Students, parents call for equality

BREWSTER, Wash. – A panel of educators and civil rights advocates heard testimony Tuesday night from Latino and Anglo parents who said their children have been denied equal access to education in the schools here because of their ethnic origins or social status.

“What I am asking for is justice for our children,” said Jose Luis Ortiz, a parent who believes his daughter has been mistreated by the Brewster School District. “We don’t want them to end up like us, working in the fields.”

A school board member who attended the hearing, which was sponsored by the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, called much of Tuesday’s testimony “hogwash” and said school officials are doing everything they can for Latino students in a school district plagued by gang activity.

Tuesday’s hearing was the result of a continuing clash between the school district and parents who have been organized by LULAC following a Nov. 6 incident in which 27 students – all Latino – were singled out by high school principal Randy Phillips for discipline as a result of an on-campus fight between two Latino students.

It had been the eighth fight of the 2003 school year and Phillips, convinced the violence was the result of gang activity, summoned the students to the school library for a meeting, where two Brewster police officers were present.

For some parents, the November meeting, at which Latino students were told their future would be that of their parents – field workers – was the last straw in what they perceive as a continuing pattern of discrimination. They said students who don’t fit in are encouraged to drop out.

“What happened on Nov. 6 is that the school tried to do it to a group, rather than picking students off one at a time,” said Kay Fry, a white mother of a 2002 graduate of the high school. She believes the incident was not racism but instead unequal access to education for students from the wrong social status, church, or those who are not athletes.

“There are people who are afraid they will lose their jobs and who won’t speak against the school,” Fry said. She believes her own daughter was shunned as “trailer trash or not Christian enough.”Ortiz, whose daughter, Areli, was present at the Nov. 6 meeting, said that incident was when he began to open his eyes to problems at the school.

“Papa, I did everything I was supposed to do,” Ortiz said his daughter told him that evening, “and they locked us up in the library with police.”

How the school treats the children of field workers is not right, he said.

“We work for low pay and are mistreated at job sites and the packing sheds, where we are fired for making mistakes,” Ortiz said. “But we can take this so our children have a better future. But when I see them mistreated instead of helped, it’s not fair. We only ask for justice and equality.”

There to hear the parents’ complaints were Faviola Barbosa of the Washington Commission on Hispanic Affairs, Robert MacGregor of the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Patrick Please of the Northwest Justice Project and Reggie Eans, representing the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.

Barbosa said the Commission on Hispanic Affairs has been gathering information on conditions in the Brewster School District and has submitted a letter recommending changes. So far, she said, the district has not responded to the recommendations.

MacGregor said he was in Brewster to listen and observe. The OSPI has no authority to intervene because Washington is a “local-authority state” in which school boards have sole authority to make policy decisions.

Eans said he, too, was there to take notes and that it would be up to the NAACP’s board in Spokane what to do with the information. He said, however, that he believes school officials “are still in denial” about the situation in Brewster.

“They should have handled it differently, and they are the ones in a position to know it,” Eans said.

School board member Don Becker said not everything that was said at Tuesday’s hearing can be believed. “Not lies,” he said, “but not complete truths either.”

He said Phillips made mistakes, but responded to violence at the school with good intentions. And he believes LULAC has given a forum to parents whose children are simply discipline problems. His own son, he said, has been suspended for two weeks for a dumb mistake. But, he said, the difference is his son owned up to it.

“We know things were not always done right, but we’re making changes,” Becker said.

He called the Latino parents’ protests “a blemish to a lot of good things that are happening” at the school. “They care about their kids, and so do we.”

Linda Niehaus, a parent of a junior high school student, brought to the hearing a program from this year’s high school graduation ceremony. On it were the names of 64 students in the graduating class. Of those, 37 had Latino surnames. On the back of the program were the names of students receiving 41 college scholarships. Nine went to three Latino students.

“I don’t believe that our Latino children are not as capable,” Niehaus said. “Something has to change.”

Latino students’ scores on Washington Assessment of Student Learning are among the lowest in the state, and a 2003 report by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction showed the dropout rate among Latino students was twice that of white students. The report said schools, which often treat societal problems resulting from cultural differences simply as discipline problems, share blame for these numbers.

Maria Mendoza begged the panel members to do something before her son becomes a number in such a report.

She knows her son is not perfect, but she believes a teacher is deliberately pushing him to the edge so he will drop out of school.

“Two or three Latinos can’t be together at the school without being labeled a gang,” she said, adding that Latinos are not allowed to speak Spanish at school. “The teachers tell them ‘You’re in America. Don’t bring that other language here.’ ”

Norma Fonseca’s oldest daughter was good in sports, but her son was not.

“In this town if you’re good at sports, you can get away with anything.”

She said she took her son out of school because a counselor told her to.

“My heart broke the day I took him to Job Corps,” a federal job-training program for at-risk youth. “‘No mama, I’ll be fine,’ ” she said he told her. “Now he’s in college and about to graduate.”

It is her 14-year-old daughter she worries about now. Rebecca was one of the 27 students called into the library meeting.

“Nothing has changed at the school,” Fonseca said, adding “every child deserves an equal education.”