Race and Rural Classrooms

Aired Monday, December 18, 2006

By Chana Joffe-Walt

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Anchor Lead: Latino parents in Brewster say for years their kids have been treated as second-class citizens. Schools in the central Washington town are 75 percent Hispanic but the parents say the kids suffered from chronic low expectations. So they sued the district for racial discrimination...and won. It's the first time Latinos have brought a civil rights case against a Washington school. For our series The Learning Curve, Chana Joffe-Walt has the story.

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Remember all those corny motivational things your teacher used to tell you? You can do anything you put your mind to, dare to dream, reach for the stars? Oscar Xurape says he never heard anything like that in school. In fact, teachers never gave him the time of day.

It was kinda really hard. Maybe if I had a little bit more help from the teachers. Which I didn't.

Oscar's a Mexican immigrant. He says he never got caught up in English enough to get caught up in school.

To do the work I needed more help, more explaining, but I didn't get enough help.

Every kid who gets bad grades says the teacher hates them. But Oscar says, no, it was because he's Mexican. He's sure of that because of something that happened in 11th grade. Oscar says a counselor told him he should drop out.

He called me into his office and said that I wasn't going to come to school and said I was a failure and I had to drop off just get it over with. I told him at least let me finish one more year. He said no. He said you can't or he didn't want you to? He didn't want me to. But he didn't say you couldn't. He said he didn't want me in school.

At first, Auxillio Xurape, Oscar's mom, didn't believe her son was coerced into dropping out. But then her second son had problems at school. And then her third. All three of her boys complained they didn't get the same attention white kids got. They said when a few Hispanic kids got in trouble, they all got blamed.

If one group was bad then you were bad. But always only the Hispanics.

Auxillio's first two sons dropped out of school. By the time her youngest, Willy got high school she was worried. She started visiting the school regularly to check on him. One day, she showed up to find Willy, and 26 other Hispanic students locked in the library with the principal and the police.

When I got there I asked where's Willy? I was told in the library. Then I went down to the library and he was there with everyone else locked in there.

The story from the kids was that the principal, Randy Phillips had rounded all the Hispanic kids he thought were involved in a fight that morning. He talked to them about how badly Hispanics do on the WASL and told them they were going to end up in the orchards like their parents. The kids say they were then forced to sign contracts that if they got in trouble they'd be suspended or expelled.

The parents had already begun to talk to each other and worry about the things they were hearing from their kids. But the library incident is what pushed them over the edge. They got together and sued the school for racial discrimination.

[Ambi hallways] Well, we're a pretty typical high school, we have a 470 students, and I think we're a typical American high school.

Randy Phillips is a pretty typical seeming principal. He has a head full of gray hair, wears Mr. Rogers sweaters and makes bad jokes to clusters of students in the hallways:

Having a club meeting right here, huh? Planning your futures?

As far as the library roundup he says that's been completely misunderstood. He says around that time kids were copying the Crips and Bloods from California and had started a gang rivalry. They were getting in fights on and off school. Two kids had brought pistols to school that year. And the day before the library incident, a boy had been assaulted in school.

You know I'd been dealing with the individual fights individual incidents. But once it starts being a mob mentality. Disrupting the whole school. So I guess that was a breaking point right there. You know before someone really gets hurt.

Mr. Phillips was at the end of his rope. He says all the kids involved in the gangs were Latino although Latino parents say there was another Anglo gang called the Orchard Monkey Killers that never got in trouble. Mr. Phillips says in the library, he was trying to put an end to the fights.

He says in his 16 years as principal, the school has done its absolute best to support all its students. But the district agreed to the parents demands and the suit was settled last month. Families won between 5 to 20 thousand dollars in damages. And the high school is supposed to make some changes. The settlement included a list of things the school should add like Hispanic history classes, an office of minority of affairs and diversity training for teachers.

Many of the things that were in the laundry list so the school would be more accommodating to Latino kids many of those things were already in place.

So far, none signed up for the Hispanic history class, the office of minority affairs is an advocacy office for all students. Diversity trainings for teachers are under way.

To really understand what went on at Brewster high school, many locals say you have to look at the town. Howard Gamble was Brewster's mayor from 1963 to 1980. In this oral history tape, he remembers the town stores:

Let's talk about the town of Brewster itself? What stores do you remember? I guess Anderson's store and geyslers hardware store and on the corner there is Lincoln Tavern

Now Brewster is Juan Mariscal's town. He's a thin 19 year-old with dimply cheeks. He shows me around today's main street:

Here's a Mexican clothing store... like a fruit store, also a Mexican fruit store, Discoteca, they sell CDs there, and then the top one if Camperos Mexican food it's just a restaurant.

Brewster has been transformed...and in a really short period of time. In Mayor Ganble's era and even into the mid 80s, you could count the number of Latino families on one hand. Now Latinos make up more than half the population. Some long time residents say the school and the town's entire identity has been turned upside down. Give them some time.

Carol Smith is one of those long time residents. She's eating at Camperos, the Mexican place at the end of main street. She says there are some pretty major changes to get used to:

You know going places and they're speaking Hispanic. And you can't understand what they're saying. And it's probably none of your business you know but we're not used to that. So it's just going to take time, I won't be here, but it'll take time for everyone to get used to that.

The high school can't wait until after Carol Smith's time to get used to Latino students. They have five years to make some concrete changes. But some of those may depend on funding.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed the school did start a mariachi band and choir. White and Hispanic kids performed Mexican and American songs together.

[Music]

But when a music education levy failed, the mariachi died.

Next year, a court appointed reviewer will start monitoring Brewster. Other small town schools with booming Latino populations will be watching too. Chana Joffe-Walt, KPLU News.

The Learning Curve is an education reporting partnership between KPLU and KCTS-Public Television. For more information go to KPLU.org and click on The Learning Curve."

You can also see what Brewster looks and sounds like on a special multimedia slideshow. Again, that's at KPLU.org. Just click on the Learning Curve.

The learning curve is an education reporting partnership between KPLU ans KCTS Public Television.