Anahuacalmecac International Appeals to LACOE Board - What does it take to prove success? EDITED

What does it take to prove success?

One-size-fits-all standards create injustice for Indigenous school with humble roots and global vision

AIUP Teacher and Parent, L.Manzano advocates
for her school before the LACOE BOE, 8/13/13

When on June 18, 2013, the Los Angeles School Board denied the petition to renew the charter of a high-performing, full-service community school where low income kids had the supports necessary to master an inquiry-based education and a college preparatory curriculum, students cried, parents gasped and teachers hugged. On August 13, 2013, four days after the United Nations Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples and 492 years after the military fall of Tenochtitlan at the hands of European monarchies, the community of Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory Schools appealed to a hearing before the Los Angeles County Office of Education Board of Education to reconsider the illegal denial of the renewal of the charter of Anahuacalmecac by LAUSD.

Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory Schools of North America, in the El Sereno neighborhood of East Los Angeles, has had to overcome more than its share of hard knocks over the years. Facing down anti-immigrant bantering, terrorist threats that lead to school evacuations, multi-year state deferrals and budget cuts, do-or-die benchmarks for standardized tests, dozens of homicides and shootings in the immediate vicinity of the school and even a local restaurant trying to convert into an adult cabaret next to its kindergarten campus, remarkably Anahuacalmecac remains focused on learning. The school remains a source of hope and possibility in the center of a storm of reality. It was born of real need and parent organizing, with a Freirian vision of teachers as “cultural workers”.

Anahuacalmecac is no ordinary mom and pop start-up charter school, albeit four of its core founders are certainly parents and life-long teachers. Unlike the majority of charter schools in the United States today, Anahuacalmecac is the fruit of a convergence of two epic social movements in this country, the Chicano civil rights/labor movement and the international movement advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples which among many accomplishments, memorialized the principles of Indigenous rights in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Founded by a community-based parent and educator run nonprofit organization, Semillas del Pueblo, Anahuacalmecac, aims to meet the mission planted in its indigenous Nahuatl name which means, “the Aztec house of higher learning in the land of harmonious life” (semillasdelpueblo.org).

This humble, yet high performing school became the first public school in the City of Los Angeles to earn the prestigious authorization as an International Baccalaureate World School. The school community sought the inquiry-based, international model of curriculum, because it resolved to seek out access to the best education in the world, realizing that schools around California, indeed around the country, often offered nothing but the latest marketed teach-to-the-test, or English-only, under-education of our children.  Coupled with a unique and engaging and relevant curriculum in Mexican indigenous language, arts and culture, in an open classroom environment, Anahuacalmecac bridges the gap between community aspirations and community roots. Roots that run deep in a movement for educational, social and economic justice for decades.

That same drive for higher learning has fueled the passion behind the community-based design of Semillas Community Schools, the parent nonprofit organization created to develop Anahuacalmecac. After over a decade working as teachers in the District’s public school system, Anahuacalmecac’s co-directors organized teachers and parents to start a new, autonomous, community-based model of public education that would not only be responsive to the students it served, but close the achievement gap by transforming the curriculum and school culture through indigenous ways of knowing and international education. Most importantly, we asked questions. What does it mean to be an educated person? How do institutions of higher education measure student success? How does education transform community?

In 1988, Al Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, reportedly stated that Americans “need to seek ways that will enable any group of teachers in a building and parents of children to opt for a different type of school…a totally autonomous school within that district,” (http://bit.ly/shanker). This is precisely what Semillas del Pueblo has achieved. Recently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reacted with shock to recent findings that high school graduates across America were underprepared for a university education (http://bit.ly/arnedisturbed). Yet, to those civil and educational rights leaders who, like Semillas’ founders, have struggled to open the doors to the university for decades, the failure of schooling in our community comes as no surprise. Anahuacalmecac challenges these trends, not by focusing only on those who have been tracked to go to college, but by inspiring those who have been told college was just not for them. By all measures, Anahuacalmecac is bridging the achievement gap. What is surprising is that any Board of Education would vote against a community-based school that is achieving such remarkable results.

In Los Angeles county, slightly over half of all English Learners and Students with Disabilities graduate, while reportedly only 7 out of 10 Socioeconomically disadvantaged students graduate (http://bit.ly/LAgrads12). By comparison Anahuacalmecac graduated 100% of its students in each of these ‘sub-group’ populations (http://bit.ly/subgrps2012).

Only 3 out of 10 ‘Latino’ high school graduates in both the county and the State of California completed all courses required for U.C. and/or C.S.U. entrance (CDE Dataquest: http://bit.ly/3of10grads). This means that only 30% at most of the 60% of students who graduate in Los Angeles schools are eligible to go to college. Too often (8 out of 10), students like ours are excluded from this opportunity before they get to even try. At our school ALL students graduate with a rigorous curriculum and high support, and at least 80% meet all UC/CSU eligibility criteria upon graduation compared to less than only 30% of those that graduate from our neighboring schools.

Our active defense of our students' rights to education is relevant to larger issues of public education we face today in Los Angeles and the world today. At Anahuacalmecac we know that with support and guidance, students with learning disabilities, LGBTQ, English learners, Native American and African American students CAN access high school graduation, UC/CSU eligibility and go on to successful college experiences. Anahuacalmecac is a RIGHT, not a choice for Indigenous parents and students who choose to include language, culture and community autonomy in their lives and education. YET, THERE ARE NO OTHER SCHOOLS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY WHICH TEACH ANY NATIVE LANGUAGE OR CULTURE, LET ALONE UC APPROVED A-G NAHUATL LANGUAGE COURSES BY CERTIFICATED NATIVE SPEAKER TEACHERS.

The LACOE Board of Education will vote on our charter petition appeal on September 10, 2013. Hundreds of students and families, and dozens of teachers call on the LACOE Board of Education to do the right thing and renew the charter of Anahuacalmecac. As stated by Marcos Matias Alonso, representative of the High Commission on Indigenous Peoples Affairs for the Congress of Mexico and founding member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the public hearing in LAUSD in June of 2013, after the illegal denial by the Board of Education of LAUSD, “This has been a long struggle. We will not give up. We will appeal all illegal actions to a higher authority and continue to seek the support of the People. Our future generations deserve no less.”