An Educator’s Lesson for the Community

Darline Robles figured she’d spend her entire life in Montebello. She grew up there, went to school there, decided she wanted to be a teacher there and got her first classroom job there. After she got married, Robles and husband Frank knew there was only one town to live in. Eventually, her mother moved in next door.

It seemed appropriate when Robles became the superintendent of the local school district in 1991.

“I thought I’d be here for life,” she remembered.

All that’s changed now.

Next month, the 44-year-old Robles leaves home to become the superintendent of schools in Salt Lake City. The job pays less than the one in Montebello and it’s in a part of the country that some Chicano activists might think is inhospitable to them. The good folks in Montebello begged the hometown girl to stay, but in the end she decided she wanted to go to Utah.

Why?

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In a place like Montebello, the reasons for moving on can range from the small-town political intrigue to wanting to spread one’s wings to try something different. There was a little bit of that when Robles talked about her reasons for leaving the other morning.

But the main reason for saying adios to Montebello was her sense that California and her hometown aren’t aggressively fighting for public education.

To her, we’re no longer “ahead of the curve,” seeking innovative ways to educate the diversity of kids in schools today. We’re reacting to problems, not anticipating them.

“I think people who support public education have gotten . . . a little apathetic about it,” she explained. “They probably think it’ll take care of itself because it’s the right thing to do. We need to be risk-takers. To me, if I’m just a teacher, I’m defending the status quo. The needs are so great now for our kids that you can’t afford to be a regular educator.

“You gotta be a social engineer . . . putting your neck on the line for the kids.”

I stopped Robles right there, questioning whether her new employers in Utah knew that Robles, a product of the Chicano movement, was espousing something different than the three Rs.

“I want to keep up the enthusiasm for public education,” she countered, explaining that innovative ideas can counter the blase attitude that seems to have set in among some public education advocates.

In Montebello, where nearly 89% of the 31,000 students are Latinos, Robles contended that support seems to be dwindling for the programs, such as bilingual education, that are intended to put some students on par with others who are fluent English-speakers.

She doesn’t make apologies for such programs, explaining that they work. The fact that she’s Chicano has nothing to do with it. “I work for all kids,” she said. “In Montebello, these programs have worked. They can work elsewhere.”

And in Salt Lake City, where Latinos make up only 18% of the surprisingly small 25,000-pupil enrollment, such programs would be ahead of the curve.

Robles said another reason for leaving was her sense that L.A.’s power elite isn’t fully behind public education.

Oh sure, the corporation captains of L.A. say the right things and occasionally do the right things. But she said they don’t willingly give up their own time on behalf of public education. Too often, it seems the bigwigs delegate the investment of time to others who don’t carry the influence their bosses do.

“When they do something, it’s always on their terms,” she said. “There’s no dialogue.”

Robles said that on a recent visit to Salt Lake City, she was shocked to learn that the top editor of one of the town’s newspapers donates an hour a week to tutor kids. She was impressed by that newspaperman, knowing full well that such a commitment would be tough to equal in L.A.

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There are other reasons for concern about public education in California--dwindling state monies and that proposition. But Robles doesn’t intend her comments to be an indictment of home. It’s more of a wake-up call to L.A. to do the right thing about public education.

“Let people know who we really are,” she said. “We are a beautiful community, but the impression is that we’re not. I think we are. We just don’t let enough people know that. We can’t go by other people’s view of us. We need to be holding our heads up high. . . . We need not to be passive. We need to get that voice heard, and not hear what (other) voices say about us. We need to get the word out.”

At the end of our talk, Robles sounded like someone already set to come home.