21828: (Hermantin) Miami-Herald-In multicultural S. Florida, schools puzzle over how to (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

In multicultural S. Florida, schools puzzle over how to define diversity



By Bill Hirschman, Karla Shores and Scott Travis
Education Writers

May 11, 2004

South Florida outgrew Brown vs. Board of Education a long time ago.

The 1954 landmark ruling demanded equal education for blacks and whites.

Now educators in Broward and Palm Beach counties must continually find ways
to accommodate a fluid change of students who come from at least 150
countries and speak 104 different languages.

"We can't develop policies today based on a case of half a century ago,"
says Cuban-American lawyer Ali Waldman. "The law may still look at it as
black and white, but our society has evolved in such a way that we have to
get away from that."

South Florida education activists are asking: How do they define minorities
when minorities have become a majority of the students?

What constitutes desegregation when every school has white, black and brown
students, but one in four campuses is made up of 90 percent blacks and
Hispanics?

Waldman has fought since 1990 to expand how Broward policymakers view
desegregation.

"We have to look at the condition of the world today, taking into account
what happened with 9-11, the religious groups -- everything in the world
today is different and we have to take that into consideration when
developing new rules."

The only edge on 1954 is that students are born into an inescapably
multicultural world.

Once all-white, Forest Hill High in West Palm Beach is one of the most
diverse schools in Palm Beach County: 48 percent Hispanic, 28 percent white
and 21 percent black.

"It's so mixed and so diverse, you'd be surprised the groupings you see.
It's all one big mix," Principal Mayra Stafford said. "You don't see
stratification like you do in other places."

Her students embrace the new diversity, she said.

"You get to meet so many different people and learn about different
languages and cultures," said Anneris Francisco, a senior whose parents are
from the Dominican Republic. Occasionally cultures clash, she said. A
student of one race might make disparaging remarks about the clothes worn by
a student of a different race. But Francisco said most students have a
diverse group of friends. "We're all the same," she said.

The law, too, sees them all the same. Providing a quality education to all
minorities is universal, said Yvette Fernandez, a specialist in Broward's
bilingual parent outreach program.

Additional hurdle

Their challenges are similar. Just like black children's average test
scores, those of Hispanic children lag behind white children's results.
Nearly 90 percent of white fifth-graders in Palm Beach County passed the
Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests for reading a year ago. But only 66
percent of Hispanics students passed.

Haitians and Hispanics often have additional hurdles of language and
cultural barriers, which courts addressed decades after Brown.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lau vs. Nichols in 1974 and a 1990
lawsuit settlement called the Florida Consent Decree require schools not
only to provide an equal education for immigrants, but also one that invests
extra money to overcome those barriers.

That requires major investments of time and money in both counties for
English as a Second Language classes and for hiring minority educators.

The districts tutor teachers about the cultural differences that stymie
education. Florida Atlantic University and Nova Southeastern University
train Palm Beach teachers how to reach students with limited English skills.
Through the use of pictures, pantomime and other techniques, English for
Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, teachers help students learn English.

As a result, South Florida educators are making inroads with immigrants,
said Steve Byrne, assistant director of multicultural studies for the Palm
Beach County School District.

"For a number of years, I taught students who only spoke Haitian Creole, a
language I don't speak," he said. "If you have the right teaching strategies
and the right teaching materials, it's really no problem. You can teach any
student."

Much harder to address are the subtler prejudices. Fernandez tells of a
Hispanic Hallandale Beach girl put in ESOL classes in 1990. She scored
straight A's. She transferred into general education classes. Straight A's
again. Clearly, she was on track for a four-year college, Fernandez said.

But a guidance counselor did not see that. She saw a Hispanic student,
someone from another country.

"She was putting her in low-level math classes. I told her this child needs
math to go to a university," Fernandez said. "The guidance counselor said,
`What's the difference? This child could go to the community college.'"

Those biases infect students as well, said Suze Lindor, one of Broward's
first Haitian teachers. She is quick to challenge students who tease Haitian
kids who wear Haitian flag bandanas on May 18, Haitian Flag Day, or speak
the Creole language.

"Being able to speak two languages is a plus, not a minus," Fernandez, the
Broward schools liaison, tells frustrated students and parents who are new
to the United States.

But the biases are not limited to white students and educators, Lindor said.
Outsiders may not see divisions within some ethnicities because they see a
single skin color. But the schism is especially pronounced among some
African-Americans who resent first- and second-generation Caribbeans.

Some of those who fought for civil rights for decades think, "Those late
immigrants to this community see the opportunity. But they don't come with
the baggage that I experienced ... that somebody told me it was not
rightfully mine," said Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Carlton Moore, one
of the first black students to desegregate a South Florida white school.

Lindor says that 40 years after African-American children carried the burden
of desegregation on their backs, their grandchildren are the persecutors,
lashing out at black Caribbeans who look but don't sound like them.

"Some of these kids used to call out `Haitian!' as a curse word and call
them `boat people,'" Lindor said. "I tell them Haitian is not a curse word.
It describes people born in Haiti. And the term boat people is misleading
because the first wave of Americans from Europe came on the Mayflower. ...
It's a teachable moment."

A parallel struggle

While the African-American fight under Brown was making headlines, other
minorities struggled out of the spotlight because they were such a small
percentage of South Florida's population.

In Broward, racial breakdowns of school enrollments did not even acknowledge
Hispanics until 1980s. Thirteen years ago, Palm Beach County's enrollment
was 11 percent Hispanic; today it is 20 percent.

As a result, educational equality did not exist in the 1960s as hundreds of
Cuban refugees flooded South Florida school districts, said Jose "Pepe"
Lopez, president of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Broward
County.

"I was dropped into a regular English class when they knew very well I
didn't talk English," said Lopez, 56, who fled Havana with his mother and
siblings in 1961.

"The English didn't come easy. I was bored in the school due to the fact I
didn't know what was going on," said Lopez, who dropped out of Miami schools
in 10th grade.

The problems weren't much different in 1979 when Fernandez tried to enroll
her daughter in kindergarten at Westchester Elementary in Coral Springs.

The Puerto Rican girl spoke no English and the district had few resources
for Hispanic students. They fixed the problem by sending her miles away from
her home to Margate Elementary, which had a growing number of Hispanic
children.

But over the years, a steady flow of non-Cuban Hispanics, Chinese, and
eventually Haitian students kept the districts reeling with staffing
problems, translation nightmares and cultural roadblocks. By 1997, whites
were no longer the majority in Broward; by 2000 the same was true in Palm
Beach County.

That groundswell created the need for advisers and advocates for non-English
speakers too intimidated to insist on what Brown, Lau and the Florida
Consent Decree guaranteed them.

Fernandez has spent the past 26 years in that role, helping parents who she
said didn't question their children's education because they were told to be
grateful for what they were given; for Hispanic, Brazilian, and Caribbean
students who were placed in a room with "their kind" away from the
English-speaking, general education student population.

Even with the framework of laws, she sees South Florida educators still
giving short shrift to the equal education foreseen by the Supreme Court,
and she helps families file grievances under the law.

"Brown vs. Board of Education is extremely important, but we still have to
know there are people in charge of implementing things who don't see it,"
said Fernandez. "People still have to be told this is the right thing to do.
Unfortunately we still have to resort to the legal system to tell people
this."

The answers, for many, are to be colorblind and treat everyone equally.

"I don't believe in racial quotas, I don't believe in affirmative action and
I'm a minority," Waldman said. "I believe that if we educate everybody,
everybody will be able to stand on their own two feet and compete on the
merits rather than on the color of their skin or the fact that they may be a
woman or a Hispanic or what have you.

"Don't look at our differences. Celebrate our diversity and encourage us to
do the best we can do in this society. Don't pin us with labels."

Bill Hirschman can be reached at bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com or
954-356-4513.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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