N.Y. School Board Member Sees Self as Role Model

Black, female and Puerto Rican, Carmen Alvarez qualifies as a “threefer.” She says: “I’m a token everything.”

Except a token inspiration to children. At 36, she has been a school board member in Upper Manhattan since 1983. “Just being there serves as a positive role model,” she says. “Those who do not get a good education are at a tremendous disadvantage, just in daily living alone. They are disempowered.

“The message they’re getting from society on education in general is very negative. I don’t think the system has really adjusted to Hispanics and blacks, who are the majority in New York City.”

She also works as a teacher consultant in a different school district on the Lower East Side. At the desk in her modest office, Alvarez dispenses cheer, soft drinks and advice to students and teachers in Spanish and English.

Her dominant side is Puerto Rican.

“I’m a black Puerto Rican,” she says. “It’s as simple as that. It’s me; it’s who I am; it’s my combination. My primary thing is bilingual education, not the black condition.”

As a role model, she is trying to send a message that being Puerto Rican and being middle class are not mutually exclusive.

Alvarez, the only Latino on her nine-member board, says: “In addition to ethnicity, I have a great deal to offer. I have a Hispanic perspective, a middle-class Hispanic perspective. Some people thought that my middle-class background would not allow me to represent them. That passed.

“A negative vision has been reversed. I know if I was not on the board they would have cut funding for bilingual education programs. I have tried to show minorities how to capitalize on the political process--that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. In the past, they didn’t squeak.”