1 Teen’s Action May Help Many

The final indignity for Sweetie Williams hit the afternoon his son Eliezer brought home tattered photocopied pages from an eighth-grade math book, not the math book. This came after another son wrote an essay about his San Francisco school titled “Too Many,” for too many broken chairs, too many broken urinals, too many old books.

So when the ACLU contacted Williams in 2000 and asked if he would allow Eliezer, then 12, to be the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the state over school inequities, the frustrated father said to sign up his son.

The suit accused the state of denying poor children the well-trained teachers, up-to-date textbooks and clean schools needed for a decent education. After the administration of Gov. Gray Davis spent $18 million to fight the lawsuit, lawyers for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the American Civil Liberties Union are expected to reach an agreement within weeks, according to people involved in the talks.

After joining the lawsuit four years ago, Williams sent Eliezer to school with a disposable camera to photograph broken rails, busted lockers and falling ceiling tiles. He and Eliezer attended news conferences and stayed late for interviews because “we wanted to get as much attention as we could.” And then the Williams side of the widely watched Williams vs. California lawsuit continued on with his schooling -- and waited for results.

Although the settlement could involve more money for books and more state attention to urban schools that teach mostly low-income and minority students, the help would arrive too late for Eliezer, who will be entering his senior year in high school, the boy and his father said in interviews Saturday.

“It’s kind of disappointing,” said Eliezer, who is 16. Sweetie Williams, a father of six and pastor of the First Samoan Full Gospel Pentecostal Church in San Francisco, and his family were in Norwalk to attend a religious meeting.

“It kind of confused me over the years. I thought they had forgotten about me,” the teenager said of the lawsuit. “I thought it would be settled sooner. But at least now I know it wasn’t for nothing.”

Now Eliezer isn’t so worried about the deficiencies alleged in the lawsuit: the roaches and other vermin in the classroom, the lack of a school librarian, the social studies textbook that did not reflect the breakup of the former Soviet Union. They were a part of his adolescent years at San Francisco Unified School District’s Luther Burbank Middle School.

As an incoming senior at Balboa High School, he worries about his grades. He’s a C-plus student. He’s struggling with U.S. history and physics because “there are just things [in those classes] I’ve never heard of before.”

And, at last, when he’s found a passion for school because of a new communications course and aspires to be a cinematographer, the student known to many top education officials simply as the Williams case wonders if he will be able to get into a college.

“I’m going to try my hardest to make it into college,” he said. “But I’m worried about my grades.”

Would a math textbook to take home from middle school have made a difference?

Sweetie Williams, 52, explained it this way:

“As a pastor, I can preach and preach to my congregation. But I want everyone to have a copy of the Bible at home so they can read it, study it, and if they have any questions, they can reference the chapters. The same too has be available to the kids when it comes to textbooks.

“These kids need to be provided with the right and proper tools,” Williams said.

Louise Renne, special counsel for the San Francisco Unified School District, said the last five years have brought a “sea change” of improvements to district schools, including Luther Burbank, which has been extensively remodeled. Also, a new maintenance and instructional materials program has been put in place to ensure that campuses are up to code and that there are enough textbooks to go around.

Some of the improvements, she said, came not as the direct results of lawsuits or legislation, but because San Francisco voters passed a nearly $300-million school bond issue last year. Renne said that the district had disputed “a number of the allegations” in the suit and that one claim about the lack of books from a student whom she declined to name was overstated.

For his part, Eliezer knows there are areas where he can show personal improvement. Like getting to school on time. “I have a hard time waking up.” Compounding his early-rising problem is the fact that the public transit bus he takes to school often runs late.

The call Sweetie Williams said he once got from his son’s high school further fueled his frustrations over the state of public education, and spoke to one of the lawsuit’s contentions: that students from low-income schools lack adequately trained teachers.

“I got a call from a teacher saying he was counseling my son because he had been late three times,” Williams said. “I asked him if he was a counselor. He told me, no, he was a coach. I told him to send my son home, I’ll do the counseling.”

The elder Williams, named Sweetie by his mother because “I was sweet,” he said, is an airport screener supervisor at San Francisco International Airport and leaves the family apartment before 7:30 a.m. His wife, Talosaga, also works as an airport screener. They juggle jobs and their church responsibilities and expect their oldest children to help out with baby-sitting their younger siblings.

The couple, who are from American Samoa, came to California in 1997, in part to offer their children a better education. “To my frustration, this has not been the case,” Williams said.

Yet Eliezer spoke with enthusiasm about his senior year at school, where he has found his niche in communication arts. The student who didn’t have a math book in middle school to take home can now check out expensive video and computer equipment. He credits his teacher, George Lee, with jump-starting his enthusiasm. For Mother’s Day, Eliezer produced a video presentation that included old family photos and a recorded message from his sister in Texas.

“It blew my wife away,” Sweetie Williams said. “And it’s all because my son has a good teacher. That’s what counts most.”

As the years wore on, few in his school even knew Eliezer was at the center of the Williams case. The notoriety of the case in national education circles never translated to special treatment in school for Eliezer. The father and son don’t even think of themselves as activists -- just one voice, albeit the lead name behind the 99 students and 18 schools named in the suit.

And Williams said one advantage of his big family -- children ages 29 to 3 -- is that although the older boys had to take remedial courses at a community college to make up for lost time in middle and high school, there is the youngest, Kealani.

“Maybe the settlement of this lawsuit will come in time to help her,” he said.