Thread: How is Latino different than white - what is "diversity

I want these people to come out with EXACTLY why there is a need for "Latino" (whatever that is) leadership? Is there something in their culture that prevents mainstreaming with the rest of us? Maybe there are legit reasons for a "paucity" of Latino admins in the system? Like a 50% drop-out rate? I guess that's our fault too for being too white to run a school properly.
Comments left at article.

http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_7319327

Group says Mount Pleasant School District needs more diversity among principals
KIDS: 70 PERCENT LATINO; PRINCIPALS: ALL WHITE
By Jessie Mangaliman
Mercury News
Article Launched: 10/30/2007 01:37:16 AM PDT

East San Jose's Mount Pleasant School District, already under attack from parents and teachers for failing to deliver textbooks to one elementary school, has now come under fire from Latino community leaders for a lack of diversity among administrators.
More than 70 percent of the 3,000 students in the district are Latino. Mount Pleasant is led by a Latino superintendent, but all of the principals in the five elementary and middle schools are white.
The Latino Leadership Alliance, a group of Latino business, education and government leaders, said in a letter sent last week to Superintendent George Perez that "the district's failure to assemble a diverse pool of school principals is unacceptable and irresponsible in a valley that is renowned for diversity."
The group did not do a similar statistical analysis for other school districts in Silicon Valley. But statewide statistics show a paucity of Latino administrators in a state where Latino children will soon make up the majority of students.
Fred M. Tovar, the alliance's secretary and director of student affairs, said he's hoping to meet with Perez.
"I'm not out to chop his head off, and I'm not saying bad things about the principals at Mount Pleasant schools," said Tovar, who is assistant director of admissions at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "I want to have a discussion to point out that the community is concerned."
Role models, parental involvement, and academic
Advertisement

and social support for students are critical elements needed to solve the lagging achievement of Latinos in schools, the alliance wrote, citing research on the "achievement gap" - the academic disparity between whites and Asians vs. Latinos and blacks.
Perez, a former high school principal, said he is preparing a written response to the group. But he scoffed at the letter.
"I find it amusing and ironic that they're writing to a Latino superintendent to point this out," he said in an interview. "Do they not know who they're writing to?"
Perez said the lack of Latino principals in California public schools is an issue he's tried to address in his 36 years in education.
Nearly half of the state's 6.2 million public school students are Latino. According to recent demographic projections, Latino schoolchildren are expected to become the majority in three years. Yet, Perez said, 71 percent of teachers - the potential pool of future principals - are white.
At Mount Pleasant, about 14 percent of the teachers are Latino, and 68 percent are white, according to statewide data.
In Santa Clara County's largest school district, San Jose Unified, more than half of the 30,000 students are Latino. Two-thirds of the 1,600 teachers are white; 18 percent are Latino.
No statistics were available on the ethnicity of district administrators.
I think they're raising legitimate issues," said Bernie Kotlier, vice president of Proyecto Alegria, the parent group for an English/Spanish language immersion program housed at the district's Ida Jew Elementary School.
"My feeling is any entity should try to reflect the ethnic composition of its community," said Kotlier, who is not Latino, and has two children in Alegria.
The criticism regarding the lack of administrators' diversity in Mount Pleasant is the latest to be lobbed at the administration by parents - Proyecto Alegria parents included - unhappy about missing textbooks at Ida Jew Elementary. Last month, a parent group, on behalf of all students at the school, filed a legal complaint contending that the district failed for two months to provide sufficient textbooks and materials, in violation of state law.
The school board concluded recently that some of the missing textbooks resulted from the confusion from a major district restructuring last year. Although Perez and the board said all the students now have their required textbooks and materials, many parents said they're unconvinced.
At a tense board meeting last week, parents questioned Perez's leadership and recounted instances in which they said administrators at Ida Jew Elementary were less than welcoming to Latino parent volunteers.
Parents complained that Perez was "dismissive" of their complaints about the missing books and that their e-mail queries were ignored until they filed a legal complaint.
Proyecto Alegria parents, including Kotlier, said Perez tried to "quash communication" between teachers who raised the issue of the missing textbooks.
Perez declined to respond to the criticism.
Sarah N. Torres, a physician who has a child in Proyecto Alegria, said: "To me, we need leaders who can be creative. It would be nice for the children to see role models. But in the end, what's important is if they can do their jobs."
The relationship between Perez and the mostly Latino parents in the district appears to be growing testier by the day.
Late last week, Kotlier delivered another critique from parents, asking Perez to clarify a suggestion he made earlier this month to dissolve Proyecto Alegria and merge with the PTA.
Perez said the idea he suggested was for the two groups that serve a largely Latino student body to work together so that they would not, for example, compete in fundraising.
"We do more than just raise money," Kotlier said. "We have cultural events that are important. We need to keep this organization intact."
Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5794.

How many of those 3,000 students are legal?

This must be one of the dumbest articles I have ever read!

How would it be diversity if they want more Latino administrators in a school district that's mostly latino anyway? Sounds like they want segregation, which is backward thinking.

They are arguing this with a Latino Superintendent? WOW!

Maybe if they paid the school taxes we do, we MIGHT give a s**t what they think!

They want more diversity, meaning more of 'them'. We are being eaten from the inside out and this is 'their' goal. It's not about what's fair it's about take-over. The trouble with tribbles.

We have a large illegal alien immigrant population coming into this country or who have come in within the last 10 to 15 years. Many if not most of the people in this population are young and in their child bearing years. They love to have large families and most of our illegals are from south of the border so therefore they are latino. Very few of the illegal alien immigrants are professionals and many if not most of them have had little education. If they are professionals they can't teach here because they are as they say undocumented. Therefore the people that are teaching these kids are citizens who were born here and since the majority of the population in the US was caucasion before the invasion you are going to have caucasion teachers.

Last I heard, there are quite a few "caucasian" teachers in Mexico too.

What the parents want is not to be bothered with school activities at all, their children are better educated than them and the parents become defensive when they are asked to get involved.

I know my children are getting a better education than I did, because my parents had the same attitude toward schools that these Mexican parents do and my grades reflected this. Did I resent my parents for their fatalistic attitude, absolutely and I still do!

The attitude was this: The teachers were educated and my parents were not. My parents would always put school down as unecessary garbage. I was always in the middle and KNEW my parents were wrong. Teachers were clueless as to what was being said at home. My parents thought I should be working to earn money, not wasting my time in school. They now KNOW they were wrong, but alas; it's too late for me.

This school board should be educating the PARENTS about the harm they are doing to their children. The race of the teacher should not matter, but it does matter if one is a racist. Ergo, these latino parents are racist.

Take it from one who's been there, done that.

I posted this because to me it is rather ironic. My son was attending a downtown San Jose elementary school and the principal, who is hispanic (and who I like) always conducting the parent meetings in both English and Spanish. Took alot of time. One night he looked at me and said "you know Spanish, right?" and I said yes, so for efficiency we ran the rest of the meeting in Spanish since he knew I was the only English speaker there. I'm glad it went faster, and I'm glad those parents cared for their kids and showed up to a school meeting - but can you imagine how strange that felt for me here in my own country?
I pay property taxes too - and around here those are STEEP. We kept getting notices about once a week from a new case of headlice, hoof-and-mouth disease, chicken-pox and various other things. Scary stuff. No offense to the admins or teachers - they were great. Sometimes I felt bad for my son, who is thin, being surrounded by so many hispanic kids who were twice his weight. He got along with everyone well, though - the kids seemed pretty race-oblivious, which is how it should be.

What? There are NO white Latinos?????!!!

70% of the students are Latino, and this is diversity????I think they need more white, black and asian students!!!!