Migrant students attending the 2007 LEAP Conference visit legislators at the state Capitol in Olympia.

Hispanic students learn
working within political
system more powerful
than demonstrating

By Editor Ken Harvey

Nearly 650 Hispanic students, parents and educators attended the Seventh Annual LEAP (Latino/a Education Achievement Project) Conference this year – about 100 more than ever before.

“Every year it has grown,” says Ricardo Sanchez, LEAP’s founder and board chairman, “and I think it will continue to grow. We did a miserable job of promoting it, and yet over 600 people showed up.”

Sanchez noted that 637 people formally registered for the conference, but he says some people showed up without registering. Over 400 of this year’s participants were students.

“It went really great,” says Sanchez.  “I was pleased to the see the enthusiasm on the part of the students. They were really paying attention to the legislators.”

The students swarm the Capitol each year to speak to legislators, watch the state Senate and House of Representatives in action, and learn more about how to effect change from within rather than through demonstrations and other tactics of protest.

Besides numerous legislators from both parties, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, Supt. of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray stopped by to talk to the students.

“For the first time in their lives, students really understand the representative form of government we have and that they can actually talk to them. It becomes very empowering,” Sanchez says.

Older people sometimes tend to romanticize the past, such as the demonstrations of the 1960s. Those protests were important to get the attention of those in society who wanted to ignore the plight of the poor and the minorities, but there are better ways of achieving change now, says Sanchez.

“This is a new kind of activism that we want kids to learn. It’s more effective,” he says.

The lobbying efforts of the LEAP participants has been credited with getting House Bill 1079 passed into law in 2003. The bill allows undocumented students who graduate from Washington high schools to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez-Kenney (D-Seattle), who is a former migrant student and a regular attendee at the LEAP conference.

“Part of what we bring is real-life stuff,” Sanchez says. “Students and many of the adults are seeing for the first time what our representative government is all about.

“We do have a voice,” he says. “We just have to learn how to exercise it. Until we learn how to exercise our voice, we don’t have any political power.”

Sanchez says LEAP would never resort to picketing – not because it’s wrong but because it’s no longer as effective as working through the system in a respectful manner.

“If we picketed, we would set ourselves up in a confrontational mode,” he says. “We’ve been effective this way. I can almost guarantee you that if we had been out there marching and demonstrating, we’d still be out there,” and HB 1079 would not have been passed.

Two of the main speakers at the conference, held Feb. 22-24 in Olympia, were not only inspiring speakers but also excellent role models. Former migrant student Rodolfo Arévalo is now the first Hispanic president of a state university in Washington.

Another former migrant student who spoke to the conference was Dr. Alfonso Anaya, the director of the Migrant Education Program of Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

Arevalo faced the same obstacles as most migrant students. He flunked the first grade for lack of English language skills. As a senior in high school, Arevalo, like many Hispanic students, was discouraged from planning for college.

“You’re not really college material,” he was told. So Arevalo successfully applied to college on his own and graduated in just three years. By age 27 he had achieved his master’s and doctoral degrees and had become an assistant dean at the University of Texas – Austin.

Dr. Anaya’s family also migrated around the U.S. in his early years. They would sometimes live in cars, in tents, in barns, or in shacks with dirt floors.

He went on to achieve his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and to become a teacher, a principal, one of the first Hispanic school superintendents in California, and now the state director of the Migrant Education Program.

“I’m no smarter than anyone in this room,” he says, as he assured the students that they could be leaders in business, in the arts, in the sciences and in the government. But he added, “It is not easy. It’s a struggle.”

For every person who spoke, the message was the same: “Education is important,” Sanchez says.

Dr. Anaya “lived in shacks with dirt floors,” Sanchez says. “The message to the students was clear: “It is tough, but we can do it.

“We’ve lived in poverty, but poverty by itself doesn’t debilitate you,” says Sanchez. “Whatever your goals are, you can do it.  Just believe in yourself.

“Don’t let any test score define you,” he adds, referring to the difficulty many Latino students – especially English language learners -- are having with the statewide WASL test.

Sanchez says the LEAP conference was originally organized to provide training and discussion among adult Hispanic leaders, but the adults felt so good about the experience, they began bringing students. Now about two-thirds of the participants are students.

“I can’t tell you this is the way it was designed,” says the LEAP founder. “The kids have kind of driven LEAP to where it is today.”

So, over the years LEAP has provided more student workshops and activities.

“We have had to make adjustments,” Sanchez says. “And we’re making more and more progress.”

Planning meetings for next year’s conference are beginning immediately, and, again, LEAP staff and advisors will discuss how to make next year’s conference even better – especially in how they address the needs and interests of student participants.

Sanchez may move the conference from Olympia’s Red Lion to a convention hotel in Tacoma, where more people can be accommodated. They would still bus participants to Olympia for first-hand experience in the governmental system.

STUDENTS MEET WITH OWN LEGISLATORS

When student participants go to the Capitol, they break up into small regional groups to meet with their own legislators.

Over 40 students and adults came from the Tri-City area to participate. Many of them met with Rep. Larry Haler (R-Richland), Rep. Shirley Hankins (R-Richland), Sen. Jerome Delvin (R-Richland) and Senate Republican Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla).

Tri-Citians met Sen. Hewitt within the Senate chambers itself and had their picture taken with the Senate’s top Republican.

While 2003 conference leaders and participants provided impetus behind the passage of HB 1079 in-state tuition bill, this year they supported a bill that would allow undocumented students to be eligible to receive State Need Grant financial aid.

Another bill of interest to the group was HB 2303, which would create a pilot program to train future bilingual teachers to better prepare the growing number of Hispanic students to succeed in Washington schools.

Between 1986 and 2005, the number of Hispanic students in Washington schools increased by 268 percent, compared with an increase in Anglo students of only 9 percent.

The Hispanic children are among those who struggle the hardest to achieve state standards, and much of that can be attributed to the language barrier many of the students have to overcome. Yet only 20 percent of the teachers who serve Washington’s 87,000 bilingual students have a bilingual teaching endorsement, according to state officials.

A two-year pilot project would fund the selection, training and mentoring of 50 bilingual high school students around the state who express an interest in becoming teachers. Each would be assigned a bilingual teacher to be their mentor.

Students who complete the program would then be eligible for a Future Teacher Conditional Scholarship and Loan Repayment Program. That program helps finance college for education students who agree to teach in Washington state for two years for each year of college financed.

Haler had not heard of the new LEAP-supported bills, noting that over 2,500 separate bills were filed for consideration by the Legislature this year.

“I’ve been supporting all the education issues,” said Haler. “Both caucuses (Republicans and Democrats) support the education issues.”

Many of the LEAP participants met with Sen. Hewitt, whose 16^th District includes Pasco and part of Kennewick.

Hewitt noted that his district has the second-highest concentration of Hispanics of all the districts in the state.

“You have become a very important part of some of the things I do over here. The thing I think about when I’m making my decisions is, ‘How can I help you become productive in society?’” Hewitt said. “So I have been very supportive of measures to help you make it through school and succeed in life just like everybody else has a chance to do. I want people to be successful and contribute back to society rather than use society for their gain.”

Hewitt was unaware of the House bills supported by the LEAP conference. “Unless it’s a high-profile or controversial bill or a high-level bill in one of the committees I sit on, I’ll hardly ever know where it’s at in the process” until it’s ready to come to the full Senate for a vote, he said.

Hewitt added that the state does need to take some action to recruit future teachers for key areas, especially math and science.

“We don’t have enough students in those areas to fill the pipeline,” he said. He was not convinced that bilingual educators were as needed.

He was also asked about the controversial statewide WASL test, now required for high school graduation.

“I feel it’s important to maintain high standards for students to achieve. But, having said that, I spent some time with Ricardo Sanchez (LEAP founder) last year. He showed me a graph of where minority groups are at. They learn on the same curve, but they’re starting out at a lower level and are not able to reach the achievement levels we expect at this time. I’m very cognizant of that as I’m thinking about legislation,” Hewitt said.

The Republican leader expected some changes in the WASL, but emphasized, “I don’t want to lower the standards.”

Sen. Jerome Delvin (R-Richland) is a member of the Senate’s Higher Education Committee, and he admitted his concerns at giving undocumented immigrants access to State Need Scholarships. But that bill had not yet passed the House of Representatives, where it originated.

“I’ll have to give that some thought. I supported legislation two years ago for allowing undocumented students to go to college,” he said. “I would like to hear the debate on both sides. Right now we are having trouble funding tuition. We spent about 75 percent of our time in the Higher Ed Committee talking about tuition and scholarships.”

Part of the debate was whether to limit increases in college tuition. The governor had recommended a limit of 7 percent per year, while one of the senators wanted to tie tuition increases to the Cost of Living Index. The committee compromised at 5.5 percent, Delvin said.

“They have never been able to give me a good explanation of why tuition increases are double or triple inflation,” he said. “The colleges would like to have unlimited authority to set tuition at whatever they can get in the marketplace.”

The Richland Republican said he hadn’t seen the House bill for the mentoring of prospective bilingual teachers but said a similar mentoring bill had been passed by his committee already.

“Our program was based on the income of the student. We offered a scholarship that if the student would enter the mentoring program in junior high school and maintain a good GPA, and not get in trouble with the law, they will be eligible for a full scholarship,” he said.

The bilingual legislation was seeking funds for 50 students, but the program supported by the Senate’s Higher Education Committee would cover about 1,500 students, Delvin said.