Mexico and California officials yesterday announced the expansion of a binational education program that targets limited-English speaking Latinos. The program features a Spanish-based curriculum provided by Mexico via the Internet.

The program will be expanded to South County and will focus on boosting the education of adults and middle school students. One center and eight satellites are planned for adults throughout South County along with a pilot math program for students at San Ysidro Middle School.

Mexican President Vicente Fox underscored the importance of the binational program in remarks made via satellite yesterday to a gathering of officials at the San Diego County Office of Education.

Fox called the program a "key to the progress" of Mexicans living in the United States. Many Mexican immigrants who come to the United States to work arrive with little education. Their children also struggle in the classroom.

Most of the state's 1.5 million English language learners in public schools, including 114,000 students in San Diego County, are Latino.

Thirty-six binational education centers known as community plazas, or plaza comunitarias, operate in the United States, including eight in California. The first was established in San Marcos in November 2001, under the guidance of the county's Migrant Education Office. Most of these centers operate in schools, churches and community centers that have computer labs.

The South County expansion will be housed temporarily at Central Elementary School in National City before it moves to the planned Education Village in that city.

In Mexico, 2,000 community plazas operate throughout the country, aimed at helping raise the educational level of Mexicans age 15 and up. In the United States, they mainly target adults, but that could change depending on the success of the California Project at San Ysidro Middle School.

"Assuming it's successful it will be scaled up to be available to all of California," said San Diego County Office of Education Assistant Superintendent Richard Thome, who helped push for the program.

The Beaumont Foundation of America has donated computers to the middle school and students there will have access to online instruction in pre-algebra and algebra courses.

California Secretary for Education Kerry Mazzoni, in San Diego for the announcement yesterday, described the curriculum Mexico is providing as supplementary and consistent with state educational standards. She said she welcomed Mexico's help and expects that it will help English learners pass the state's high school exit exam.

"Our goal is to level the playing field for students of all backgrounds," said county schools Superintendent Rudy Castruita.