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Paula Vizcarra listens to instructions from her algebra teacher at Lydia Patterson Institute, a United Methodist college prep school in El Paso, Texas. The school has had to move to online instruction only during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.)
Lydia Patterson Institute, in El Paso, Texas, has faced many challenges since its 1913 founding. The latest is the COVID-19 pandemic.
The beloved United Methodist school, named for a philanthropic Methodist laywoman, has provided English-language college preparatory education to generations of Hispanic high school students from El Paso and across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
COVID-19 forced the school to go to online classes only last spring, and tighter border crossing policies by the U.S. also meant many parents couldn’t get over to pay their kids’ tuition.
“We rely on tuition for operations,” said Socorro de Anda, longtime president. “We had to get parents to acquire credit cards in preparation for this year.”
Mexican students are allowed to cross into the U.S., but the school has begun fall term with online classes only because of COVID-19 rates in El Paso County. The hope is the campus will reopen, with limitations, in October.
Enrollment has been slow, in part because COVID-19 has left some parents out of work. De Anda has been calling South Central Jurisdiction churches to ask for financial support, and many have come through.
Through the years, Lydia Patterson has survived everything from U.S. recessions to Mexican peso devaluations to violent crime waves across the border.
De Anda said, “We’re going to get through this.”
Sam Hodges is a Dallas-based writer for United Methodist News Service.