Seven years ago, Blanca Albarado took a class in Modesto because she never wanted to stop learning.

She didn’t take the class for herself; she already had a degree in psychology from a university in Mexico. She took it so that her daughter could have a partner and support through her academic endeavors.

This year, Albarado’s daughter, now a high school senior, is enrolled in advanced placement courses as she prepares to either attend UC Berkeley or UC Merced in the fall.

Albarado credits the class she took with the Parents Institute for Quality Education program, which will soon expand to the Sacramento area, for her daughter’s success, and the success of thousands of other children throughout the state.

The California State University system has taken note of the program, and will invest more than $500,000 in it. Sacramento State, along with the other 22 CSU campuses, will receive $25,000 to kick-start the program in the area.Albarado is now an associate director in one of the institute’s offices in Modesto, which she helped establish in 1997. “I wanted to do this for other parents,” Albarado said.

According to staff at the Modesto office, over 12,000 parents have completed the workshops.

“They are very pleased with us. They need the info, they are hungry, enthusiastic and motivated to learn,” Albarado said.

The organization has nine offices throughout California and offers nine-week long workshops to give parents valuable information on how to help their kids obtain a high school diploma and get them off to college, said Darla Harmon, another Modesto associate director.

“If the family is not focused on education, the chances of high school graduation are not very good,” Harmon said. “In our classes, we teach parents how to change home environments, to be more supportive of school and to make college a goal in their lives.”

And it starts early: The program is designed for the parents of high school, middle school and elementary school students. It also reaches across cultural borders, offering workshops in 13 different languages, Harmon said.

However, the number of Spanish-speaking families is always greater, even though the program caters to people of many different backgrounds, Harmon said.

“They become huge advocates for their children,” Harmon said. “They may be farm workers, but, you know what, their kids go to college. We empower them.” Harmon said the main goal is to reach out to “average students,” so that they can get parental support and find enough resources to become college bound.

“It’s for a quality education,” CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. “Starting at high school isn’t good enough, students must start at an early age.”

The workshops will be conducted in 23 different communities near each CSU campus, and the training will include techniques on how parents should approach teachers and principals to inquire about their child’s academic progress, Potes-Fellow said.

Workshop topics also include the following: Self-esteem; communication and discipline; drugs and gangs; how the school system functions; and college and career election. Follow-ups are also a part of the regimen, Albarado said.

The program readies parents to be advocates for their children, Potes-Fellow said. “These parents don’t have the experience because they did not have the benefit of having a (higher) education ?” this program enables them to do so.

“It’s about benefiting the students of California, so that they can go to college; it’s for the people of California, too.”

Sac State spokeswoman Lori Hall said the program is too new to the university, and therefore no person has been appointed to work with the program.For more information about the program, visit www.piqe.org.

Gamaliel Ortiz can be reached at [email protected]