This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Twice a week, a basement room at the old Midvale City Hall comes alive with the city's youngest constituents: children ages 1 to 5. La Escuelita, an early education program for Latino children, is in session.
The program has an obvious goal: Get the children ready for school and teach their parents, many of whom have only an elementary school education, how to help.
But it also has a more subtle aim: Give Latino children a firm foundation in Spanish so they do not lose their native language skills once they begin public school.
"Families who've migrated to Midvale realize that once the children get in school, their Spanish practically disappears," said Mauricio Agramont, community developer. "Parents want to keep a solid base of their native language so as [their children] grow up they become fully bilingual as adults."
Within a year or two of entering public school, most children start to become fluent in English but their literacy in Spanish begins to fade.
"By the next generation, Spanish will be out of their lives," Agramont said. "We keep hearing over and over, 'I wish I had done something so my kids had kept their language' because it's an advantage to be bilingual."
So Midvale created La Escuelita, a preschool program that is conducted almost entirely in Spanish.
At 21 percent, Midvale's Latino population is, on a percentage basis, is surpassed only by Ogden's, at 24 percent, according to Census 2000 data.
The percentage of Midvale's population that is Latino is larger than that of Salt Lake City, Kearns, West Valley City and Taylorsville - and is three times as large as Murray's.
Many of Midvale's Latinos are immigrants with limited incomes; Midvale is attractive because it still is an affordable place to live.
"We're working very hard to make sure that as those people come in, they have the services they need to make sure their families are stable," said Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini.
Seghini sees that effort as benefiting the whole community. Among her initiatives: Instituting bilingual council meetings while also pushing English classes for adults.
"They were hidden," Seghini said of the city's Latino population. "They didn't participate and now they participate.
"Our goal is to make them fully participating members in the community and English speakers but you don't start that by not liking them because they aren't [English speakers]."
Seghini also has taken a grassroots approach to tackling social problems in the Midvale through the Community-Building Community Initiative. Created in 1998, it identified five key "results" it wanted to achieve in Midvale, all focusing on providing a healthy, supportive lifestyle for children.
Ten years ago, the city's infant mortality rate was among the highest in the state. Thanks to an outreach effort that brought prenatal information to residents' doorsteps, that rate has dropped from 12 per 1,000 to under 2 per 1,000, Seghini said.
Today, teen pregnancy is at the top of the city's agenda. Midvale has the third highest teen pregnancy rate on the Wasatch Front and the city is attempting to reach parents and teens with education and prevention programs.
"I give full credit to Mayor Seghini," Agramont said. "It is something a lot of mayors talk about, but they stop at the talk. Mayor Seghini doesn't talk a lot about it, she just does it."
Helping children succeed in school also made the city's agenda list and the preschool program is part of that effort.
Once a week, two groups of children make their way to La Escuelita, taught by Carolina Carasa.
On Mondays, 10 children ages 1 to 3 and their parents - mostly "mommies" - come to the basement classroom to work with Carasa.
The parents spend the first 20 minutes reading to their children and then help them color, cut and paste. The children sing songs (mostly in English), dance and, finally, have playtime where they learn to share and get along.
"Some of them are the only ones in the family, so they spend time playing with kids their own age," Carasa said.
At the end of class, each child gets "homework" - something to color or cut at home so parents can practice with their kids, Carasa said.
"We're hoping that they are learning how to teach their kids the basic elements they need to be successful," Agramont said.
On Wednesdays, five children ages 3 to 4 1/2 attend La Escuelita, where they engage in many of the same activities. As with the younger children, parents spend the first 20 minutes reading to the children, but then leave and let Carasa take over.
"That's part of getting them ready for kindergarten," Carasa said.
Carasa, who has worked with school-age Latino children, could see first hand "how they lost their Spanish."
"They lose everything when they start into school," she said. "I try to teach parents the important thing is to keep Spanish at home and keep their hard foundation. It is a culture."
Agramont said the hope is the program will eventually become self sufficient and expand to other grades.