Cuyamaca College is expanding a six-year partnership with Mountain Empire Unified
School District to offer classes to residents of East County’s back country.
Since 2018, students at Mountain Empire High School have been able to take college-level English as a Second Language (ESL) classes taught by high school teachers who are hired on as adjunct professors at Cuyamaca.
Beginning in April, college-level child development classes offered in Campo will be open to all back country residents. The ESL and child development classes will be available this fall in Campo and Potrero.
“We’re not just looking at educating a student who just graduated from high school,” said Jessica Robinson, president of Cuyamaca College. “We are looking at educating families.”
Patrick Keeley, superintendent of the Mountain Empire 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 in Rancho San Diego.
“The more opportunities you create for the entire community helps raise the opportunities for the kids in the community,” Keeley said.
ESL classes offered at Mountain Empire High 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.
About 72% of English learners at Mountain Empire who took an English language proficiency test increased at least one level from the 2021-22 academic year to 2022-23. That compares 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 (formerly Camp Lockett Middle School) 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, both supports the classes being offered for back country residents and wants to study the situation further.
He will be taking a sabbatical in the fall to research the feasibility of creating a back country 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 such a site.
“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.”