Field of Dreams : Values. Ethics. Even gardening and breeding fish. Doesn’t sound like public school, but it is. And it’s an instant hit.
Not every public school has goats and pigs in a tidy pen, a fish hatchery or a vegetable garden grown from seed.
There aren’t many, either, where children enter preschool, stay on through 12th grade and wear uniforms. Or where they pause for a moment of silence every morning in classrooms that have names--Hope, Honesty and Respect. Almost nothing about Esperanza Montessori and College Preparatory Academy resembles modern public schools. Maybe that’s why there was a waiting list even before the school opened its doors for the first time last week.
Esperanza Academy is among Arizona’s first charter schools, part of an experimental system that goes into effect this month. (Californians adopted a similar program two years ago.)
Charters are described as skunk works or test laboratories for innovation, and rules for who qualifies vary from state to state. In California, for example, anyone with local and state school board approval can open a charter school and receive the same funding per student as a district public school. Many of the most successful charter schools were founded by teachers looking for a better way, and are housed in existing buildings, including storefronts, offices and recycled schools. Among them: Yvonne Chan’s Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, a charter school in Pacoima.
Esperanza--Spanish for hope--not only stands out because it was founded by an entire family, most of them not accredited teachers, but because this summer two generations of the Mexican American household started building the campus from the ground up, on five acres of lots in south Phoenix. (Right now, classrooms are contained in four buildings.) Two months ago the same property held open junkyards, burnt grass fields and used tire dump sites.
Thirty-eight year old Armando Ruiz is chairman of the school board. His twin brother, Fernando, is director. Their father, Reyes, 72, a retired employee of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, oversees construction. A few days before school opened, the three men poured concrete in the 100-degree desert heat and drove a tractor to replant the tire field with grass.
The twins’ mother, Estela, designed the school curriculum, based on the Montessori method, which integrates every subject and nurtures a child’s spirit, as well as mind and body. Estela is a retired supervisor of bilingual education for the Phoenix public schools, with a master’s degree in school administration.
The twins’ younger sister, Becky Castillo, 33, works in the school office, located in the family room of Estela’s and Reyes’ house while the campus office is still under construction.
Esperanza stands out in another way as well. Many charter schools claim a certain specialty--some were designed for dropouts, techno-kids or budding artists. Here, “Our goal is to teach values,” says Armando, days before school opens. (Their privately run preschool has operated for about two years.)
He was raised in the low-income neighborhood near the school and he still lives there. “One of the problems we have is that our leaders tend to move out of south Phoenix,” he says. “Our goal is to replenish that leadership and teach community values.”
Estela expands on the plan: “We will teach the children spiritual awareness. We want them to recognize who they are, and who they are intended to be.”
Some say it can’t be done. “Values isn’t a course, like history,” insists John Perez, vice president of the Unified Teachers, Los Angeles, who has reservations about charter schools. “You teach values by example.”
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The founders of Esperanza see the school as one part of a larger plan devised four years ago by local leaders. They are in the process of rebuilding the entire infrastructure of south Phoenix, a largely poor, Latino community.
Among the projects under way: affordable housing for single mothers and the elderly; a community garden; a transportation corridor for access to the rest of the city; and a communication center for accessing the information highway.
They have also designed a leadership program that trains participants to rebuild their own communities. So far, 170 people from the Arizona area have completed the course. “We want them to go back home and adapt this model,” says Armando.
“The school came out of the leadership program,” he explains. A state representative at age 32, he now works for Gov. Fife Symington, as executive director of Neighborhood Revitalization for Arizona. “We realized we need to implement the principles of community leadership at an early age.”
The entire redevelopment program, including the school, is under the nonprofit umbrella, Espiritu Development Corp.--Spanish for spirit . “ Esprit de corps is a very real aspect of neighborhood development,” Armando explains.
“We want people to rely not on government but on themselves and their neighbors,” adds Fernando, as he drives past rusted cars and houses with newspaper-covered windows. “That way no one can tell the people of this community, ‘you can’t do this.’ ”
Esperanza students will plant and maintain the school garden as part of their course work.
“There are lessons in self-sufficiency along with science and math,” Estela explains. This summer, the preschool class grew blue corn from seed. They ate some and used some of the kernels for learning how to count. Similar interdisciplinary studies are the base for the entire school’s program.
Like the garden, the fish hatchery will be a teaching tool for academic and practical life lessons. Students learn to breed and harvest the fish for food. Only Reyes knows enough about plumbing to set it all up, which he will do once he paves the school parking lot.
Other requirements for Esperanza students include landscaping the curb sides of the neighborhood and adopting walls from local business owners to decorate them with murals.
“We teach civic values,” Fernando explains when a young father arrived to tour the campus one evening before school had started. He carried his preschool daughter on his shoulders.
Some of the tools for teaching civic values--including the gardens and the hatchery--have been funded by a $45,000 state start-up grant for charter schools in Arizona, as well as private donations.
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Local business leaders have donated school desks, office equipment, and one of the vacant lots where the school now stands, along with the installation of campus electricity. Smaller gifts seem to arrive unexpectedly each day. On a recent afternoon, a businessman brought in his used computer for the school. The Ruiz family patio is filled with cartons of paper towels and dispensers, a juice machine, and stacks of stationery supplies waiting to be unpacked.
“A lot of corporations have helped us,” Fernando says. “They see there has to be a change in this community.”
When the school needs anything, he asks. At a parents’ meeting that some 500 parents and children attend, just days before school opens, he explains that the lighting is not yet fully installed, the parking lot area is not leveled for paving. “We need you to come help us this weekend,” he says. Despite the heat, most families had arrived at the meeting half an hour early, to stroll the new sidewalks between classrooms, visit the barnyard, or introduce the children to their teachers--all around age 30.
Standing in front of a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the back yard of his parents’ home where the meeting was held, Fernando, his sister Becky and Zelda Graham, director of school support services, explain bus transportation, the lunch program, YMCA memberships, which each student receives, and uniforms. First in English, then in Spanish.
Early on, the microphone loses power. The circuit has overloaded and all the lights have to be turned out before the mike works again. “We don’t have all the luxuries of life here,” Fernando says with an easy smile. The crescent moon and the dozens of stars overhead suddenly seem more visible.
Some of the parents ask about transportation for their preschool-age children.
Others voice concern about the walk to the bus stop. “If your kids can’t walk to the bus because there’s a bad house on the way, or something like that, tell us right away,” says Fernando. “We’ll figure something out.”
Two mothers are worried that the school uniform, a white shirt and navy bottoms, has been sold out at Target. Zelda Graham explains that Mervyn’s carries something similar. The price is comparable, about $10. “Some of our families are having a bit of a hard time right now,” she adds. “If you would like to donate to a fund for uniforms, see me later in the office.”
At the end of the meeting, Fernando takes the mike. “Come on everybody, grab hands,” he says.
“Do you believe in hope?”
“Yes,” shouts the audience, gripping hands.
“If you keep hoping, loving, caring, the world will be a better place for our children,” he tells them.
Audrey Lauro, a mother from the neighborhood, says she took her preschool child and her 7-year-old out of a traditional public school to enroll them in Esperanza Academy. “The emphasis here is on positive values and positive issues,” she says.
“We’ve lived in this community all our lives,” adds Linda Duran, mother of two teen-age children. Last year she took her son and daughter out of a Christian school and taught them at home. This fall they entered Esperanza, which has about 250 students enrolled. (Like traditional public schools, students at Esperanza are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.)
“The area is financially depressed, but people are looking for something better for their children,” she says. “We’re banking on the Ruiz family.”
Lisa Graham, state superintendent of public instruction for Arizona--and one of the officials who selects charter schools--lauds the efforts of the Ruizes.
“As a group, the Ruiz family lives what they say: You can and should teach values primarily through example. At Esperanza, it is a key part of the curriculum to teach values. The idea is, ‘We respect each other here.’ ”
She adds: “We do not get questions about the religious issue in my office concerning Esperanza Academy. People recognize at that school the kids have a spirit, but they are not enforcing a religious belief on anyone.”
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The Ruiz family is very well known in the neighborhood. People remember Armando’s celebrity status as a state representative before his current job for the governor. They know about Fernando’s success in the life insurance business at Aetna in Connecticut before he returned home to become director of the school. Some went to local public school and knew Estela for her high-profile position as a school administrator.
The family is also known for its strong religious faith. Twice each week, 100 people or more gather before the back-yard shrine to pray the rosary. Life-size religious sculptures that Reyes makes, and a holy water fountain, are permanent parts of the landscape.
Religious beliefs are a presence at the school. The values taught as an integral part of course work, and modeled by the family, are from among the Cardinal virtues and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit taught to the Ruiz children as Catholic school students. The twins attended Loyola University in Los Angeles. “If you don’t emphasize fortitude, compassion, respect, society begins to crumble,” Armando says.
At the preschool, there is more tangible proof of the family’s faith. A 10-foot cross and a stone chair that resembles the biblical mercy seat, stand at the foot of the garden. The preschool is privately funded, not state supported and therefore is not subject to federal regulations concerning religion, Fernando explains.
The First Amendment forbids religious proselytizing in public schools. In addition, some states, including Michigan, have their own laws that forbid teaching morals or values in public schools.
Some in Arizona are concerned that charter schools, not as closely monitored as district public schools, could overstep the bounds concerning religious expression. (In California, charter schools are free of some education codes, teachers are not required to belong to the union, they take an active role in creating curriculum and set their own salaries. However, a school’s financial responsibility and civil rights regulations are under government domain.)
“Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be put into schools that don’t honor separation of church and state,” says Lela Alston, a public high school teacher who ran for state superintendent of schools in the last election. “I’m a Christian, but I wouldn’t want my grandchild going to a public school teaching religious doctrine.”
Perez of the Los Angeles teachers’ union says, “The charter system lets people do things the way they want to. But you have to understand, everything in the education code is there because somebody made a mistake.”
He suggests that California, for example, establish an oversight agency to monitor the charter schools, whose spending is not as restricted as public schools.
Currently, there are 89 charter schools in California; 51 schools have been approved in Arizona with a handful opening this year.
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The Ruizes admit to pushing the envelope in other ways as well. While federal law does not permit teachers or administrators to authorize organized prayer, each morning Esperanza students will begin with a moment of silence.
“I’ll use the morning time for everyone to join hands as a sign of unity,” says Mary Ann Hovden, who teaches children ages 6 to 8. “We’ll all answer a question. Maybe something like, ‘What do you want to do to make tomorrow better?’ ”
Armando sees no problem. “We’re going by President Clinton’s latest executive order, stating that students can pray on campus if they don’t compel other students to participate. We’re not teaching religion at Esperanza, we’re teaching students to respect each other. And, we’re teaching an attitude of tolerance.”
In fact, no one at Esperanza seems uncomfortable with this plan.
“At home, we approach our children on a spiritual level first,” says Edward Duran, whose two children are enrolled in the school. “Spiritual awareness is what leads us to help each other, encourage each other.”
“I’m not religious at all,” adds teacher Luis Lujan, whose students are ages 13 and 14. “Spirit has to do with self-esteem, self-confidence. Most of education doesn’t develop the spirit of the child, or their sense of values or virtues. This school is more like a family that way.”
