Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: Swamp cabbage, linguistic divides, in south central Florida.

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01: Postcards

“Here’s how I describe Hendry County to anybody who is thinking about it,” begins Michael Swindle, a former teacher and the county’s current superintendent.

First, you have to talk about the geography here in the heart of central southern Florida, where miles of untouched swampland sits just a sun ray’s edge over the Everglades.

“Some of God’s beautiful country that has never been touched by man,” says the educator, who owns 400 acres and whose family has farmed the local land for over half a century.

Swindle spends lots of time enjoying enjoying Hendry’s natural beauty, with weekends spent fishing at Lake Okeechobee, or out by irrigation canals full of alligators, feeding cattle and hunting down the pesky wild boars that keep turning up crops and ruining harvests.

The county seat of Clewiston is home to the annual Swamp Cabbage Festival and U.S. Sugar, the nation’s largest producer of sugarcane, which is why it calls itself “America’s sweetest town.”

Unfortunately, that idyllic portrait gets a bit muddied by the stats that come with it.

“All the metrics you would judge a county on, we’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in the ugly categories,” Swindle adds.

The unemployment rate was 4.5% as of February, placing Hendry 63rd out of Florida’s 67 counties. 

And, nearly a quarter of residents — 22.3% — were below the federal poverty line in 2022. 

Plus, local leaders say less than a third of working-age adults have a high school diploma or equivalency degree.

To put that into context: Nearly 35% of Americans have a bachelor’s degree, meaning residents here are less likely to finish high school than the average American is to graduate from a four-year college.

There are some obvious reasons for that discrepancy, and part of it is that geography which Swindle finds so beautiful.

Hendry is the closest populated in-land region from Miami, meaning it attracts undocumented immigrants who may not be able to get most jobs because of their immigration status. 

“Where is the first place you can go that has more affordable rural living, a chance to live under-the-radar and get a cash job in agriculture or construction? It’s right here,” Swindle says.

More than half of residents here are Hispanic, and 48% speak a language other than English at home, the second-highest rate of any Florida county. 

The county’s unique makeup has created distinct challenges for educators and employers.

Swindle and the local K-12 education system have had to get creative in serving the educational needs of residents in Clewiston and La Belle, the county’s two largest towns.

The county opened adult education centers in those areas in 2019. The one in Clewiston hosts a state-of-the-art welding facility and diesel mechanic shop behind the local middle school, while staff at the facility in La Belle mostly teach GED and English to Speakers of Other Languages courses.

Getting buildings built was the first part of the puzzle. Finding people to teach them was another.

Rural communities often struggle to attract instructors. Swindle convinced an experienced welder from the U.S. sugar plant to switch gears, and the county’s longtime school bus mechanic to push off retirement. 

“When they asked me if I could do it, I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m not a teacher, I’m a mechanic,” says Albert Williams, who had spent four decades as a diesel mechanic for the county.

However, he’s settled into the role nicely, and in just a few years the program has seen plenty of success stories, with his students finding great paying jobs everywhere from Osceola Farms to John Deere.

“Even though it’s a diesel program, I teach it all to them, because when you go out into the workforce, you can’t just do diesel — you’re going to be working on whatever the company needs.”

There are about a dozen students in each cohort, and the county has advertised the programs through physical posters and social media videos. The programs are self-paced, with participants graduating as they pass state exams to get their industry certifications.

“I had seen a couple videos on YouTube and was like, “Wow, that sounds interesting.” says Samantha Garza, a 21-year-old who now wants to become a travel welder after previously studying childcare at a community college in Fort Myers.

“I’m an artsy person, so I have more of a steady hand already, and I love to be down and dirty doing physical things, so I felt like this would be a career for me.” 

The GED and ESOL courses in La Belle are also brimming with dozens of Spanish-speaking students hoping to improve their careers.

That’s been in no small part due to the efforts of Silvia Gullett, who arrived in August 2021, when the program only had a couple of students.

Born in Peru, Gullett used to teach ESOL courses in Fort Lauderdale, and has taken an energetic and personal approach to helping students here. 

Don’t show up to class? Expect to get a text from her asking why not. Her students even have a WhatsApp group where they can organize carpooling or childcare duties between them. 

“When I came here, the community didn’t really know about this program,” Gullet says, but word-of-mouth and consistent outreach has led to the county now having dozens of students enrolled at any time. 

While she has them there, Gullett often urges her students to not stop at passing their GED or ESOL tests — her classroom wall is covered in print-outs of additional certifications students have earned in digital literacy, entrepreneurship, and personal finance.

Her commitment to 1-on-1 instruction has made a real difference in the lives of her students, most of whom are mothers with multiple kids at home and struggle to find childcare and transportation. 

A few have gone on to get administrative or nursing jobs. Others have used the training to start their own businesses, from an ice cream shop to an empanada stand. 

After taking ESOL and personal finance courses, Marisela Rodriguez Sebastian was able to handle the accounting for her husband’s small construction business, helping him triple revenue in just three years.

“It’s allowed me to help my husband and his business, and give my kids a good example of how to live,” she says.

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