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Two dozen teens pour into Margaret Vanbuskirk's classroom for 6th period at Gaithersburg High School, a blur of blue jeans and baseball caps.

They hail from countries wrenched by war and economic woe — El Salvador, Iraq, Togo — trying to learn English and the simpler skills of being a student.

The class: social studies for METS — Multidisciplinary Educational, Training and Support — the county school system's program for non-English speakers who have missed at least two years of schooling. Pioneered at two middle schools in 1984, METS serves more than 400 students at 20 schools, a number that has stable for several years.

Vanbuskirk approaches her class as an elementary school teacher would, leading students through a worksheet designed to teach English phrases by asking for the error in a series of statements that include, "The earth is shaped like a box," "About 2,200 years ago, Brazil began building the Great Wall," and "Antarctica is the hottest continent."

She is their "mother hen," she says, and METS is their "bridge" into the English-speaking world.

But the students' stories and school data compiled by request of The Gazette paint a bleak picture for the scores of students who enter METS late in their teens.

Prompted by Latino advocates, school administrators unveiled a career-based curriculum at Wheaton High School last year. The curriculum — called Students Engaged in Pathways for Achievement — expanded this year to Albert Einstein High School in Kensington and is yielding promising results, administrators say.

But amid the gloomy budget outlook, SEPA is not likely to expand in the near future.

At the five elementary schools, eight middle schools and seven high schools with METS, students average 33 months before moving into standard ESOL curriculum, according to the data. At the elementary and middle school levels, the outlook is good for a smooth transition into mainstream classes.

At Gaithersburg High, the prospect of graduation is out of step with the reality that most METS students face. Vanbuskirk estimates that one in 10 graduate. Some students spend a portion of their school day in vocational programs. The rest drop out or simply bide their time, she said, learning what English they can before they reach MCPS' age limit of 21.

Many of Vanbuskirk's students are barely, if at all, literate in their native languages. Many have emotional and mental problems.

"My personal philosophy: I don't like it when people come in and try to motivate them to graduate from high school," Vanbuskirk said. "It's like ‘You should have a car like I have and a house like I have.' No, people aren't the same. The way I talk now is, ‘You need a life plan, and this [METS] is part of it, and you use it as long as you can to get English, to get skills, to get acclimated, to socialize. And then, don't leave without a plan.'"

Daunting odds

Dany Henrique Lopez, 19, and his twin sister Veronica were 10 years old when their parents left El Salvador for Montgomery County. When he joined his parents four years ago, he could hardly read and write in Spanish and no one around him spoke English.

After two years in METS, he and his sister moved into standard ESOL and plan to graduate in June. She is on her way to a career as an EMT. He hopes to work as a mechanic to save money for college.

Looking back on those early struggles, METS might have been the only thing keeping him from that grim future.

"It was to learn the language, to be better, not to be working outside, doing hard work and earning little money," Dany Henrique Lopez said in English. "I needed it, because nobody else going to tell to me what to do, what to not do. I hope I go on with my life and do better."

More often than not, the story parallels that of 18-year-old Edward Estrada, also of El Salvador, who dropped out of GHS last year to support his daughter.

He re-enrolled late last year with no illusions about graduating. Despite spending a year in the construction program at The Thomas Edison High School of Technology in Silver Spring, he does not know if he will earn his certification.

All he is left with, he said, is to learn what English he can.

The emerging response

Stories such as Estrada's prompted Latino advocates to demand reform. Working with MCPS, the then-dubbed Latino Education Coalition created the SEPA curriculum that debuted at Wheaton High School last year. It is a two-year program for students who are 18 years old.

In the mornings, the 15 SEPA students at Einstein and 10 at Wheaton work on native language literacy and math and English skills tailored to their career fields. They then go to Edison for training.

Administrators find promise in the curriculum. It has engaged students and helped make sure that "with the time that they have left, that they leave us with a viable skill that they can then use to make it," said Karen Woodson, director of MCPS's ESOL program.

Gaithersburg High is next to get SEPA, but officials do not know when that will happen.

"There's a push-pull with the urgency to get something out as quickly as possible ... [and] concern about having one year and then just going out everywhere with it." said Erick Lang, associate superintendent of curriculum and instructional programs. "And the budget situation is really curtailing a lot of expansion of new programs at this point. It may be a couple years before we can get that."

In the meantime, Vanbuskirk has incorporated some aspects of SEPA into her lessons. She has also been getting help from Identity Inc., a Gaithersburg-based nonprofit that works with Latino youth and is the driving force behind the Latino Education Coalition. Twice a week, Identity counsels her students and guides them to social services.

With an evaluation of SEPA pending, Identity has only the anecdotes of Wheaton and Einstein students who say it is working.

"We saw this year as a first step," said Diego Uriburo, Identity's deputy executive director. "That needs to be followed by monetary commitment for these youth at other schools."

METS serves more than 400 students at 20 county schools. The program is at the following elementary schools: Broad Acres, Chevy Chase, Cresthaven, Sargent Shriver and South Lake; middle schools: Eastern, Montgomery Village, Neelsville, Parkland, Sligo Creek, Takoma Park, Julius West and White Oak; high schools: Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Blair, Albert Einstein, Gaithersburg, Quince Orchard, Springbrook and Wheaton.

METS students are native speakers of 24 languages. Eighty-two percent of them list Spanish as their native tongue. Most students (218) are from El Salvador, 42 are from Guatemala, 38 from Honduras and 16 from the United States. Other countries of origin include Ethiopa, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Haiti, Cameroon, Chad, Liberia, Nicaragua and Peru.