McKinley Middle School, also known as McKinley Institute of Technology, is located in downtown Redwood City, a small city of 76,000 in the heart of Silicon Valley, with a large Latino community (about 23,000, or 30 percent) and a disproportionately high number of children under the age of 14 (about 15,000, 20 percent).

McKinley serves over 300 of those Redwood City children from 6th grade through 8th grade. And Los Ayudantes has worked with students at McKinley since our inception in 2002--the relationship having grown and blossomed ever since.

Over 225 students at McKinley (75 percent of McKinley's student body) are Latino, and almost half of those (over 100 students, a third of the entire student body) are classified as "English Language Learners," meaning English is not the primary language spoken at home. Meanwhile, about two-thirds (200) of McKinley students qualify for the free-lunch-program and the  student-teacher ratio in a typical McKinley class is nearly 30-to-1.

We now have six volunteer tutors working with over 40 students at McKinley both during school--in direct collaboration with McKinley teachers and McKinley's principal, Cheryl Bracco--as well as after school as part of our partnership with Citizen Schools at McKinley.

Over the years, these collaborations have led to increased standardized test scores and, more importantly, increased skill and confidence by McKinley students in their reading, writing and speaking of English.

We look forward to the continued growth of this fruitful partnership.