Immigrants eager to pay it forward for Schuyler schools

It was clear to Peruvian immigrant Luis Lucar: Something in Schuyler, Neb., had to give.



Students wait for an opening to jump on the crowded merry-go-round at Schuyler's North Ward Elementary. On Tuesday, residents will be asked to approve a $6.9 million bond issue. Four bond proposals have failed in the past seven years.Four times in the past seven years, his adopted town's more established residents of Czech, Irish and German ancestry have rejected bond proposals aimed at relieving schools crowded by a growing Latino population.

On Tuesday, Schuyler will vote on another school bond proposal, for $6.9 million.

This time, Lucar has offered a different strategy that is unprecedented in Nebraska and perhaps the nation. Backed by other Latinos, Lucar is calling on immigrants to give personal funds beyond what they'd pay in taxes, including a voluntary deduction from their wages at the local meatpacking plant.

"We don't want to be seen as the problem," said Lucar, who arrived in Schuyler in 1995. "We want to show the Anglo community and everyone that we want to be part of the solution."

Lucar and Schuyler Community Schools Superintendent Robin Stevens knocked on Latino storefronts last week, asking for financial donations to supplement the bond project. In one day, they rounded up $7,000 in pledges from immigrant merchants as well as non-Latino business owners.

The key to Lucar's strategy is a voluntary payroll deduction or direct deposit at Cargill Meat Solutions, the town's major employer. Lucar said more than 150 Latino employees said they would participate. Last week, Cargill pledged $500,000 to supplement school projects.

Whether the payroll deductions are doable has yet to be determined, said Cargill spokeswoman Suzanne McCarty. If denied, Lucar said, Latino workers at the 2,000-employee plant would set out collection boxes.

National immigration experts Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute and Douglas Rivlin of the National Immigration Forum said they hadn't heard of any similar moves elsewhere to sway public sentiment on a communitywide project or election.

"It appears to be a pretty unique model," Chishti said.

Others say the effort could signal an evolving foreign-born community that has moved beyond passivity and is looking for ways to dismantle barriers, build bridges and claim a place in its adopted community.

"Part of it was time," said Omaha sociologist Tomas Sanchez, who has published research on Schuyler. Early on, he said, neither longtime residents nor newcomers knew whether foreigners were going to stay.

During the 1990s, the town's immigrant population soared from 4 percent to 32 percent, ranking it sixth in increased percentage of foreigners among U.S. cities with 5,000 or more residents in the 2000 Census.

This year's kindergarten class is 140 children, the largest ever, with about 20 white kindergartners, Stevens said. The 1,600- student district overall has grown 20 percent in the past decade.

Latino leaders, meanwhile, emerged. Some, such as Lucar, came from South America with college degrees to advance professional careers here.

Others, such as Norma Corral, came from Chihuahua, Mexico, for low-skilled jobs. Corral now owns the Palateria Oasis ice cream shop and is a U.S. citizen, putting her daughter though the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Victor Lopez is among immigrants who came at an early age, worked a stint in the meatpacking industry and recently started his own business and a family.

Now 33, Lopez is expanding his El Pueblo Tires to a second site. As a bilingual businessman with voting rights, he integrates more easily than immigrants who speak less English and lack U.S. citizenship status.

Lopez said he still sees a wall between residents who speak different languages, although the U.S.-born children of immigrants increasingly are immersed in the community.

City leaders said that defeats of past bond elections stemmed in part from a belief among some longtime residents that they've disproportionately absorbed a public cost of new immigrants.

Mayor David Reinecke said two mindsets killed past efforts. One resists any potential tax hike. The other, he said, is reflected in the sentiment "My kids are gone. I don't want to have to increase my taxes to build a better school for Hispanics."

Leland Pokorny, 83, finds it hard to justify why his fixed income should help pay for school improvements. He thinks multiple Hispanic families live in some houses and therefore pay less in property taxes. He also said Cargill, which drew many of the Latino families, should foot a large portion of the bill.

"When we retired, it was a good town," Pokorny said. "It's gone practically all Hispanic. Don't get me wrong. I'm not down on these immigrants. But why wouldn't they have to learn English and abide by our rules?"

Longtime resident Wilma Chudomelka also objects to a new facility for the town's youngest pupils: "I just don't think it's one of those things that is necessary."

Mike Slegl, who is co-chairman with Lucar of the Schuyler Education Committee, believes the Latino campaign to raise outside funds may soften opposition. The coordinators have publicized the effort, which has a goal of raising $1 million beyond the $6.9 million bond issue.

"Some are seeing that, 'Hey, they're (immigrants) willing to help us pay for the school,'" said Linda Prochaska of Muehlich Oil Co., who was born and is raising three children in Schuyler.

Prochaska and her husband also own the local theater and are using it to inform audiences about school needs, including the growing reliance on modular classrooms outside the main buildings.

Before last weekend's showing of "Underdog," for example, moviegoers were shown a 10-minute DVD narrated by Superintendent Stevens and produced by Lucar in English and Spanish.

Stevens also is visiting coffee shops and other meeting places to talk about what he described as crowded, outdated and sometimes unsafe conditions for students.

Prochaska said the superintendent at times is "walking into a lion's den."

"I hear the comments," she said. "But people also are realizing that Cargill is not going anywhere and that the Hispanic community is here to stay."

Each of the past school bond elections was defeated by a smaller margin. If Tuesday's measure passes, a $6 million facility for those in kindergarten through third grade would be built on a recently acquired 20-acre site, freeing up building space for other grades. The rest of the money would go to improve the high school.

Officials said the project would not require an immediate property tax rate increase because the bonds would be paid for with a special building tax levy already being collected. Mayor Reinecke called the proposal "tax neutral," but Stevens said he could not rule out the possibility of a future hike.

The mayor said he favors the bond issue because schools are a reflection of the city and an investment in all youths.

For Lucar, who owns Lucar Video Productions, it is the first bond election in which he's taken an active role. He and his wife have three children.

Lucar compared the fundraising style to those more common in Latin American villages. If the government won't pay to erect a school, he said, the people pitch in and do it themselves.

"Many of the Hispanics cannot vote," he said. "But we can give money."

The concept of banding together for an ethnic community's well-being has old roots in the U.S., said Sanchez. Mutual aid societies were formed decades ago by earlier waves of Mexican and European immigrants, to help ease the integration of their respective populations.

Though intrigued by the efforts of Schuyler's Latino leaders, Milo Mumgaard of the national AFL-CIO was bothered.

He doesn't think the immigrant segment of the community should feel obligated to give above and beyond others for something that is to benefit the community as a whole. The Nebraska lawyer is the former national director of immigration policy for Appleseed Centers.

"It runs against the grain of certain American principles of how we meet the needs of our community," Mumgaard said. "A school is a shared responsibility for everyone. That's the way it works."

Lopez, the tire store owner, has one toddler and another child on the way. Once informed about school overcrowding, he was glad to donate $300.

He plans to vote Tuesday and hopes the campaign will motivate more Latino parents to get involved at school.

"That way, when my kids are growing up," Lopez said, "the schools will be ready for them."
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