Latino Parents in 3 School Districts Rally to Boost Education Programs

Four years after prodding the Department of Justice into a civil rights investigation of the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District, Manuel Maldonado is still worried that his eight kids are being shortchanged in their education because they’re Latino.

One year after bureaucrats nixed a plan for Maria Calzada and 59 other parents to volunteer at a school in the Bassett Unified School District, Calzada remains angry that she is being ignored.

And a few months after the Hacienda-La Puente School Board convened a panel to study bilingual education, a roomful of parents Wednesday said they feared that a plot was being hatched to kill the program--despite an administrator’s assurance that bilingual education will continue.

The parents from three San Gabriel Valley school districts--Hacienda-La Puente, Bassett and Rowland--came together to plan a conference on education Sept. 7. The goal, said organizer Jose De Paz, is to draw thousands of Latino parents and generate enough electoral clout to force the districts to pay attention to a constituency they say is ignored.

“The Latino population is the one that’s being left behind,” said Maldonado. “That’s why we need to pull together.”

Parents from all of the three districts voiced similar complaints. Bureaucrats, they say, constantly ignore them. Facilities where their students should be learning are crumbling while wealthier neighborhoods boast clean, well-lit schools. And, most important, their kids rank near the bottom in standardized testing, and no one is helping them.

“When we confront the administration and ask, ‘Why are they so low? What can we do to help our children test higher?’ We’re literally ignored,” Calzada said.