TALAS E-newsletter – April 4

Gregory-Portland ISD keeps rolling through the year with more awards to decorate their shelves, this time with a the Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO) handing over the RISE Award to Ismael Gonzalez III. 

The RISE Award recognizes a person whose early accomplishments – within their career and TASBO – distinguish them as future leaders in the profession. The organization said the goal of this award is to bring to light those individuals who are on the RISE in the school business community.

Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Education Agency announced Tuesday that public school districts may not lose funding because of low attendance rates caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Texas, schools are funded based on the number of students enrolled and the daily attendance on campus. Currently, schools receive a base allotment of $6,160 per student each year. The pandemic disrupted not only learning, but also enrollment, as some school districts reported lower figures than in non-COVID years.

When an angry parent approached Principal Michael Mann a few years ago about her daughter’s failing math grade, he was well aware of the problem. His school, North Star Academy Washington Park High School in Newark, New Jersey, knew too many of his students were struggling to stay afloat academically. He saw it in the classrooms and he had the data. The numbers revealed in stark terms how incoming students from other schools were far behind in math and trying — and too often failing — to keep up with the charter school’s rigorous curriculum.

Mann had already set up weekly, teacher-led group tutorials for extra support, stretching educators to the limit of their schedules. He reassured the mother that her daughter was enrolled in the weekly teacher tutoring.

The number of colleges with Latino enrollment of at least 25 percent has declined during the pandemic, reversing a 20-year trend in higher education, and putting these students at a disadvantage, experts say.

Colleges with at least 25 percent Latino enrollment are designated as Hispanic-serving Institutions, or HSIs, by the federal government and are eligible for certain grant programs to further Latino student success. Such resources can improve the quality of education for these students and ensure they receive enough support to earn their degrees.

Jean Guerrero’s op-ed column on the treatment she received as a child speaker of both Spanish and English, and of her courage to drop the Anglicized pronunciation of her last name as an adult, struck my heart.

As a bilingual teacher of 52 years, I have watched children who start in kindergarten as Jose and Maria somehow morph into Joe and Mary by the third grade. Did teachers rename them? Did their friends (not likely)? Or did they do it themselves, driven by the need to fit in?

I attended a high school graduation where 90% of the students were Hispanic and the names were read as Joe, Mary, Rose, Albert and Ellen, and not Jose, Maria, Rosa, Alberto or Elena. I wondered what their parents were feeling.

Latino-led and nonprofit organizations are marking the life of the late labor and civil rights champion César Chávez on what would have been his 95th birthday.

As Covid-19 restrictions ease across the country, groups have been commemorating his legacy of activism by holding events and mobilizing crowds while focusing on several issues, from farmworker and labor rights to legal and environmental issues.