BY ADRIAN JIMENEZ

Probation Officer Deputy Martha Aguirre handles kids formally on probation and gets referrals from school staff to participate in her At Risk program. A few of the students referred are committers of the fireworks incidents. “Myself, along with the police officer that we have on campus, Officer Flores, we work together on a lot of things and was really more of a collaboration with the assistant principals and trying to, you know, determine some of the kids that have been involved with the fireworks that were going off earlier in the school year” Aguirre said.

After students causing disruptions are caught, they are sometimes referred to Aguirre’s At Risk program. Students and their parents or guardians will talk with her and set up a plan to help the students.

“When the student is referred, the first thing we do is contact the parent to make sure that the parent is on board and gives us permission because we’re not allowed to work with the student without parent’s permission” Aguirre said.

Aguirre is the official probation officer so she helps kids that are put under her supervision by judges because of a court case. Since her At Risk program doesn’t involve any legal action, they need the parent’s permission in order to help the students.

“We start out, we talk about school, and grades, and attendance, and behavior, but we also get very into what’s going on in the home. A lot of times students are struggling in school because there’s issues at home, we talk about if there’s any substance use issues, and so we try to first assess what are the areas of concern, what are the strengths that the  student has, but what are the risk factors, and then with the risk factors we want to try to provide support.” Aguirre said.

After the assessment meeting, Aguirre’s main objective is to get the student to make goals, especially about their grades. She provides resources to refer the students to counseling for drugs or family problems and encourages students to engage in after school activities or clubs.

“On average, I work with about I would say 50 to 100 students per school year, different students, because they are coming in and out of the program.” Aguirre said.

For some students, progress can be slow, but others make huge progress because of the program. One student, in fact, went from a 0.0 GPA to a 3.8 with Aguirre’s help.

“The biggest improvement we see right away is school attendance, kids that are having attendance issues, we start working with them then you just see an immediate increase in them being on campus because they have to check in with me everyday, so I’m monitoring their attendance everyday, I call their parents if they don’t show up, so we’re really watching them very closely” Aguirre said.

Aguirre started her path to being a probation officer right after she got out of high school and become a student worker.

“When I graduated from high school I got a job as a student worker, but I was actually studying architecture here at cal poly pomona, and that’s what I wanted to be, I wanted to be an architect.” Aguirre said.

After a year of working as a student worker, she changed her mind.

“When I would hear the stories of the ones that worked with kids, it just really sparked this interest in me and I just, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it just completely changed my path of career, of what I wanted to do. I wanted to help people, I wanted to work with kids, I wanted to work with kids that a lot of people would just typically give up on, and so I changed my major, from architecture, I did one year and then I changed my major to sociology and criminal justice and never looked back.” Aguirre said.

Aguirre lives with her husband and three children and enjoys photography whenever she is not preoccupied with taking her kids to sports.

For the culprits of the fireworks incidents, Aguirre will help them set goals and keep them from repeating their past actions.

“It’s a lot of extra support for kids that are kind of falling between the cracks, not doing well in school, not getting the attention they need” Aguirre said.