024.
