Ruth Balderas, 36, lived in Guanajuato her whole life – until strangers on the street tried to kidnap her young son. He escaped. When she reported the kidnapping attempt to the police, they told her that without names and addresses of the suspects, they couldn’t arrest them.
When a different group of men accosted and threatened her a week later, she went to the police again with the same results. After receiving more threats, she ended up fleeing Mexico.
“I felt as though my own country wouldn’t help me,” she said. Balderas and her two young children came to the United States three years ago, leaving behind their family construction business.
“No money, no house, no work, no nothing, in a new country with a new language.” But Balderas speaks nearly fluent English now. She’s taking classes at Chula Vista Adult School.
Everyone here has a story.
Lider Linares, 69, is originally from Columbia. He decided to return to school for personal satisfaction, he said.
“I’m studying for my GED, my high school equivalency,” he said. He came to the United States looking for citizenship so that he and his children could have more opportunities that, he said, don’t exist in Colombia. He earned his citizenship this year.
These are just some of the students at Chula Vista Adult School, a modest whitewashed building on Fourth Avenue.
Everyone here has some kind of story, but everyone’s story is different: stories of poverty, struggle, conflict, escaping from kidnappers in the dead of night, as well as people who just wanted to change their lives for the better.
Chula Vista Adult School is one of four fully accredited adult education schools offered by the Sweetwater Union High School District. The others are in National City, Montgomery, and San Ysidro.
Admission and tuition are mostly free, except for nominal fees for books and materials for certain classes. Anyone can attend, as long as they’re 18 or older. Each school offers core classes – citizenship, high school equivalency classes, and English as a second language are just a few – and training for various careers.
“I’ve loved every place I’ve ever worked, including my teaching years, but this job may be the most fulfilling,” said Wes Braddock, who retired from his job as principal at Mar Vista High only to take a new job as principal here, a little more than a year ago. “Watching adults striving against some pretty significant odds to make their lives better and to be great role models for their children.”
He was enthusiastically chatting about Chula Vista Adult School over a meal of glazed ribs, coleslaw, and iced tea, an offering from the students in the culinary program, available to anyone who wants to buy lunch on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
“We have career technical education, which is the culinary arts class, for example, computer applications, business skills, construction.” Braddock said he wanted to emphasize that each school offers a different focus and different courses, as well as online and take-home courses, and that the ages of the students there run the gamut from barely eighteen to retired grandparents.
“The average age of students here is probably early to mid 40s. In the ESL, high school equivalency world, probably late thirties to mid-forties.”
Braddock said his students have taught him that it’s never too late to change your situation – a lesson that he’s applied to the school itself, pressing for remodeled and updated classrooms and prodding more reticent students to continue their education.
“I always say I want my students to be as proud of this school as we are of them. Here they are, fighting to become educated, fighting to learn the language, fighting to get a degree or earn a diploma.
Everybody here is pulling the rope in the same direction, and that direction is giving our community members a chance to achieve the American Dream. That’s what we’re all about here.”
Students like Balderas and Linares say they are working toward that dream, bit by bit, for themselves and for the futures of their children.
“Maybe I’ll go to Southwestern College,” said Balderas. She broke into Spanish. “Sorry, it’s easier for me to talk about this in Spanish. I don’t know. There are so many things that interest me. I love math, accounting, psychology, there are just so many things out there, it’s so tough to decide.”
She switched back to speaking English and smiled.
“I’m still thinking about what career is right for me.”
