PALMS - Bringing College Within Grasp

(Post Secondary Access for Latino Middle-Grades Students)

With major funding from Lumina Foundation for Education, the Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens are launching the PALMS Project (Postsecondary Access for Latino Middle-Grades Students).

In the first year of PALMS, the project partners will identify programs that are effectively reaching the parents of Latino middle-grades students with information about how to prepare their children for college. Profiles of exemplary programs, along with analyses of why the programs work, will be available on a new project website in the summer of 2005. These profiles will serve as a resource for schools and other organizations interested in reaching Hispanic families.

In its second year, PALMS will develop a toolkit for middle-grades school leaders (i.e. administrators, guidance counselors, parent coordinators) who want to strengthen their efforts at reaching Latino families. The toolkit will present many of the strategies used by the outreach programs to be profiled next summer.

To recommend a program that is promoting postsecondary access by working with parents of Latino middle-grades students, please contact Project Directors Amy Aparicio Clark (aclark@edc.org) or Charles Tamez (CharlesTamez@LULAC.org).