In FB Schools, Frank Debates on Race, Class: Some Say Immigrants, Poor Hurt District
By Katherine Leal Unmuth, The Dallas Morning News
May 5–Long before the illegal immigration debate divided Farmers Branch, tensions were brewing over the large number of poor Hispanic children in local schools.
A decade ago, the city accused the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district of segregating such children into underfunded schools in its southern half. The city and school district eventually worked through their differences in mediation.
But the underlying sentiment — that attendance boundaries hurt the quality of Farmers Branch schools — never really went away.
Over time, the district’s population became majority minority. Poverty rates climbed.
This past year, the debate intensified in meetings of the city’s school-community relations committee. Recordings of the meetings for this advisory group appointed by the City Council reveal frank discussions about race and class.
In committee meetings, the focus became more about who attends the schools than how to educate who’s there.
“Look at the southern-district schools,” Nyles Bynum, a committee member and uncle of City Council member Tim O’Hare, said in a meeting last year. “They’re cram-packed with minorities. Is that the way to run a school district?”
It was amid this mounting concern last year that Mr. O’Hare came up with what amounted to a solution for some. His controversial proposal to ban most illegal immigrants from renting apartments in the city appears on the May 12 ballot.
Mr. O’Hare cited declining schools as one of his major motivations for the ordinance. He has repeatedly talked about R.L. Turner High School, where he played football and graduated with the Class of 1987. He has blamed illegal immigrants there for problems such as the high dropout and failure rates, low parent involvement and teen girls being “pregnant all over the place.”
“If we have less illegal alien children in our schools, I have no doubt our school district will be a better school district and our kids will learn more,” he said in an interview last month.
School districts do not ask students’ legal status.
But the perception has been that children of illegal immigrants are a major factor in the district’s poverty rate, forcing schools to add resources to help them learn.
Carrollton-Farmers Branch administrators worry about losing students — and the state funding that comes with them — if families leave town because of the proposal.
“Some of this has to do with immigrants, some of it has to do with hate,” said Gilbert Bernal, a Mexican-American on the committee who was angered by some of the comments. “Some of it has to do with trying to make some money on property. But really this is about getting rid of Mexicans.”
Focus on the south
The debate has focused on R.L. Turner and its feeder schools in south Carrollton and Farmers Branch. Elementary students there are 86 percent Hispanic and 71 percent poor — percentages much higher than other areas of the district that serve more black, Asian and white students. Many students are learning English as a second language.
The enrollment districtwide is nearly 49 percent Hispanic and 46 percent poor.
But test scores show the schools aren’t doing poorly. The district improved its rating to recognized in the most recent performance rankings by the state. And every middle and elementary school in Farmers Branch is recognized — a rating that has eluded other schools with fewer Hispanics and fewer poor students.
“The superintendent has been very good about trying to provide equality,” said James Goode, a school board member and resident of Farmers Branch. “We the school district do not dictate the demographics of our community. All we do is encourage students to go to their community schools.”
Dallas’ inner-ring suburbs and even far-flung suburbs are seeing more minorities and lower-income students. Research shows Hispanic children, especially those learning English as a second language, attend highly segregated schools nationwide.
The population changes also come at a time when many schools have shifted away from desegregation efforts such as busing. The end result is that schools mirror their neighborhoods.
When Mr. O’Hare graduated from R.L. Turner 20 years ago, it was 73 percent white. Today, its student population is nearly 70 percent Latino.
Last year, R.L. Turner had 750 freshmen and just 333 seniors, one indicator of a high dropout rate. About half its student body is considered low income.
The school’s poor athletic record has also been an issue. In the eight major team sports, R.L. Turner has posted 18 wins and 166 losses this school year.
“I was born and raised here, and it just galls me to have my peers move and go up to Lewisville to get out of this because of what, of whatever you want to call it, their perception,” David Kirby, a member of the school-community relations committee, said in reference to white flight. “You’re not going to get out of this. This is everywhere.”
Equity issue
The district’s plans to open Creekview High School in the more affluent north Carrollton sparked concerns a decade ago that R.L. Turner would become a poorer Hispanic school over time.
Former City Manager Richard Escalante led the fight along with a Hispanic parent, Alfonso Herrera. Together, they filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, accusing the district of building a school for the “Anglo elite.”
The city also commissioned a study of education equity by the nonprofit Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio. The report, citing the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, recommended that any new attendance zones “do not exacerbate the ethnic and socio-economic level identifiability of any school.”
“A downward economic spiral in some neighborhoods will affect the whole district if schools only reflect the economic conditions of the immediate neighborhood,” the report stated.
The study recommended that an academy be established at R.L. Turner to draw more students. It also suggested that the new high school be built in the southwest corner of the district to serve some Farmers Branch students.
Superintendent Annette Griffin, who joined the district in September 1997 after the complaint had been filed, said she took the report as recommendations that Farmers Branch schools needed more resources in facilities and teachers.
Since then, the district has added a media and biomedical academy at Turner. An engineering track is slated to open there next year. Part of a 2003 bond issue went toward additions and new schools in the area.
“We are 74 percent minority, so we have Hispanics in all of our schools,” Dr. Griffin said. “Some people believe that some students don’t learn as well as others. But I’ve found that, given time, all students can learn.”
Tensions re-emerge
Last school year, the departure of the athletic director and the reassignment of the longtime principal at R.L. Turner prompted an exodus of teachers and the formation of a grassroots group Parents 4 Farmers Branch.
In 2003 and 2005, Turner failed to make adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind, which measures TAKS scores along with student attendance and graduation rates.
“I’m bringing in a new regime, and we’re going to push harder, and if you don’t support these people, I want you to find another place,” Dr. Griffin recalls telling teachers. “We lost 50 to 60 people.”
About that time, Mr. Kirby began organizing parent meetings and circulating e-mails to parents. Mr. O’Hare, who received the e-mails, attended some of the meetings.
“No one class of people want to be where the majority of students will be first-generation Hispanics,” Mr. Kirby, a 1976 Turner graduate, wrote in an e-mail last spring. “We must demand an equal distribution of the Hispanic community. We cannot allow our teachers and coaches to have demands on them and have the system set up for failure.”
Similar discussions were occurring at meetings of the city’s school-community relations committee, which also talked about overcrowding and the need for more per-pupil funding and more experienced teachers. Several committee members with children in the district said they were satisfied with their children’s education but were frustrated with the negative perceptions about their schools.
Among the committee members was Tim Scott, who stepped down to run for City Council in support of the city ordinance.
At one meeting, Mr. Bynum confronted a district administrator about the “chaos” in his daughter’s class because of a Spanish translator.
“It sure would be nice if the kids in Farmers Branch would be given a shot growing up being taught on the same level as the ones in the northern district,” he said. “Is someone in charge of keeping the population down?”
“What do you think we’re going to do with the minorities?” Mr. Bernal asked.
“I think they should spread them throughout the district,” Mr. Bynum responded. “Bus them north.”
Some of the committee’s discussions alienated Hispanic members.
“I quit going for a while because all I ever heard was, ‘Why can’t we bus ‘em; we have too many minorities,’ ” said Mr. Bernal, another R.L. Turner alum. “When I was a kid, I was a minority. I didn’t hang my head down. Life went on.”
His wife, Candy Bernal, frequently attends the meetings.
“All it’s become is a place for people to rant about the diversity,” she said. “It doesn’t have to do with education. It’s perception.”
Committee member Tony Munoz said he felt conflicted. At one time he suggested busing by socioeconomic status and agreed with Mr. Bynum that Farmers Branch schools have become overwhelmed with poor children.
But the son of one-time illegal immigrants became uncomfortable when the discussions became more about race.
“In the beginning, they were talking about revitalization. I was all about that,” he said. “I just didn’t realize they were talking about getting rid of people like me.”
In the past 10 years, the school district has built up its bilingual program. This year, it opened a preschool center and an Early College High School that primarily serve low-income Hispanics. The district also offers extensive after-school tutoring and parenting classes in Spanish. It has focused more on support services for needy campuses rather than changing who attends them.
Some white parents have complained that these efforts take away from resources that could help their children.
The school district maintains that’s why it also has a lot of school choice — the high school academies, Advanced Placement classes, many specialized gifted programs and the ability to transfer schools.
“The solution has to be, how do we improve education for the kids and the most kids we possibly can? Not how do we equally share a burden, if we want to call it a burden,” assistant superintendent Charles Cole told the committee at one meeting.
Committee member Lydia Padilla, who does parent outreach in Dallas schools, said the district can’t go back in time and redraw boundary lines “to put all their little white kids in one school.”
“It’s the quality of education they’re giving that’s important,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what kind of people go to the school. If we teach them and they’re learning, that’s good.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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