THE GORGE —Two longstanding federally funded programs — one helps migrant farmworkers get GEDs, the other helps migrant students in their first year of college — have faced months of uncertainty as funds were frozen despite congressional approval for the 2025 fiscal year (see related story).
In mid-September, 73 of the 116 programs nationwide, which operate at a number of community colleges in Oregon and at Oregon State University (OSU), learned they would get funding after all. The remaining 43 programs nationwide were told they would not.
Bartolo Marquez runs OSU’s HEP (High School Equivalency Program). His GED program will continue to be funded, but the HEP programs at Chemeketa Community College in Salem and Portland Community College were not. The latter two programs had already finished their five-year grants and were seeking new ones. The 30 programs nationwide that were seeking new grants did not get funding.
HEP programs were established nationally in the 1960s, and have been in Oregon since then as well, Marquez said.
The HEP program at OSU draws students from all over the state, and recently enrolled a number of students from Parkdale, he said.
The college-level program, called College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), offers stipends and tutoring to first-year college students. CAMP was not funded at OSU itself, but OSU also distributes federal funds to CAMP programs at three community colleges, including Columbia Gorge Community College, and those programs, called OSU CAMP Alliance, were given funding for the 2025-26 school year, Marquez said.
The federal funding comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Migrant Education.
A lawsuit was filed in August challenging the withholding of congressionally approved funding for HEP and CAMP, Marquez said. As a result of the lawsuit, funding for the 73 programs nationwide was approved Sept. 15.
Marquez said the HEP program at OSU just finished the fourth year of its five-year grant.
The OSU HEP program helps 40 students per year, both remotely and in-person. The in-person option is a fast-tracked, 10-week course on campus to get a GED.
That program at OSU also covers students’ housing, food, laptop if needed, and classes. Students are able to take the GED coursework in English or Spanish, and then take an off-site test in English or Spanish. The GED test itself is four exams.
Most students complete the course in 3-4 months. Some finish in 3-4 weeks, Marquez said.
Qualifying students are either farmworkers themselves or have a family member who does migrant agricultural work, were part of the K-12 migrant education program, or were in the national Farmworkers Jobs Program, Marquez said.
The HEP program also focuses on what comes after getting the GED, he said. It helps students apply for college or other training programs — including paying any application fees — or seek better jobs or higher levels of job training, or pursue joining the military.
“We don’t just get them their GEDs; we also transition them into their next step, whatever that will be,” Marquez said.
The HEP program has operated at five community colleges in Oregon: Portland Community College, Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Central Oregon Community College in Redmond, Chemeketa Community College in Salem and Klamath Community College in Klamath Falls.
Statewide this past year, HEP programs enrolled 40 students at OSU, 58 at PCC, 40 in Redmond and 45 at Treasure Valley. Klamath did not respond to his request for their numbers, Marquez said, likely because the program was already shut down.
Normally, the programs that are within their five-year grant cycle get a “continuation letter” each spring saying expected grant funds would continue.
But in June, programs were encouraged by their program officer in Washington, D.C., to spend whatever money they had by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. They were told they could not carry over any funds after that date, as had previously been allowed, Marquez said.
In August, Marquez’s office was preparing to close down the grant, as were other programs across the state since their colleges did not have money to directly fund the programs.
While his program ended up getting funded, he said program cuts elsewhere are “directly affecting probably the most disenfranchised community that there is.
“Our whole project is to empower and have people gain a better education, for people that either didn’t have a chance to get an education or didn’t have success in the K-12 system. So we take on that challenge as HEP programs to be able to give hope to those students that go through our programs,” he said.
A handful of students in the program at OSU have scored high enough on the GED exam to gain admittance to OSU itself, he said.
While the program has historically served younger people, when it moved online during COVID, it opened it up to a larger and older population, Marquez said.
Yajaira Madrigal, who lives in The Dalles and graduated from OSU, also worked part-time with the HEP program at OSU. “We try our best to help our students find something better than what they started with,” she said.
She asked students about their previous education experience, and a number had already gotten their college degrees in their home countries, but the degrees aren’t recognized in the U.S.
“We have had nurses, architects, and some who were close to getting their M.D.,” Madrigal said.
“They were working in Mexico, or whatever country, full-time in their field. And they got here and were told, ‘Sorry, we’re not going to validate your credentials,’” she said.
While most CAMP and HEP programs got a reprieve of continued funding for this academic year, the Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget does not include funding for the programs. The Senate proposed keeping the funding while the House has proposed zero funding.
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