First Lady, Mexico’s Leader Share Spotlight During Visit to L.A. School

The first lady of the United States was visiting, but the crowd held balloons in red, white and green. They were waiting for the president of Mexico.

“It’s not that we don’t like Bush . . . but we came for Fox,” said Marta Lopez of Arleta. “That’s our heritage,” added Oscar Garcia, her 12-year-old son.

Vicente Fox, the Mexican president, was supposed to be the sideshow Thursday during Laura Bush’s visit to Morningside Elementary School, her first official stop outside Washington since her husband became president. But at a school where 98% of the students are Latino, many from Mexican families, Fox was the draw.

“He’s come from Mexico,” 10-year-old Brianna Melero said, explaining why she wanted to see Fox, who made California his first U.S. destination since taking office last December.

“Mrs. Bush, she’s just a president’s wife,” said Brianna’s friend and fellow fourth-grader, Jasmine Perez.

Maybe so, but it was the First Lady who brought Fox and Gov. Gray Davis to Morningside to see what she called “an oasis of excellence.” The school’s students made impressive gains in their standardized test scores last year, and the number of students reading at or above their grade level tripled.

“I wish the rest of the country could see your school,” Bush told about 300 students, their parents, teachers and a firing line of television cameras. “You care about what’s going on in the classroom.”

Bush did not unveil any new government programs and the only federal donations she delivered were a heap of praise for Morningside and a book about a policeman and his dog that she read to second-graders, who liked her Texas accent.

Morningside is one of 15 Los Angeles Unified School District schools in the San Fernando Valley that have been linked to Project Grad, a program in five other U.S. cities that begins preparing children for college as early as kindergarten. Parents at the 1,100-student school pledge to read to their children at least 20 minutes every day, and they commit to 15 hours each year of volunteer work at the school.

Belia Hernandez’s 7-year-old son “was reading at the end of kindergarten--in Spanish and English,” she said. “He’s doing very well.”

Hernandez and her husband were among 90 Morningside parents given seats in the auditorium Thursday to see Bush, Davis and Fox.

“Even though we’re here [in the United States], we still have family there [in Mexico], and we’re worried about the future of Mexico,” she said.

Fox had his own praise for Morningside and its immigrant families.

“We love our paisanos,” he said, referring to his countrymen who left for the United States. “We respect you for what you have done. . . . You have come here to make sure that your kids have a real and certain future.”

Outside the school, several hundred more Fox supporters waited several hours for the visiting president, but because his motorcade took a back route, they never saw him.

“We were here since the morning, and they told us he would come out through the front,” said Oscar Garcia.

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Not everyone welcomed Fox. Several young men calling themselves the “Sub-Guerrilla Art Collective” held a 30-foot banner that read in English and Spanish: “Fox, don’t promise here what you haven’t delivered over there.”

Bush drew her own small group of protesters, who held signs stating that her husband stole the White House from former Vice President Al Gore in a “coup d’etat.”