THE proud mother fixed her gaze on a crack in the sidewalk, her face clouded with equal parts anger and shame.
Her daughter, at age 8, is unable to read, write or speak the English language.
“Almost nothing,” the mother, Rosalie Salazar, said in her native Spanish.
Almost no English. This is not just a shame, but a criminal act perpetrated against a child. Because Mrs. Salazar’s little girl is no recent immigrant. She was born in America.
“She has been in this school three years,” Mrs. Salazar, a native of Mexico, told me yesterday morning, pointing accusingly in the direction of PS 161.
“I am here today because my kids need help.”
Rosalie Salazar and her sister, Olivia Moran, came to school on this cold and drizzly morning to vote on the most significant issue to affect their families’ lives since they immigrated to the United States a decade ago.
The mothers voted “Yes” on the question of whether a private company, Edison, should take over the management of Harlem’s PS 161, one of the five rottenest apples in the city’s foul system of schools.
This is a school that, for some incomprehensible reason – be it laziness or incompetence or simple neglect – cannot or will not teach some American kids English. Generations of immigrants’ children have learned English at school. Why can’t these kids?
>From the looks of things, Salazar and Moran were frightfully outnumbered. Edison, it appears, never stood a chance.
Despite numerous reports that Edison has engaged in a well-organized effort to get out the vote, I saw no buses bringing Edison-favoring parents to school.
In fact, the Board of Education, which agreed to provide Edison with parents’ addresses, gave out incorrect information on hundreds. Apparently, the rotten system can’t even keep track of which kids it serves – or where they live.
Yesterday morning, giddy Edison opponents gathered in large knots directly in front of – or even inside – PS 161.
Meanwhile, two lonely-looking Edison workers were banished across the street.
“I believe in Edison. I believe Edison is the best thing that can happen to this school,” a worker said forlornly. But no parents could hear.
In front of PS 161, anti-Edison parents and workers, not handicapped by the same geographical penalty, each offered strikingly similar reasons for rejecting the company.
“I voted ?no’ because they have a very poor track record,” said Molly Vargas. “We really don’t need anything Edison is offering.”
I mention that Edison promised to buy each student a home computer.
“My child’s education is not worth a computer,” Vargas replied.
“Nobody gives you nothing for free,” Anna Gonzalez said suspiciously.
Aracelis Dominguez expressed contempt: “They don’t have enough proof they’re going to make the school better.”
Shortly before 9 a.m., City Councilman Guillermo Linares showed up at the school, and a spirited anti-Edison chant broke out.
So the company loses and the parents win. But what, exactly, is the prize?
In Edison, parents were offered an alternative. You would expect the powers that profit from failure – the Board of Ed and the teachers union – to oppose any change that threatens their monopoly.
Many parents have been thoroughly convinced that a profit-making company can’t possibly have their best interests in mind. But if not Edison, then who?
Now, it will be more of the same in the worst school in the worst system your money can buy.
Mrs. Salazar looked crushed at the prospect.
In addition to an 8-year-old daughter, her 6-year-old son is showing only some small promise of learning English. Another child, now in kindergarten, she isn’t so sure about.
She and her husband, a cook, also have a 2-year-old son.
Where, they wonder, will he learn his native country’s tongue?
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