In the United States today, 9 out of 10 school superintendents are white and two-thirds are white men. When you think of a typical superintendent, the person you imagine probably doesn’t look like me. 

As a Latina, my leadership isn’t often expected, nor is it always welcome. 

Institutional biases block career advancement for educators of color, who constitute only 1 in 5 U.S. teachers and principals. We are promoted less often and experience higher turnover than our white colleagues. 

This is a serious problem: The caliber and stability of our educator workforce affects our education system’s quality and capacity for improvement. We must address these barriers: Educators of color enhance student learning and are key to closing educational gaps. 

Much has been written about why we need to break down barriers in order to diversify the educator workforce. Much less covered has been the formidable task of how to launch and sustain transformative solutions. I urge fellow superintendents from all racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to act now.

That’s what we are doing inWaukegan public schools in Illinois, which serve a diverse population of about 14,000 students from preschool through high school, near Lake Michigan, about 10 miles south of the Wisconsin border. I am using my leadership position to take strong, unapologetic action so that every student can graduate from high school prepared and supported to pursue their dreams. 

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

Since taking on the superintendent role, I’ve found that when it comes to the young men in our district, we’ve got serious work to do. 

After analyzing a wide range of data and engaging in deep reflection last year, we realized that our Black male students often lack the necessary resources and support to reach their full potential. This aligns with national trends through which these students typically face low expectations, inequitable discipline that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline and a shortage of effective, culturally responsive teaching.

We launched an ambitious, systemwide, data-driven initiative aimed at creating equitable opportunities to help our Black male students and educators. I believe our efforts can provide an example for any school system dedicated to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for all students. 

Research confirms the intertwined success of Black students and educators. Studies show that low-income Black male students are 39 percent less likely to drop out of high school if they had at least one Black male teacher in elementary school. Our goal is to convince more Black male educators to build a career in our district because we know that hiring and retaining Black teachers and leaders can measurably improve math scores for Black students.

Related: White men have the edge in the school principal pipeline, researchers say

Some key insights from our work stand out as essential tools for continued success. First is the indispensable role of broad support from executive leadership. My commitment to addressing education inequities is deeply personal. I relate to many of the challenges our Black male educators face and, as a mother to a Black teenage boy, the urgency of this effort pulses through my veins.

Our board of education’s steadfast support has been equally key to launching our initiative, with board members helping drive us toward significant, measurable achievements.

Community engagement and leadership are our foundational principles. I know that the solutions we need won’t come from me alone. This acknowledgment led us to launch a task force that includes Black male students, teachers, principals, students’ fathers and other family members and community partners. 

We’ve also hosted planning sessions involving diverse stakeholders to try to foster buy-in and accountability as we move forward. And we’ve engaged national partners with unparalleled expertise to help us guide professional learning for district officials using an inclusive, equity-focused lens. 

We are also dedicating staff to oversee the work. We created a new position to catalyze our multiyear initiative and are investing in our teachers and leaders while we pursue systemic transformation. In particular, we launched a local leadership chapter for Men of Color in Educational Leadership, where our educators can share experiences, seek guidance and grow professionally within a community of practice.

We rely on a framework that highlights skills vital for the success of education leaders of color and contributes to the broader goal of systemic change in education. I often turn to these resources myself when reflecting on my own leadership as a woman of color. 

Acknowledging the extent of the challenge is just the start to fostering inclusive, equitable education. We have begun the critical process of setting goals so we can transparently track and communicate our progress. We are also trying to see how this focused initiative advances broader efforts to strengthen and diversify our entire educator workforce, including paraprofessionals, teachers and school leaders. 

Other superintendents can do this too. Find your champions, allies, community leaders and partners. The time for brave, visionary leadership is now.

Theresa Plascencia is superintendent of Waukegan Public Schools in Waukegan, Illinois. She sits on the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents Advisory Policy Committee and on the Men of Color in Educational Leadership National Advisory Council. 

This story about diversifying the educator workforce was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

The post SUPERINTENDENT VOICE: As a Latina, my leadership sets me apart and gives me a chance to set an example appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Nota de la editora: Este reportaje sobre las escuelas de Russellville fue producido por palabra, una iniciativa de la Asociación Nacional de Periodistas Hispanos,  The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin fines de lucro que se enfoca en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y AL.com.

RUSSELLVILLE, Alabama — Lindsey Johnson y Yesenia de la Rosa estaban usando estrategias diferentes para impartir la misma lección de inglés sobre letras mudas, sentadas en extremos opuestos de ese salón de clases de primer grado en la Escuela Primaria West. En esa tarde de marzo, Johnson, la maestra del aula, estaba leyendo un cuento con niños de 6 y 7 años que dominaban el inglés. Los estudiantes de la asistente bilingüe, De la Rosa, aún estaban aprendiendo el idioma, así que, aunque les estaba leyendo el mismo cuento, iba más lento, traduciendo palabras, actuando emociones y mostrándoles fotos en su iPhone.

Valentina, de 6 años, que llevaba puesta una camiseta negra con un logo de Nike en dorado y mallas, había llegado hacía menos de dos semanas desde Guatemala. Sentada en el suelo, cerca de la silla de De la Rosa, su mejilla casi tocaba la pierna de su maestra. De la Rosa solía trabajar con ella de forma individual, ya que la niña no sabía letras ni números, ni en español ni en inglés. Cuando Valentina fue al kínder en su país natal, lo único que hacía era colorear. “Así que cuando llegó aquí, eso es lo que pensaba que iba a hacer. Solo dibujar”, dijo De la Rosa. “Pero aquí es distinto”.

El distrito escolar de la ciudad de Russellville creó el puesto de De la Rosa a principios de 2021, como parte de un esfuerzo más amplio por ayudar a educar a su creciente población de alumnos que hablan inglés como segundo idioma. Muchos de los estudiantes de inglés, como se les llama, tienen padres provenientes de México o Guatemala que trabajan en una planta avícola cercana y en empleos locales en la industria y la construcción. Hoy, el 60% de los niños del distrito son hispanos/latinos y aproximadamente un tercio son estudiantes de inglés.

Johnson dijo que, sin De la Rosa, no podría comunicarse con más de la mitad de sus alumnos, ni entender los desafíos a los que se enfrentan. Johnson sabía que Yeferson, un estudiante de inglés de Guatemala, era uno de los niños más inteligentes en la clase, ya que leía más de 100 palabras, muy por encima de la meta de 60. “Es una esponja. Lo absorbe todo”, dijo Johnson. Pero ella supo gracias a De la Rosa que Yeferson se estaba destacando a pesar de sus muchas responsabilidades en casa: su mamá trabajaba turnos nocturnos, por lo que Yeferson lavaba la ropa, fregaba los platos y cuidaba de sus hermanos menores. Dijo Johnson: “Tener un asistente bilingüe hace una gran diferencia”.

Russellville quizás no dé la impresión de ser una comunidad que va a invertir e innovar a favor de los estudiantes inmigrantes. Es una ciudad políticamente conservadora del noroeste de Alabama, con una población aproximada de 11.000 habitantes, y en la que un 72% de los votantes optó por Donald Trump en las últimas elecciones presidenciales. 

Cuando la planta de procesamiento avícola abrió, en 1989, la población hispana de Russellville era aproximadamente el 0,5% del total de habitantes. En 2000, había aumentado al 13% y, en 2020, era casi del 40%. Al principio, al distrito escolar, como a muchos otros del país, se le hizo difícil dar cabida al creciente número de estudiantes de inglés, que abandonaban los estudios en altos porcentajes, estos eran empujados a clases de educación especial y después mostraban escasos progresos académicos. Sin embargo, sus logros importan: hoy en Estados Unidos, más de uno de cada 10 estudiantes es un estudiante de inglés como segundo idioma y, en una época en la que la matrícula en los centros públicos en general está disminuyendo, se encuentran entre los grupos de estudiantes que más rápido están creciendo del país.

A principios de 2015, cuando el entonces superintendente anunció su retiro, el distrito reclutó para el puesto a Heath Grimes, que en aquel momento era el superintendente del sistema escolar del cercano condado de Lawrence. Grimes, de 48 años, quien se autodenomina sureño conservador y hombre de fe de la Alabama rural, se propuso abordar la reforma de la enseñanza para los estudiantes de inglés por completo, estableciendo actividades extracurriculares culturalmente relevantes y conectando con la comunidad hispana. Se sintió el impacto de dichos esfuerzos: la porción de estudiantes hispanos que tomaron clases de nivel avanzado (AP, por sus siglas en inglés), así como cursos de doble matrícula en el colegio comunitario local, aumentó. También lo hizo la participación de los padres. Y Grimes lideró un esfuerzo para convencer a los legisladores de que cambiaran la fórmula de financiación del estado de Alabama para los estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma, multiplicando por más de ocho la asignación estatal, hasta llegar a los $18,5 millones. El distrito y Grimes recibieron el reconocimiento estatal y nacional por su labor con los estudiantes de inglés.

“Cualquier distrito con una población significativa de estudiantes de inglés ha acudido a Heath (Grimes) porque él se adelantó a los acontecimientos ”, dijo Ryan Hollingsworth, director ejecutivo de los Superintendentes Escolares de Alabama, que representa a los 150 distritos escolares del estado. “Es simplemente increíble ver lo que ha podido lograr en un distrito pequeño sin muchos recursos”.

Pero a medida que la figura de Grimes ascendía a nivel estatal, según los educadores y residentes locales, su relación con los dirigentes de la ciudad comenzó a desmoronarse. Luego, a mediados de mayo de 2023, un miembro de la junta escolar le informó a Grimes que su contrato, que terminaba en junio de 2024, no sería renovado. Grimes aceptó retirarse cuando terminara su contrato al año siguiente, a cambio de un aumento en el salario de su último año. A partir de noviembre, intenté hablar con miembros de la junta escolar, con el alcalde y con miembros del ayuntamiento acerca del distrito escolar y de Grimes, y en un principio no respondieron a mis reiteradas solicitudes de entrevistas. (Cuando me presenté ante al alcalde, David Grissom, sobre la calle en Russellville, me dijo “sin comentarios” y se marchó). Pero a  lo largo de los meses, sin embargo, pude hablar con más de 60 funcionarios estatales, administradores locales, docentes, exmiembros de la junta escolar, líderes comunitarios y residentes, incluyendo personas que conocí en negocios y en la calle, en Russellville. Dichas entrevistas indican que la decisión de forzar a Grimes a dejar el cargo como superintendente surgió de una maraña de políticas de pueblo pequeño, una antipatía profundamente arraigada hacia los inmigrantes y una añoranza de la ciudad que Russellville solía ser.

“Heath Grimes puso a los estudiantes primero. Y esto al final pudo haberlo perjudicado”, dijo Jason Barnett, superintendente del Consejo de Educación de la ciudad de Guntersville, en el norte de Alabama, y uno de las docenas de líderes de distrito en el estado que trabajaron de cerca con Grimes. Aproximadamente, 18 educadores y líderes comunitarios en Russellville, muchos de ellos con conocimiento de los acontecimientos, me dijeron que el apoyo de Grimes a la creciente población de estudiantes que aprenden inglés fue clave para que perdiera el apoyo entre los principales dirigentes de la ciudad. Muchos de los líderes pidieron no ser citados por temor a represalias o a tensar las relaciones en esta pequeña comunidad. Un administrador escolar, que no quiso ser identificado por miedo a perder su empleo, dijo de Grimes: “Muchas personas dijeron que el aumento en la población indocumentada se debía a que él hizo de las escuelas de Russellville (y por ende la ciudad) un lugar acogedor en el que los inmigrantes querían vivir. A la gente no le gustó eso”. 

A principios de julio volví a buscar a Grissom; a Daniel McDowell, al abogado de la junta escolar,  y a Greg Trapp, quien fue hasta hace poco el presidente de esa misma junta. Les compartí mis hallazgos tras meses de reportajes, junto con una lista detallada de preguntas para ellos. McDowell y Grissom respondieron con declaraciones por escrito en las que afirmaron que los estudiantes de habla hispana habían prosperado en el distrito mucho antes de que llegara el superintendente Grimes, y negaron que su dedicación a los estudiantes de inglés hubiera propiciado su partida. “Los inmigrantes de los países latinoamericanos han venido mudándose a Russellville durante los últimos 25 años y siempre han sido bienvenidos en la ciudad y al cuerpo estudiantil”, escribió Grissom. “Mirando hacia atrás, nuestra escuela preparatoria ha coronado a una reina latina de baile de bienvenida, votada por el cuerpo estudiantil, y ha reconocido al primer estudiante latino graduado con las mejores calificaciones. Esos eventos ocurrieron mucho antes de que el Dr. Grimes llegara a Russellville”.

Inmigrantes no bienvenidos 

Antes de que Grimes llegara a Russellville, los legisladores estatales aprobaron, en 2011, la ley HB 56, considerada ampliamente como la ley antiinmigrante más severa del país. Dicha ley daba a la policía la autoridad para detener a las personas que creían que no tenían documentos legales para vivir en Estados Unidos, y tipificaba como delito que las empresas contrataran a estas personas a sabiendas y que los propietarios alquilaran a quienes carecían de documentación. Además, las universidades públicas no podían admitir estudiantes sin documentos de inmigración y, aunque, según la ley federal, las escuelas K-12 están obligadas a acoger a los estudiantes sin importar su estatus de ciudadanía, la legislación de Alabama también exigía que los distritos escolares recopilaran información sobre el estatus de ciudadanía de sus estudiantes. Aunque partes de la ley fueron posteriormente anuladas por un tribunal federal, el mensaje era claro: los inmigrantes no eran bienvenidos.

Por todo eso, cuando Greg Batchelor, entonces presidente de la junta escolar de la ciudad de Russellville, buscaba un nuevo superintendente escolar, en el 2015, sabía que las cosas se volverían controversiales. La población hispana de la ciudad era del 22% y seguía creciendo. Algunos antiguos residentes “anglo”, como se autodenominaban los miembros de la población de raza blanca, se referían despectivamente al centro de la ciudad como “Pequeño México”, y se quejaban de oír hablar español y de ver las casas coloridas que asociaban con la comunidad hispana.

Batchelor y otro exmiembro de la junta escolar, Bret Gist, recordaron haber oído a antiguos residentes decir que estaban inscribiendo a sus hijos en escuelas privadas o marchándose de Russellville porque no querían que sus hijos fueran “la minoría”. A otros les preocupaba que los estudiantes de inglés hicieran bajar las calificaciones de los exámenes y dañaran la reputación de su distrito escolar. En aquel entonces, apenas cinco distritos del estado tenían una población de estudiantes de inglés superior al 10%; la de Russellville era la segunda más alta, con un 16%.

Batchelor, que también es presidente de la junta directiva de CB&S, uno de los bancos comunitarios más grandes de Alabama, dijo que sabía que la futura economía de la ciudad dependía del próximo líder escolar: “Si nuestra comunidad sobrevive y le va bien, solo podrá ser tan buena como eduquemos a nuestros niños”. También expresó que creía que los estudiantes hispanos de la ciudad merecían las mismas oportunidades que sus compañeros de clase, y que estaba profundamente influenciado por su padre, quien fue miembro de la junta escolar de Russellville durante 20 años. “Mi papá solía decir que todos se ponen los pantalones de la misma manera, una pierna a la vez”, recordó Batchelor.

En ese momento, Grimes, un exmaestro de educación especial  y entrenador de fútbol americano,  se encontraba en su sexto año como superintendente del condado de Lawrence. En su primer mandato de cuatro años, había cerrado tres escuelas secundarias debido a una caída de la matrícula y a un déficit presupuestario que heredó. “Es muy inusual en Alabama que un superintendente cierre escuelas en un condado y luego sea reelecto, y él fue reelecto”, dijo Batchelor. “Sentí como que él no temía tomar decisiones difíciles”. Gist, el exmiembro de la junta escolar, recuerda la emoción que sintieron los integrantes de la junta tras la entrevista con Grimes. “Yo estaba listo para que llegara y tuviera un gran impacto”, dijo Gist.

El 11 de mayo de 2015, Grimes fue votado por unanimidad como el nuevo superintendente escolar de Russellville. 

Nuevas estrategias

Kristie Ezzell, quien se jubiló de las escuelas de Russellville en 2022 después de 31 años en los que trabajó bajo cuatro superintendentes, presenció la transformación de primera mano. Como maestra de segundo grado en la década de 1990, enseñó a una de las primeras estudiantes de inglés del distrito. Ezzell recordó a una niña pequeña que intentaba una y otra vez comunicarse, pero a quien Ezzell no podía entender. “Comenzó a llorar y luego comencé a llorar yo, y las dos nos quedamos paradas ahí y nos abrazamos y lloramos”, recordó Ezzell. “La barrera idiomática entre nosotras era simplemente desgarradora”. 

El crecimiento rápido de la población de estudiantes de inglés había tomado por sorpresa a los educadores de Russellville. En todo el distrito, había apenas un maestro titulado para enseñar inglés como segundo idioma, ningún intérprete y muy poco desarrollo profesional. “Nos llegaban estudiantes que no hablan una pizca de inglés, sus padres no hablan una pizca de inglés, y se espera que nosotros los eduquemos”, me dijo una maestra, quien pidió no ser identificada para evitar consecuencias. “Y yo ni siquiera sabía si están pidiendo ir al baño o si tienen hambre”. La situación también era injusta para los estudiantes angloparlantes, que perdían tiempo de aprendizaje porque sus maestros tenían la mente en otras cosas, dijo . “Simplemente era un desorden en todos los sentidos”.

Grimes, que no habla español y tenía poca experiencia con estudiantes de inglés en sus roles anteriores, dijo que lo primero que escuchó fue: “¿Cómo vas a solucionar esto?”. “Creo que pensaban que yo iba a hacer, de alguna manera, que la población de estudiantes de inglés desapareciera”, me dijo. “Y mi actitud fue: ‘No, no vamos a hacer eso’”. En lugar de ello, les pidió a los educadores: “Aceptar, Acoger, Celebrar”. “Primero, tienen que aceptar que su distrito está cambiando. Y, cuando abracemos ese cambio, vamos a ver algunos cambios muy positivos que vamos a poder celebrar”, recuerda que les dijo. “Y todo eso se ha hecho realidad”.

Para entonces, Ezzell era directora de la Escuela Primaria de Russellville. Recordó la primera reunión que tuvo Grimes con maestros, en la que presentó las calificaciones de los exámenes de los estudiantes, desglosados por escuelas. “Me hundí en mi asiento y vinieron lágrimas a mis ojos porque nuestros resultados no eran muy buenos”, me dijo.

Su mensaje, según Ezzell, fue simple: “No más excusas. Nuestros maestros ya no van a decir: ‘Bueno, son estudiantes de inglés’. Eso no está bien. (Estos estudiantes) van a crecer igual que todos los demás”. Mientras exponía sus expectativas, los maestros comenzaron a mirar nerviosos a su alrededor, recordó. Algunos lloraron y uno tuvo que dejar el salón. A algunos les preocupaba que Grimes estuviera criticando sus competencias; otros lo desestimaron por forastero, dijo Ezzell. Pero, ella recordó, una cosa estaba clara: “Sabíamos que hablaba en serio”, dijo. “Era muy empático con todo lo que estábamos enfrentando, pero afirmó: ‘Esto no puede continuar’”.

Cuando Ezzell se fue a casa esa noche, no podía dejar de pensar en la reunión. Era consciente de lo duro que trabajaban sus maestros. “Nunca dejaron de enseñar”, dijo. Pero las pésimas estadísticas le demostraron que no se estaban enfocando en las cosas indicadas. Ezzell me dijo que, desde ese momento, ha comenzado una misión para encontrar mejores formas de educar a sus estudiantes: “Dediqué mi vida a ello”.

Grimes dijo que la actitud predominante era que los estudiantes de inglés eran una carga, una percepción similar a la que se tenía de los estudiantes de educación especial a los que él una vez enseñó. Entonces trajo a una profesora y asesora educativa, Tery Medina, que explicó que los niños inmigrantes eran estudiantes del distrito bajo la ley federal. Siendo ella misma refugiada cubana, dirigió debates con los docentes sobre las similitudes entre la cultura hispana y la sureña. “Aman a la familia. Son trabajadores y muchos tienen fe en Cristo. Eran todas esas cosas con las que todos se podían identificar”, recordó Grimes. Por su parte, Medina dijo que estaba impresionada con la apertura que Russellville tuvo con estos estudiantes. Durante el mandato de Grimes, “Russellville fue una pequeña joya”,  dijo, “allí no se veía a los estudiantes de inglés como una carga”.

El distrito también invirtió en el desarrollo profesional de los maestros, asegurándose de que tuviera lugar durante las horas de trabajo, dijo Ezzell. Expertos, libros, videos, planes de lecciones detallados… para los maestros, en ese momento, era como una maraña de aprendizaje continuo. Lentamente, los educadores comenzaron a compartir estrategias y a impartir clases juntos. “¿Conoces el dicho, ‘Cuando sabes más, haces mejor?’”, me preguntó Ezzell. “Eso fue lo que sucedió”. Los maestros experimentaron, hicieron sus lecciones más interactivas y se guiaron por las más recientes investigaciones. Algunos maestros incluso crearon lo que se convirtió en una premiada clase de ciencia en tres idiomas: inglés, español y q’anjob’al, un dialecto guatemalteco. “Les dedicábamos tiempo para que fueran a aprender las mejores prácticas. Y eso benefició a todos los estudiantes, no solamente a los estudiantes de inglés”, dijo Ezzell.

No todos en el distrito aceptaron el cambio. Grimes recordó haberse reunido con una maestra que estaba a cargo de una clase en la que el 30% de los estudiantes estaba reprobando. Ella no lo veía como un problema, dijo Grimes. “(Su actitud) era como: ‘Vengo haciendo esto durante 20 años y no vas a decirme lo contrario’”. Según Grimes, dicha maestra se jubiló poco después; algunos otros maestros renunciaron.

Pero los maestros que se quedaron dijeron que podían ver que los estudiantes empezaban a responder a los nuevos enfoques. Los estudiantes de inglés comenzaban a participar más en clase; ya no se sentaban al fondo del salón. Muchos más de ellos comenzaron a tomar clases AP, de nivel avanzado, así como también clases de doble inscripción en el Colegio Comunitario Northwest College. “Los motivamos. Y cuando motivas con amor, vas a tener éxito”, dijo Ezzell.

El distrito comenzó a acumular galardones. Varias de sus escuelas recibieron el codiciado Blue Ribbon School of Excellence (un premio a la excelencia). Desde 2021, la escuela secundaria Russellville ha sido nombrada una de las mejores 25 escuelas en Alabama por U.S. News & World Report. En 2022, fue el único distrito de Alabama en el que predominan las minorías que recibió una nota  “A” en el boletín de calificaciones del estado; en 2023, Russellville fue uno de los dos únicos en el estado nombrado como “Spotlight District” (Distrito destacado) en lectura y alfabetización, y su escuela secundaria fue reconocida como Escuela de Excelencia A+ College Ready, designación otorgada por una organización sin fines de lucro contratada por el departamento de educación estatal para maximizar la preparación para la universidad.

El núcleo de las estrategias de Grimes, además del fomento del conocimiento  cultural y del desarrollo profesional, eran los educadores bilingües. En un principio, Grimes colocó intérpretes en cada escuela para ayudar con las traducciones cotidianas, pero sabía que los maestros necesitaban aún más ayuda en los salones de clases. Sin embargo, una escasez nacional de educadores bilingües exigía creatividad. Grimes decidió enfocarse en contratar asistentes bilingües, que ganaban la mitad del sueldo de un maestro. Se comunicó con el reverendo Vincent Bresowar, de la Iglesia Católica del Buen Pastor de Russellville, para que lo ayudara a correr la voz sobre los puestos que se ofrecían.

El tamaño de la congregación de Bresowar había crecido a medida que habían ido llegando familias inmigrantes a Russellville; su iglesia había construido recientemente un nuevo edificio de $4,5 millones para adaptarse a ese aumento. 

Sus feligreses, mientras tanto, trabajaban largas e irregulares jornadas, tenían problemas económicos y a menudo cargaban con traumas. “El sufrimiento es muy intenso y puede ser muy difícil”, me dijo Bresowar. Además, sabía cómo la barrera idiomática podía exacerbarlos malos entendidos. El reverendo dijo que su propia comprensión y aprecio por la comunidad hispana cambió una vez que aprendió a hablar español y compartió tiempo con ellos. “Creo que mucha gente tiene miedo porque no puede comunicarse y eso hace más difícil acortar la brecha”, dijo Bresowar. 

Él puso a Grimes en contacto con feligreses y, en 2021, usando fondos destinados a la pandemia, Grimes contrató a una docena de asistentes bilingües de esa comunidad. Al mismo tiempo, puso a esos asistentes en contacto con un programa de aprendizaje, gestionado por la organización sin fines de lucro Reach University, para que ellos pudieran simultáneamente formarse como docentes. “Fue un punto de inflexión”, dijo Grimes sobre esa ayuda adicional en las escuelas. 

Elizabeth Alonzo fue una de esas asistentes bilingües. Se incorporó al plantel de la Escuela Primaria West, de Russellville, (la escuela de la maestra Johnson y de la asistente bilingüe De la Rosa), en 2021, donde trabajaba mayormente con estudiantes de segundo grado en pequeños grupos y también servía de intérprete durante actividades escolares y para comunicarse con los padres. Mientras caminaba por un pasillo en una reciente jornada escolar, niñas hispanas de otras clases dejaron sus filas y corrieron a darle un abrazo rápido.  “Al principio era como: “Oh, ¿tú hablas español? Sus rostros se iluminan, ¿sabes?”, dijo Alonzo, quien nació en Alabama y fue criada allí por padres inmigrantes. En el pasado mes de diciembre de 2023, completó los cursos para convertirse en maestra y espera quedarse en West. 

Si lo consigue, será la sexta maestra hispana del distrito, mientras que, cuando llegó Grimes, había solo una. El nivel de recursos para los estudiantes de inglés es muy distinto del que había cuando ella iba a la escuela. Cuando Alonzo estaba en el kinder de una escuela del condado, su prima fue retirada de su clase de primer grado para hacer de intérprete para ella, recordó. “Y, luego, cuando yo estaba en primer grado, me sacaban de clase para ayudar a mi hermano menor”. Alonzo asistió a las escuelas de Russellville de 2008 a 2013. 

Otro maestro de Russellville, Edmund Preciado Martínez, también recordó haberse sentido aislado cuando era estudiante en Alabama a fines de la década de 1990. A veces, confundía palabras en español y en inglés, dijo, por lo que a menudo se sentía demasiado avergonzado como para hablar en clase. “Eso me llevó a educación especial porque pensaban que algo andaba mal conmigo”, recordó.

Era maestro en un distrito cercano cuando se enteró de los cambios que Grimes estaba implementando en Russellville y decidió solicitar un empleo. Hace seis años, fue contratado para trabajar con estudiantes de inglés en la escuela secundaria de Russellville.

Cada año, dijo Preciado Martínez, los docentes eligen un lema alrededor del cual unirse, como #whateverittakes (lo que sea necesario) or #allin (completamente comprometidos). La camaradería allí es muy diferente a las historias que ha escuchado de sus colegas en otras partes del estado, quienes hablan de compañeros que se quejan de los estudiantes de inglés e incluso se refieren a ellos de manera despectiva y con insultos.

“Siempre que necesitamos algo, simplemente lo pedimos y ellos hacen su mayor esfuerzo por conseguírnoslo”, dijo Martínez refiriéndose a los líderes de su distrito. “E incluso, si no pueden, buscan alternativas que podemos utilizar”.

“Hay espacio para todos nosotros” 

Grimes también se enfocó en involucrar a los padres hispanos en la educación de sus hijos. Se dio cuenta de que muchos de ellos se sentían demasiado intimidados o avergonzados para hablar con los educadores; en sus países natales, a veces se consideraba una falta de respeto cuestionar a un docente o incluso preguntarle sobre el progreso de su hijo. Así que se dedicó a entablar relaciones, frecuentando comercios hispanos, reuniéndose con líderes comunitarios y traduciendo al español todos los anuncios en la página web y Facebook del distrito escolar.

Dichos esfuerzos cambiaron la experiencia escolar de la madre Analine Mederos. Ella había abandonado la escuela en México en séptimo grado y deseaba con desesperación que sus hijos recibieran una buena educación. Pero, dijo Mederos, cuando su hija mayor se inscribió en las escuelas del distrito de Russellville, en 2006, ella no estaba involucrada en su educación en absoluto. “No interactuaba con los maestros porque no hablaba mucho inglés. La mayor parte del tiempo me daba miedo hablar”, me contó. Sentía que los empleados de la escuela la miraban por encima del hombro por la barrera idiomática, y no le veía sentido a hablar. “Si tienes preguntas, ¿quién te va a ayudar?”, dijo. “Así que, dijeran lo que dijeran, yo decía: ‘Bueno, está bien’”.

Pero con su segundo hijo, que ahora está en el décimo grado, ha tenido una experiencia completamente distinta. “Grimes ha hecho un gran… no sé ni cómo decirlo… un gran impacto. Especialmente con la comunidad hispana”, me dijo. Y agregó que a su hija le encanta la escuela, y que a su hijo, que está en la enseñanza media, no ve la hora de hacer la prueba para el equipo de fútbol. Cuando ve a Grimes en la comunidad, dice que se siente lo suficientemente cómoda como para hablarle de sus hijos: “Te va a escuchar. No va a fingir que te está escuchando. No; realmente escucha”. 

Ahora, a Mederos se le hace más fácil seguir las reuniones escolares. Hace apenas unos años, en la escuela primaria, había apenas un intérprete para 600 niños, por lo que la escuela solamente podía programar reuniones con los padres cuando un niño estaba en problemas o reprobaba. Ahora, con seis asistentes bilingües, el personal de la escuela puede tener reuniones individuales con cada familia al menos una vez al año, y también ofrecen dos días completos de actividades para padres en inglés y en español. Los padres saben que habrá un intérprete presente y eso manda un mensaje claro. “Nuestros padres saben que los estamos acogiendo y que los valoramos”, me dijo la directora Alicia Stanford.

El evento Mes de la Herencia Hispana que Grimes inició en la escuela secundaria Russellville se ha convertido en una gran celebración para todo el distrito, en la que los estudiantes aprenden sobre distintas culturas y tradiciones, hacen presentaciones de baile, leen a autores célebres e investigan sobre figuras históricas. Pero quizás sea el programa de fútbol, que Grimes puso en marcha, el que  ha obtenido la mayor respuesta. Antes de la llegada de Grimes, los estudiantes habían hecho lobby por el programa, sin éxito, pero él comprendió que era una parte querida e importante de la cultura latinoamericana. “Querían algo que fuera suyo”, dijo Grimes. 

Grimes no tenía fondos para una nueva cancha de fútbol, por lo que mandó a reemplazar el césped del campo de fútbol americano, y los estudiantes comenzaron a jugar allí en 2017. En 2021, cuando el equipo de fútbol de Russellville, los Golden Tigers, jugó en las semifinales estatales, tanto familias hispanas como no hispanas acudieron en masa. “Todos estaban animando, ‘Sí, se puede’, ‘Yes, we can‘”, recordó Grimes cuando nos reunimos en su oficina en marzo. El logo de la escuela es una antorcha como la de la Estatua de la Libertad, y hay una tradición escolar de levantar los puños cerrados para mostrar unidad y orgullo. “Toda la comunidad latina se pone de pie con sus antorchas en alto ―añadió―, y están cantando: ‘Russ-ell-ville, Russ-ell-ville’. Eso fue muy, muy poderoso”.

La pared de la oficina de Grimes estaba adornada con trofeos deportivos de eventos como este, junto con credenciales académicas enmarcadas, incluido su título de doctorado. Fue el primer miembro de su familia en ir a la universidad. También había fotos familiares y de antiguos alumnos, junto con una Biblia desgastada en su escritorio.

Batchelor, el expresidente de la junta escolar, dijo que, aunque en algunas ocasiones el proceso fue difícil, gracias a los esfuerzos sostenidos de Grimes y a su ejemplo, familias de todos los orígenes poco a poco vieron que mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes de inglés significaba que todo el sistema escolar mejorara. “Creo que la comunidad ha aceptado que hay espacio para todos nosotros”, dijo Batchelor.

No todas las ideas de Grimes funcionaron. Al principio, separó a los estudiantes de inglés del resto de los alumnos durante las clases curriculares, pero luego abandonó la idea cuando los maestros le dijeron que no estaba funcionando. Ahora, las escuelas combinan la enseñanza a los alumnos de inglés en grupos pequeños, por un lado, y por otro, con lecciones junto a toda la clase. Luego de que un acto de “vuelta a clases” demorara más de lo previsto, porque Grimes pidió que cada frase fuera traducida, él decidió realizar reuniones escolares simultáneas donde los padres podían elegir entre escuchar en inglés o en español.

Y no ha sido fácil sostener todo lo conseguido. Entre 2019 (cuando los asistentes de educación bilingües fueron contratados) y 2021, los estudiantes de inglés de algunos grados registraron grandes avances en los exámenes para medir su nivel de dominio del idioma inglés. Por ejemplo, los niveles de desempeño de los estudiantes de segundo grado pasaron del 46% al 84% y, los estudiantes de tercer grado, del 44% al 71%. Pero el progreso desde entonces no ha sido consistente; los porcentajes de estudiantes que dominan el idioma en algunos grados cayeron en 2023 por debajo de las cifras de 2019. Los administradores dicen que se debe a que la cantidad de estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma sigue aumentando mientras que el número de educadores no, lo que significa que los niños reciben menos atención individualizada.

Pero la buena disposición que Grimes género al abrazar a las familias hispanas dio sus frutos de maneras inesperadas. En 2018, el distrito necesitaba reparar los techos de los edificios escolares pero no tenía los fondos para completarlos, dijo Grimes. Alguien de la comunidad hispana llamó a Grimes, ofreciendo hacer el trabajo gratis, dijo. “Ofrecieron voluntariamente su tiempo, sus esfuerzos, su energía y sus materiales, y completaron esos edificios”, él me dijo.

Hoy en día, los comercios hispanos dominan el centro de la ciudad, un área de unas pocas manzanas que hasta hace poco estaba llena de edificios deteriorados y vacíos. Hay tres panaderías mexicanas, dos tiendas de comestibles atinas, tres barberías, salones de manicura y una carnicería. Los dueños de los comercios se esfuerzan por apoyar al sistema escolar, dijo Yaneli Bahena, quien hace cuatro años se graduó  en el distrito escolar de Russellville y ahora es propietaria de un negocio llamado The Ville Nutrition.

Un restaurante mexicano se encargó del catering para un evento de “vuelta a clases” de 200 personas, las panaderías suelen donar pan y dulces, y algunas peluquerías ofrecen cortes de pelo gratuitos antes del comienzo del año escolar.  El campo de fútbol está rodeado de carteles de negocios hispanos locales que han patrocinado al equipo. La propia Bahena patrocina comidas para eventos escolares, y dona mochilas y material escolar. “La escuela me dio un sentimiento de esperanza”, dijo. “Tuve muy buenos maestros. Todos se preocupaban por mi”. En la escuela secundaria, notó que, a diferencia de años anteriores, se incluía a los estudiantes en las excursiones y se los animaba a cursar materias optativas. Bahena dijo que algunos de sus compañeros de clase se quedaron en la escuela en lugar de abandonar los estudios para irse a trabajar gracias al “empuje de ayuda” de los educadores. Ella también le dio crédito a Grimes: “Todo lo que han puesto para estos niños no sería posible sin el superintendente”.

Abogando a nivel estatal 

En 2019, ansioso por encontrar socios y apoyo para su labor con los estudiantes de inglés, Grimes comenzó a hablar con otros líderes del distrito que enfrentaban desafíos parecidos, y a intercambiar sobre cómo sería abogar por esos estudiantes en todo el estado. A nivel nacional, aproximadamente cinco millones de niños son estudiantes de inglés y la mayoría de ellos hablan español en casa. Pero, aunque la mayoría son ciudadanos estadounidenses, rara vez reciben el apoyo que necesitan, en parte porque su educación ha sido politizada, según Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, una exsuperintendente y secretaria auxiliar de educación K-12 de Estados Unidos en la administración de Barack Obama. “La gente ve el mundo (en términos de) una cantidad de recursos limitada. Entonces siente que, ‘si les estás dando tal cantidad a ellos, entonces me la estás quitando a mi’”, dijo.

En parte como consecuencia de dicha actitud, dicen los expertos, las calificaciones de lectura y matemática de estudiantes de aprendizaje de inglés a nivel nacional se encuentran entre las más bajas de todos los subgrupos de estudiantes, sus índices de graduación de la escuela secundaria van a la zaga y tienen menos probabilidades de ir a la universidad. “Necesitamos a estos niños, y los necesitamos que se eduquen”, dijo Patricia Gándara, codirectora del Proyecto de Derechos Civiles en la UCLA y experta en estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma. “Representan una parte muy grande del futuro de este país”.

Al año siguiente, en 2020, Grimes fundó una coalición de superintendentes llamada Alabama Leaders Advocating for English Learners (Líderes de Alabama abogando por los estudiantes de inglés), bajo el paraguas de una operación estatal, el Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (Consejo de líderes de escuelas de Alabama). “Su pasión era evidente y no se iba a detener”, dijo Hollingsworth, de Superintendentes Escolares de Alabama. “Si sigues tocando la puerta, tocando la puerta, eventualmente alguien va a abrir la puerta. Y eso fue más o menos lo que pasó”.

La coalición de superintendentes encabezada por Grimes logró presionar a la legislatura para obtener más fondos para los estudiantes de inglés, hasta $150 por estudiante, frente a los $50 a $75 de 2015. Los distritos con una población de estudiantes de inglés superior al 10% reciben $300 por estudiante. Para Russellville, eso significó un aumento cuadruplicado de los fondos dedicados a los estudiantes de inglés, llegando a $400.000, en un momento en el que los fondos de la ciudad disminuyeron. Grimes recibió un premio estatal por sus “excepcionales aportes y defensa incansable de la financiación para los estudiantes de inglés en las escuelas de Alabama”. Gracias, en parte, a sus esfuerzos, el estado ahora tiene apoyo educativo para los distritos, 12 instructores y un director estatal de aprendizaje de inglés. Grimes también abogó por que las calificaciones de los estudiantes de inglés en los exámenes solo se tuvieran en cuenta en el boletín estatal de notas después de que hubieran estado matriculados por cinco años (aproximadamente lo que tardan los estudiantes en aprender un nuevo idioma). Esa ley, que tiene sus críticos, entró en vigor el año pasado.

Barnett, del Consejo de Educación de la ciudad de Guntersville, dijo que los esfuerzos de Grimes por los estudiantes de inglés ayudaron a persuadir a otros líderes de distrito de que ellos también podían hacer ese trabajo. “Russellville es un gran lugar, pero no hay nada especial allí que no pueda suceder en cualquier otro lugar”, dijo. “No hay nada en el agua. Definitivamente se puede replicar”.

Durante siete años, Grimes y la junta escolar de Russellville trabajaron bien juntos, dijeron tanto él como exmiembros de la junta. Pero el disgusto de otros líderes de la ciudad surgió pronto, me dijeron varias personas. Grimes había comenzado a chocar por cuestiones de financiamiento con el alcalde de la ciudad, David Grissom, quien fue electo por primera vez en 2012. Un residente de Russellville cercando al funcionamiento del gobierno de la ciudad ―que pidió no ser identificado por temor a represalias― dijo que Grimes había hecho enojar a Grissom y a algunos miembros del ayuntamiento desde el principio, cuando señaló públicamente que su presupuesto para las escuelas era de $200.000 menos que el de su predecesor. (McDowell, escribió un correo electrónico en el que me decía que antes de ocupar el puesto se le informó a Grimes sobre el recorte y que había estado de acuerdo con el mismo). Los miembros del ayuntamiento “no tomaron bien que se les pusiera contra la pared o que se les hiciera quedar mal. Así que, desde ese momento, Grimes estuvo marcado”, me dijo el residente. Grimes también enfureció a Grissom cuando se negó a apoyar públicamente al candidato preferido del alcalde para un puesto en el ayuntamiento, en 2020, prefiriendo mantenerse neutral, me dijeron varias personas. 

Al responderme, Grissom no hizo comentarios sobre esos detalles específicos, pero escribió que “había entrevistado y había sido entrevistado por varias cientos de personas de todas las razas y etnias” sobre el desempeño de Grimes y que algunas de las personas con las que habló estaban insatisfechas con el superintendente. Planteó preguntas sobre si Grimes había estado en su oficina a diario, si trataba a los empleados de manera diferente y si gastaba demasiados fondos del distrito en conferencias. Grimes dijo que a veces viajaba por todo el estado por su trabajo, que las conferencias eran para el desarrollo profesional y (estaban) aprobadas por la junta, y que, como líder, a veces tenía que tomar decisiones que desagradaban a la gente, porque estaba sopesando diferentes perspectivas y necesidades. Dijo que estaba asombrado por las declaraciones del alcalde, porque ni el alcalde ni nadie más le había mencionado tales preocupaciones anteriormente. Gist y Batchelor, antiguos miembros de la junta escolar, dijeron que nunca habían escuchado semejantes quejas de nadie en los casi ocho años que llevaban trabajando con Grimes. “Ni una sola palabra”, dijo Gist. El expediente laboral de Grimes no contenía información alguna que indicara que había preocupaciones con el desempeño del superintendente. Ni el alcalde ni el abogado de la junta escolar ofrecieron aclaraciones sobre por qué, si existían tales quejas, no fueron comunicadas a Grimes. 

Mientras tanto, a medida que Grimes seguía invirtiendo esfuerzos para ayudar a los estudiantes de inglés, sus números aumentaban todos los años, duplicándose durante su mandato, hasta alcanzar el 33% de los estudiantes.

Después de aquella elección para miembros del ayuntamiento de 2020, en un esfuerzo ampliamente visto como destinado a destituir a Grimes como superintendente, Grissom e integrantes del ayuntamiento comenzaron a reemplazar a los cinco miembros de la designada junta escolar que había apoyado a Grimes. (En su correo electrónico, el alcalde Grissom escribió que los miembros del ayuntamiento tienen el derecho a reemplazar a los integrantes de la junta escolar y que lo habían hecho también previo al mandato de Grimes). En mayo de 2023, Greg Trapp, el miembro de la junta escolar, le informó al superintendente que no iban a renovar su contrato al expirar el año siguiente.

Gist, el exmiembro de la junta escolar, dijo que, aunque en un principio quedó sorprendido por la decisión del Ayuntamiento de reemplazarlo a él y a otros, tenía lógica dada la antipatía que tenía dicho organismo hacia Grimes. “Así es la política en un pueblo pequeño. Para que ellos pudieran controlar el sistema, tenían que deshacerse de los miembros de la junta escolar que estaban haciendo las cosas bien”, dijo. Y agregó: “Esa era la única manera en la que podían sacarlo”. Lo que les disgustó fue saber que la decisión no estaba motivada por lo que era mejor para los estudiantes. “Si hubieran querido reemplazarme por alguien mejor, eso está bien”, me dijo Gist. “Pero cuando lo hicieron por razones personales, eso me molestó”.  (Intenté comunicarme con Trapp por lo menos tres veces, y también traté de contactar a otros miembros de la junta, y no respondieron a mis solicitudes de comentarios.) Batchelor, quien fue reemplazado poco después de que votó a favor de mantener a Grimes, también dijo que la decisión mayoritaria de la junta fue un error: “Creo que es el mejor superintendente en el estado de Alabama”.

En marzo de 2024, el distrito nombró a un nuevo superintendente, Tim Guinn, un exdirector de la Preparatoria de Russellville, quien también había sido candidato a superintendente cuando Grimes fue electo. Más recientemente, había trabajado como superintendente del distrito de Satsuma. Guinn no respondió a repetidas solicitudes de entrevista.

Programas se desmoronan

Algunos de los programas y las prácticas que Grimes implementó parecen estarse desmoronando. A partir de junio, la mayoría de los asistentes bilingües, cuyos salarios se pagan con dinero de la asistencia por la pandemia y expira en septiembre de 2024, no habían sido contratados de nuevo. Además, los contratos de algunos docentes bilingües no fueron renovados. La junta escolar no ha dicho si tiene previsto seguir adelante con las mejoras que Grimes había planificado para los estudiantes de inglés de secundaria y preparatoria. Una escuela chárter de inmersión en dos idiomas, por la que Grimes había abogado y la junta había aprobado, estaba programada para abrir en 2025. Sin embargo, el proyecto ha sido descartado. (McDowell no comentó en un correo electrónico sobre los planes del distrito para los estudiantes de inglés. En cuanto a los asistentes bilingües, escribió que algunos de ellos no habían sido recontratados de nuevo porque los subsidios federales habían expirado. Grimes dijo que tenía previsto pagar por sus salarios mediante una combinación de fondos de las reservas del distrito escolar y fondos resultantes de la jubilación de algunos docentes: “Tomas decisiones con base a tus prioridades”, comentó. 

Grimes y la junta escolar habían acordado que él permanecería en su cargo hasta el final del año escolar de 2023-2024, mientras el distrito buscaba un reemplazo. Pero una semana después de mi visita a Russellville, McDowell acusó a Grimes de intimidar a la gente que hablara conmigo, según Grimes, y le dijo al superintendente que no podía pisar propiedad escolar o hablar con empleados del distrito fuera de su papel de padre, según Grimes. En ese momento, Grimes dejó las responsabilidades cotidianas de su cargo, pero seguirá en la comunidad hasta que su hija de 14 años termine la secundaria. Su esposa también sigue siendo maestra en el distrito. (En un correo electrónico y en una entrevista, McDowell dijo que nunca había acusado a Grimes de intimidar a nadie y que tampoco le prohibió al superintendente pisar terreno escolar.)  Fue también después de mi visita que más de una docena de educadores con los que hablé en Russellville me dijeron que ya no se sentían cómodos siendo identificados, por temor a perder sus empleos. The Hechinger Report y palabra acordaron retrasar la publicación de este artículo hasta que Grimes recibiera su último sueldo el 30 de junio.

En julio de 2024, Grimes empezó a trabajar a tiempo completo en Reach University, la organización sin fines de lucro que forma a asistentes bilingües para que se conviertan en docentes, como su director regional de asociaciones en Alabama, Misisipi y Tennessee. 

Los últimos seis meses han pasado factura. Grimes ha dicho poco públicamente sobre su partida y le ha dicho a la mayoría de las personas de la comunidad que se está jubilando. Cuando estuvimos almorzando juntos en un restaurante local, El Patrón, otros comensales se acercaron una y otra vez para desearle lo mejor. Dos de ellos le dijeron en broma que se veía demasiado joven para jubilarse. Grimes se rió y les siguió la corriente pero, una vez que se fueron, sus hombros se hundieron y parpadeó para contener las lágrimas.

“He pasado mi carrera muy entregado, muy comprometido en hacer lo que era mejor para los niños”, me dijo en voz baja. “No sentía que yo mereciera acabar de esta manera”. 

Afirmó que no se arrepiente de los cambios que hizo por los estudiantes de inglés de la ciudad. “Jesús amaba a la gente que los demás no amaban. Y ese fue parte de su mensaje: amas a tus enemigos, amas a tus vecinos, amas a los extranjeros y amas al pecador”, dijo. “Yo veo a Dios en esos niños”.

The post ¿Un trabajo demasiado bien hecho? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

RUSSELLVILLE, Ala. — Lindsey Johnson and Yesenia De La Rosa were taking different approaches to teaching the same English lesson on silent letters as they sat at opposite ends of this first grade classroom in West Elementary School. On this March afternoon, Johnson, the classroom teacher, was reading a story with the 6- and 7-year-old children who were fluent in English. The students of bilingual aide De La Rosa were still learning the language, so while she read the same story, she went slower, translating words, acting out emotions and showing them pictures on her iPhone.

Valentina, 6, wearing a black T-shirt with a gold Nike logo and leggings, had arrived less than two weeks earlier from Guatemala. She sat on the floor near De La Rosa’s chair, her cheek almost touching her teacher’s leg. De La Rosa worked with her individually because she didn’t know any letters or numbers, in Spanish or in English. When Valentina went to kindergarten in her home country, all she did was color. “So when she came here, that’s what she thought she was going to do. Just drawing,” De La Rosa said. “But here it’s different.”

The Russellville City school district created De La Rosa’s position in early 2021 as part of a larger effort to help educate its growing population of students who speak English as a second language. Many of the English learners, as they’re called, have parents from Mexico or Guatemala who work at a nearby poultry plant and in local manufacturing and construction jobs. Today, in the district, 60 percent of children are Hispanic/Latino and roughly a third are English learners.

Without De La Rosa, Johnson said she wouldn’t be able to communicate with more than half of her students, or understand the challenges they face. Johnson knew that Yeferson, an English learner from Guatemala, was one of the smartest children in the class, already reading more than 100 words, well above the goal of 60. “He’s a sponge, he soaks everything up,” Johnson said. She learned from De La Rosa that he’s doing well in spite of his many responsibilities at home: His mom works night shifts, so Yeferson does the laundry, washes the dishes and looks after his younger siblings. Said Johnson: “Having a bilingual aide makes a world of difference.” 

Russellville may not seem like a community that would be home to investment and innovation for immigrant students. It’s a politically conservative city in northwestern Alabama of about 11,000, where 72 percent of voters chose Donald Trump in the last presidential election. When the poultry processing plant opened in 1989, the Hispanic population was about 0.5 percent. By 2000, it had grown to 13 percent, and in 2020, it was almost 40 percent. The school district, like many around the country, struggled early on to accommodate the rising numbers of English learners, who were dropping out at high rates, being pushed into special education classes and showing little academic progress. Yet their success matters: Today in the U.S., more than 1 in 10 students are English learners and, at a time when overall public school enrollment is falling, they are among the country’s fastest-growing groups of students.

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In early 2015, when its superintendent announced his retirement, the district recruited Heath Grimes, then superintendent of the nearby Lawrence County school system, for the job. A self-described Southern conservative and man of faith from rural Alabama, Grimes, 48, set about overhauling instruction for English learners, establishing culturally relevant extracurriculars and reaching out to the Hispanic community. Those efforts had an impact: The share of Hispanic students taking Advanced Placement classes and dual enrollment courses at a local community college went up. Parental involvement increased. And Grimes led an effort to lobby lawmakers for a change in the state funding formula for English learners, boosting the state’s allocation more than eightfold, to $18.5 million. The district and Grimes won state and national recognition for their efforts with English learners.

“Any district with a significant English learner population has looked to Heath because he’s been ahead of the game,” said Ryan Hollingsworth, the executive director of the School Superintendents of Alabama, which represents the state’s 150 school districts. “It is just amazing to see what he’s been able to do in a small district with not a lot of resources.”

But as Grimes’ star rose statewide, according to local educators and residents, his relationship with city leadership started to unravel. Then, in mid-May 2023, a member of the school board told Grimes that it would not be renewing his contract, which was to end in June 2024. He agreed to retire when his contract ended the following year in exchange for a bump in his final year’s salary. Starting in November, I tried to talk with school board members, the mayor and City Council members about the school district and Grimes, but they did not respond initially to my interview requests. (When I introduced myself to the mayor, David Grissom, on the street in Russellville, he told me “no comment” and walked away.) But over the months, I was able to talk to more than 60 state officials, local administrators, teachers, former school board members, community leaders and residents, including people I met in businesses and on the street in Russellville. Those interviews suggest that the decision to force out Grimes as superintendent stemmed from a tangle of small-town politics, deep-rooted antipathy toward immigrants and a yearning for the city Russellville used to be.

“Heath Grimes put students first. And this ultimately may have hurt him,” said Jason Barnett, superintendent of the Guntersville City Board of Education in northern Alabama and one of dozens of district leaders in the state who worked closely with Grimes. Approximately 18 educators and community leaders in Russellville, many of them with knowledge of the events, told me that Grimes’ support for the growing English learner population was key to his loss of support among top city leadership. Many asked not to be quoted for fear of retaliation or straining relationships in this small community. One school administrator, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing their job, said of Grimes: “Many folks said the increase in the undocumented population was because he made Russellville schools a welcoming place that immigrants wanted to live in. People didn’t like that.”

In early July I went back to Grissom, school board attorney Daniel McDowell, and Gregg Trapp, who was until recently school board president, with my findings from months of reporting and a detailed list of questions. McDowell and Grissom replied with written statements that said that Spanish-speaking students had thrived in the district long before Grimes’ arrival and denied that the superintendent’s commitment to English learners had led to his departure. “Immigrants from Latin American countries have been moving to Russellville for the past 25 years and have always been welcomed into the city and the student body,” wrote Grissom. “Looking back, our high school has crowned a Latina Homecoming Queen, as voted by the student body and has recognized the first Latino Valedictorian. Those events took place long before Dr. Grimes came to Russellville.” 

Before Grimes arrived in Russellville, state lawmakers in 2011 had passed HB 56, widely considered the harshest anti-immigrant law in the nation. It gave police authority to stop individuals they believed did not have legal documents to live in the United States, and made it a crime for businesses to knowingly hire, and landlords to rent to, those who lacked documentation. Public colleges couldn’t admit students without immigration documents and, even though, under federal law, K-12 schools are required to serve students regardless of citizenship status, the Alabama legislation also called for school districts to collect information on their students’ citizenship status. While parts of the law were later struck down by a federal court, the message was clear: Immigrants weren’t welcome.

So when Greg Batchelor, then president of the Russellville City school board, was looking for a new school superintendent in 2015, he knew things would get controversial. The city’s Hispanic population was 22 percent and growing. Some longtime “Anglo” residents, as members of the white population call themselves, derisively referred to the city’s downtown as “Little Mexico” and complained about hearing Spanish spoken and seeing the colorfully painted houses they associated with the Hispanic community.

Batchelor and another former school board member, Bret Gist, recalled hearing from longtime residents who were enrolling their children in private schools or leaving Russellville because they didn’t want their kids to be “the minority.” Others worried that the English learners would drag down test scores and hurt their school district’s reputation. At that time, only five districts in the state had an English learner population above 10 percent; Russellville’s was the second highest, at 16 percent.

Batchelor, also chairman of the board of CB&S, one of Alabama’s largest community banks, said he knew the city’s future economy depended on the next school leader: “If our community survives and does well, it’s only going to be as good as we educate our kids.” He also said he believed that the town’s Hispanic students deserved the same chance as their peers, and he was deeply influenced by his father, who’d served on the Russellville City school board for 20 years. “My dad used to say everybody puts their britches on the same way, one leg at a time,” Batchelor recalled.

At the time, Grimes, a former special education teacher and football coach, was in his sixth year as Lawrence County superintendent. In his first four-year term, he had closed three high schools because of falling enrollment and a budget shortfall he inherited. “It’s very unusual in Alabama for a superintendent to close schools in a county and then be reelected — and he was reelected,” said Batchelor. “I felt like he’s not afraid to make tough decisions.” Gist, the former school board member, remembers the excitement the board felt after Grimes’ interview. “I was ready for him to come in and make a big impact,” Gist said.

On May 11, 2015, Grimes was voted in unanimously as Russellville’s new school superintendent. 

Kristie Ezzell, who retired from Russellville schools in 2022 after 31 years under four superintendents, saw the transformation firsthand. As a second grade teacher in the 1990s, she taught one of the district’s first English learners. Ezzell remembers a little girl who kept trying to communicate, but Ezzell couldn’t understand her. “She started crying and then I started crying and we both stood there and hugged and cried,” Ezzell recalled.“The language barrier between us was just heartbreaking.” 

The rapid increase in the English learner population had taken Russellville educators by surprise. The entire district had just one teacher certified to teach English as a second language, no interpreters and very little by way of professional development. “We had students come in that don’t speak a lick of English, their parents don’t speak a lick of English, and we’re expected to educate them,” one teacher, who asked not to be named to avoid repercussions, told me. “And I didn’t even know whether they are asking to go to the bathroom or are they hungry.” The situation was also unfair for the English-speaking students who missed out on learning time because their teachers were preoccupied, she said. “It was just a mess all the way around.” 

Grimes, who does not speak Spanish and had little experience with English learners in his previous roles, said the first thing he heard was: “How are you going to fix this?” “I think they thought I was going to somehow make the English learner population go away,” he told me. “And I was like, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’” Instead, he asked educators to “Accept, Embrace, Celebrate.” “You first have to accept that your district is changing. And when we embrace that change, we’re going to see some very positive changes that we’ll be able to celebrate,” he recalled telling them. “And every bit of that has come true.”

By then Ezzell was principal of Russellville Elementary School. She recalled Grimes’ first meeting with teachers, where he presented student test scores broken down by school. “I sunk down in my seat and tears came to my eyes because our data was not very good,” she told me.

His message, according to Ezzell, was simple: “No more excuses. Our teachers are not going to say anymore, ‘Well, they’re English learners.’ That’s not OK. They are going to grow just like everybody else.” As he laid out his expectations, teachers started looking around nervously, she recalled. Some cried and one had to leave the room. A few worried that Grimes was criticizing their competence; others dismissed him as an outsider. But she says one thing was clear. “We knew he meant business,” she said. “He was very empathetic for everything we were dealing with, but he said, ‘This cannot continue.’”

When Ezzell went home that evening, she couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting. She knew how hard her teachers worked. “They were never not teaching,” she said. But the dismal statistics proved to her they weren’t focusing on the right things. From then on, Ezzell told me, she was on a mission to find better ways of educating her students: “I dedicated my life to it.”

Related: English learners stopped coming to class during the pandemic. How one group is helping

Grimes said the prevailing attitude was that English learner students were a burden, similar to perceptions of the special education students he once taught. So he brought in a professor and education consultant, Tery Medina, who explained that immigrant children were district students under federal law. A Cuban refugee herself, she led discussions with teachers on similarities between Hispanic and Southern culture. “They love family. They’re hard workers and many have faith in Christ. It was all these things that everyone could relate to,” Grimes recalled. For her part, Medina said she was impressed with Russellville’s embrace of these learners. Under Grimes, “Russellville was a little gem,” she said, “where English learners were not seen as a burden.”

The district also invested in professional development for teachers, ensuring that it happened during work hours, said Ezzell. Experts, books, videos, detailed lesson plans — to teachers at the time, it felt like a blur of continuous learning. Slowly, educators began sharing strategies and co-teaching classes. “You know the saying, ‘When you know better, you do better?’” Ezzell told me. “That’s what happened.” Teachers experimented, made their lessons more hands-on and followed the latest research. Some teachers created what became an award-winning science class in three languages: English, Spanish and Q’anjob’al, a Guatemalan dialect. “We were making time for them to go and learn best practices. And it benefited all students, not just English learners,” Ezzell said.

Not everyone in the district bought into the change. Grimes remembers meeting with one teacher who led a class in which 30 percent of students were failing. She didn’t see it as a problem, Grimes said: “It was like, ‘I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you’re not going to tell me different.’” She retired soon after, Grimes said; some other teachers resigned.

But teachers who stayed said they could see that students were beginning to respond to the new approaches. English learners began participating more in class, no longer sitting at the back of the room. More started taking AP exams, as well as dual enrollment classes at nearby Northwest Shoals Community College. “We pushed them. And when you push with love, you’re going to have success,” said Ezzell. 

The district began to accrue accolades. Several of its schools received the coveted Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. Since 2021, Russellville High has been named one of the top 25 schools in Alabama by U.S. News & World Report. In 2022, it was the only majority-minority district in Alabama to receive an “A” grade in the state report card; in 2023, Russellville was one of only two in the state named a “Spotlight District” for reading and literacy, and its high school was named an A+ College Ready School of Excellence, a designation given by a nonprofit contracted with the state education department to maximize college readiness.

Core to Grimes’ strategy, along with building cultural understanding and professional development, were bilingual educators. Early on, Grimes placed interpreters at each school to help with day-to-day translation, but he knew teachers needed more help in the classroom. A national shortage of bilingual educators, though, required creativity. Grimes decided to focus on recruiting bilingual aides, who earn half the pay of teachers. He reached out to the Rev. Vincent Bresowar at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Russellville to help spread the word about the positions. 

Bresowar’s congregation had ballooned in size as immigrant families moved to Russellville; his church had recently built a new $4.5 million building to accommodate the increase.

His parishioners, meanwhile, worked long, irregular hours, struggled financially and often carried trauma. “The suffering is very intense and can be very difficult,” he told me. In addition, he knew how the language barrier could exacerbate misunderstandings. Bresowar says his own understanding and appreciation for the Hispanic community changed once he learned Spanish and spent time with them. “I think a lot of people are scared because they can’t communicate and it makes it harder to bridge the gaps,” Bresowar said. 

He connected Grimes to parishioners, and in 2021, using pandemic funds, Grimes hired a dozen bilingual aides from that community. At the same time, he connected them to an apprenticeship program, run by the nonprofit Reach University, so they could simultaneously train to become teachers. “It was a game changer,” Grimes said about that additional school help. 

Elizabeth Alonzo was one of those bilingual aides. She joined the staff at West Elementary in 2021, where she worked mostly with second graders in small groups, as well as interpreting for school activities and communicating with parents. As she walked down a hallway on a recent school day, Hispanic girls from other classes broke out of their lines and ran to give her a quick hug. “At first it was like, ‘Oh, you speak Spanish?’ Their face just lights up, you know?” said Alonzo, who was born and raised in Alabama by immigrant parents. Last December, she completed the coursework to become a teacher and hopes to stay on at West. 

If she does, she’ll be the sixth Hispanic teacher in the district, up from just one when Grimes arrived. The level of resources for English learners is very different from when she was in school. Her cousin was pulled out of first grade class to interpret for her when she was in kindergarten in a county school, she recalled. “And then when I was in first grade, I would be pulled out of class to help my younger brother.” Alonzo attended Russellville schools from 2008 to 2013. 

Related: Inside the Christian legal campaign to return prayer to public schools

Another Russellville teacher, Edmund Preciado Martínez, also remembers feeling isolated as a student in Alabama in the late 1990s. He sometimes confused Spanish and English words, he said, so was often too embarrassed to talk in class. “It landed me in special education because they thought something was wrong with me,” he recalled. 

He was a teacher in a nearby district when he heard about the changes Grimes was making in Russellville and decided to apply for a job. Six years ago, he was hired to work with English learners at Russellville High School. 

Every year, he says, teachers choose a slogan to unite around, like #whateverittakes, or #allin. The camaraderie is very different from stories he’s heard from counterparts around the state, who talk about their colleagues complaining about English learners and even referring to them with derogatory language and slurs.

“Whenever we need something, we simply ask for it and they do their best to get it for us,” Martínez said of his district’s leadership. “And even if they can’t, they find alternatives that we can use.”

Grimes also focused on involving Hispanic parents in their kids’ education. Many were too intimidated or embarrassed to speak to educators, he realized; in their home countries, it was sometimes seen as disrespectful to question a teacher or even ask about their child’s progress. So he set about building relationships by patronizing Hispanic businesses, meeting with community leaders and translating into Spanish all announcements on the district website and its Facebook account.

Those efforts changed the school experience of parent Analine Mederos. She’d dropped out of school in Mexico in seventh grade, and was desperate for her children to get a good education. But when her eldest daughter enrolled in Russellville schools in 2006, Mederos says she wasn’t involved in her education at all. “I was not interacting with the teachers because I didn’t speak very much English. I was afraid to talk most of the time,” she told me. She felt school employees looked down on her because of the language barrier, and she didn’t see a point in speaking up. “If you have questions, who’s going to help you?” she said. “So whatever they say, I was like, ‘OK, fine.’” 

But with her second child, now a 10th grader, it’s been a completely different experience. “Grimes has done a huge, I don’t even know how to say like a big impacto, especially with the Hispanic community,” she told me. Her daughter loves school, she said, and her son in middle school can’t wait to try out for the soccer team. When she sees Grimes in the community, she said she feels comfortable enough to talk to him about her children: “He’s going to listen. He’s not going to act like he’s listening. No, he does listen.”

Mederos finds it easier to follow school meetings now. Just a few years ago at West Elementary, there was just one interpreter for 600 children, which meant the school could schedule meetings with parents only when a child was in trouble or failing. Now, with six bilingual aides, school staff can have one-on-one meetings with every family at least once a year, and they also offer two full days of programming annually for parents in English and Spanish. Parents know there will be an interpreter in the room and that sends a clear message. “Our parents know we’re embracing them and we appreciate them,” Principal Alicia Stanford told me. 

A Hispanic Heritage Month event that Grimes started in Russellville High School has now grown into a big districtwide celebration, where students learn about different cultures and traditions, perform dances, read celebrated authors and research historical figures. But a soccer program Grimes started has received perhaps the biggest response. Students had lobbied for the program before Grimes’ arrival with no success, but he understood that it was a beloved and important part of Latin American culture. “They wanted something that was theirs,” he said. 

Related: English language teachers are scarce. One Alabama town is trying to change that

He didn’t have funds for a new soccer field, so he had the football field re-turfed, and students began playing in 2017. In 2021, when the Russellville Golden Tigers soccer team played in the state semifinals, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic families turned out in droves. “Everyone was cheering, ‘Sí, se puede,’ ‘Yes, we can,’” recalled Grimes when we met in his office this March. The school’s logo is a torch like that on the Statue of Liberty, and there’s a school tradition of holding up clenched fists to show unity and pride. “The whole Latino community stands up with their torches raised,” he added, “and they’re chanting, ‘Russ-ell-ville, Russ-ell-ville.’ That was very, very powerful.” 

Grimes’s office wall was decorated with sports trophies from events like these, along with framed academic credentials including his doctorate degree. He was the first in his family to attend college. There were also photos of his family and past students, along with a well-worn Bible on his desk.

Batchelor, the former school board president, says that, while the process was sometimes challenging, through Grimes’ sustained efforts and example, families of all backgrounds gradually saw that improving the outcomes of English learners meant that the entire school system was better. “I think the community has embraced the fact that there’s room for all of us,” he said. 

Not all of Grimes’ ideas worked. Early on, he separated English learners from other students during academic classes, but scrapped it after teachers told him it wasn’t working. Now schools do a combination of teaching English learners in small groups and with the entire class. After a back-to-school event took hours longer than expected because he asked for every sentence to be interpreted, Grimes decided to hold separate but simultaneous school meetings, where parents could choose to listen in Spanish or English. 

And it hasn’t been easy to sustain all of the gains. Between 2019 (when the bilingual aides were hired) and 2021, English learners in some grades recorded big increases on language proficiency tests. For example, proficiency levels for second graders went from 46 to 84 percent, and for third graders, 44 to 71 percent. But the growth since then hasn’t been consistent, and proficiency levels in 2023 for some grades fell below 2019 numbers. Administrators say that is because the number of English learners continues to increase while the number of educators has not, so children are receiving less individualized attention.

But the goodwill Grimes generated from embracing Hispanic families has paid off in unexpected ways. In 2018, the district needed roof work on school buildings but didn’t have the money to complete it, Grimes said. Someone in the Hispanic community called Grimes, he said, offering to do the work for free. “They volunteered their time, their efforts, their energy and their materials, and they completed those buildings,” he told me.

Today, Hispanic businesses dominate the downtown area of a few blocks, which until recently was full of deteriorating, vacant buildings. There are three Mexican bakeries, two Latin grocery stores, three barber shops, nail salons and a carnicería, or butcher shop. Business owners make it a point to support the school system, said Yaneli Bahena, who graduated four years ago from the Russellville school district and now owns a business called The Ville Nutrition. 

A Mexican restaurant catered a 200-person back-to-school event, bakeries often donate bread and treats, and some salons provide free haircuts before school starts. The soccer field is ringed by banners from local Hispanic businesses that have sponsored the team. Bahena herself sponsors meals for school events and donates backpacks and school supplies. “School gave me a sense of hope,” she said. “I had really good teachers. Everyone cared about me.” In high school, she noticed that, unlike in years past, the students were included on field trips and encouraged to take electives. Bahena said some of her classmates stayed in school instead of dropping out to work because educators “pushed help.” She, too, credited Grimes: “Everything they put into these kids would not be possible without the superintendent.”

In 2019, eager to find partners and support for his work with English learners, Grimes began chatting with other district leaders facing similar challenges and discussing what it would look like to advocate for those students statewide. Nationally, about 5 million children are English learners and most of them speak Spanish at home. But even though most are U.S. citizens, they rarely get the support they need, in part because their education has become politicized, according to Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, a former superintendent and assistant U.S. secretary of K-12 education in the Obama administration. “People see the world [in terms of] a limited amount of resources. And so they feel, ‘if you’re giving them that amount, then you’re taking away from me,’” she said.

In part as a result of that attitude, experts say, reading and math scores for English learners nationally are among the lowest of all student subgroups, their high school graduation rates lag behind, and they are less likely to go to college. “We need these kids and we need them educated,” said Patricia Gándara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and an expert on English learners. “They represent a very large part of the future of this country.” 

The next year, in 2020, Grimes founded a coalition of superintendents called Alabama Leaders Advocating for English Learners, under the umbrella of a state operation, Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools. “His passion was evident and he was not going to stop,” said Hollingsworth of the School Superintendents of Alabama. “If you keep knocking on the door, knocking on the door, eventually somebody’s going to open the door. And that’s kind of what happened.”

The superintendents coalition led by Grimes successfully pressed the Legislature for more funding for English learners, to $150 per student, from about $50 to $75 in 2015. Districts with an English learner population above 10 percent receive $300 per student. For Russellville, that meant a fourfold increase to $400,000, at a time when city funding declined. Grimes received a state award for his “remarkable contributions and tireless advocacy for English Learner funding in Alabama schools.” Thanks in part to his advocacy, the state now has instructional support for districts, 12 coaches and a state director of English learning. Grimes also advocated for English learners’ test scores to count on the state report card only after they’ve been enrolled for five years (approximately the time it takes for students to learn a new language). That law, which has some critics, went into effect last year.

Related: How one district is addressing the trauma undocumented students bring to school

Barnett of the Guntersville City Board of Education said Grimes’ efforts with English learners helped persuade other district leaders that they could do the work too. “Russellville is a great place, but there’s nothing special there that it can’t happen anywhere else,” he said. “There’s nothing in the water. It certainly can be replicated.”

For seven years, Grimes and the Russellville school board worked well together, he and former board members said. But discontent among other city leaders surfaced early on, several people told me. Grimes had started to clash with the city’s mayor, David Grissom, who was first elected in 2012, about funding. A Russellville resident close to the workings of city government who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation says Grimes had angered Grissom and some City Council members early on when he noted publicly that his schools budget was $200,000 less than that of his predecessor. (McDowell, the school board lawyer, wrote in his email to me that Grimes was made aware of this cut after he took office and had agreed to it.) City Council members “did not take kindly to having their feet held to the fire or being made to look bad. So from then on, Grimes was marked,” the resident told me. Grimes also angered Grissom when he declined to publicly support the mayor’s choice for a City Council seat in 2020, preferring to stay neutral, several people told me. 

In his response to me, Grissom did not comment on those specifics but wrote that he “had interviewed and have been interviewed by several hundred people of all races and ethnicities” about Grimes’ performance and that some of those he spoke with were dissatisfied with the superintendent. He posed questions about whether Grimes had been in his office every day, treated employees differently, and spent too much district money on conferences. Grimes said that he sometimes traveled around the state for his work, that the conferences were for professional development and approved by the board, and that as a leader he did sometimes have to make decisions that displeased people because he was weighing different perspectives and needs. He said he was shocked by the mayor’s statements because neither the mayor nor anyone else had previously brought such concerns to him. Gist and Batchelor, the former school board members, said they had never heard any such concerns from anyone in their roughly eight years of working with Grimes. “Not one word,” said Gist. Grimes’ personnel file did not contain any information indicating concerns with the superintendent’s performance. Neither the mayor nor the school board lawyer would provide any clarification about why, if such complaints existed, Grimes was not notified. 

As Grimes continued to invest in efforts to help English learners, their numbers rose every year, doubling in size during his tenure, to 33 percent. After the 2020 City Council election, in an effort widely seen as intended to remove Grimes as superintendent, Grissom and City Council members began replacing members of the appointed five-member school board that had supported Grimes. (In his email, Mayor Grissom wrote that the council has the right to replace board members and had done so prior to Grimes’ tenure as well.) In May 2023, Greg Trapp, the school board member, informed the superintendent they would not renew his contract when it expired the following year.

Gist, the former school board member, said that while he was shocked at first by the City Council’s decision to replace him and others, it made sense given the Council’s antipathy toward Grimes. “That’s small-town politics. In order for them to control the system, they had to get rid of the school board members that were doing it right,” he said, adding: “That’s the only way they could remove him.” What upset him was knowing the decision wasn’t driven by what was best for students, he said. “If they wanted to replace me with somebody better, that is fine,” he told me. “But when they did it for a personal reason, that bothered me.” (I reached out to Trapp at least three times, as well as to other board members, and they did not respond to my requests for comment.) Batchelor, who was replaced soon after he voted in favor of keeping Grimes, also said the board’s majority decision was a mistake: “I think he’s the best superintendent in the state of Alabama.”

In March 2024, the district named a new superintendent, Tim Guinn, a former Russellville High School principal, who was also a candidate for the superintendent position when Grimes was chosen. Most recently he’d worked as superintendent of the Satsuma district. Guinn did not respond to repeated interview requests. 

Already, some of the programs and practices Grimes put in place appear to be unraveling. As of June, most of the bilingual aides, whose salaries are paid for by pandemic aid that expires in September 2024, had not been rehired. In addition, some bilingual teachers did not have their contracts renewed. The board has not indicated if it has plans to move ahead with improvements Grimes planned for middle and high school English learners. A dual-language immersion charter school, which Grimes had advocated for and the board had approved, was set to open in 2025. It has been scrapped. (McDowell did not comment in an email on the district’s plans for English learners. Regarding the bilingual aides, he wrote that some of them were not rehired because the federal grants had expired. Grimes said he had planned to pay for their salaries using a combination of district reserves and funds he would save from teachers retiring: “You make decisions based on what your priorities are.”)

Grimes and the board had agreed for him to stay on until the end of the 2023-2024 school year as the district searched for a replacement. But a week after my March visit to Russellville, McDowell, the school board lawyer, accused him of intimidating people into talking to me, according to Grimes, and told the superintendent that he could not be on school property or speak to district employees unless it was in his capacity as a parent. At that time, Grimes stepped down from the day-to-day responsibilities of his job, but he will remain in the community while his 14-year-old daughter finishes high school. His wife also remains a teacher in the district. (In an email and in an interview, McDowell said that he had never accused Grimes of intimidating anyone nor banned the superintendent from school grounds.) Also after my visit, more than a dozen educators I spoke with in Russellville told me that they were no longer comfortable being identified for fear of losing their jobs. The Hechinger Report/palabra agreed to delay publishing this piece until Grimes received his last paycheck on June 30.

Last month, Grimes started a full-time position with Reach University, the nonprofit that trains the bilingual aides as teachers, as its regional director of partnerships in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. 

The past six months have taken a toll. Grimes has said little publicly about his departure and has told most people in the community that he’s retiring. When we were having lunch together at a local restaurant, El Patron, other diners kept stopping by to wish him well. Two of them joked about how he looked far too young to retire. Grimes laughed and played along, but after they left, his shoulders slumped and he blinked away tears.

“I’ve spent my career very invested, very committed to doing what was best for kids,” he told me quietly. “I didn’t feel like I deserved for it to end this way.” 

He said he doesn’t regret the changes he made for English learners in the city. “Jesus loved the people that everybody else didn’t. And that was part of his message — you love your enemies, you love your neighbors, you love the foreigners, you love the sinner,” he said. “I see God in those children.” 

Rebecca Griesbach of AL.com contributed reporting.

This story about Russellville schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and palabra, an initiative of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, along with AL.com. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Subscribe to palabra’s newsletter.

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Urban school districts are in crisis. Student and teacher absenteeism, special education referrals, mental health complications and violence within and outside schools are all on the rise as student enrollment and state funding are in free fall. Morale is low for teachers, principals and district leaders. 

Compounding these challenges, federal pandemic relief education funding (known as ESSER) ends in September 2024. Recent in-depth case studies of Chicago and Baltimore City Public Schools and my own research, including candid conversations with current and former big-city superintendents, have convinced me of a stark reality: States and cities must either empower bold leaders to make dramatic changes or step in to make those changes themselves. 

It was impossible not to be moved by the courage the school leaders I spoke with displayed. Yet it was also obvious that the powers these district leaders possess are narrower than the challenges they face — and that they will need support from governors, state school chiefs, mayors and other leaders. 

One superintendent lamented the incessant political scrutiny and media criticism he’s encountered, noting, “You can’t make an error without it being spread all over social media.”

Meanwhile, principals are also under pressure; many are now serving not only as instructional leaders but also as food bank organizers and mental health crisis counselors. “This job is becoming unsustainable for people to be able to have a healthy life,” one superintendent said. 

Another superintendent emphasized the challenge of finding math teachers proficient enough to teach their subject, a problem exacerbated by state hiring regulations and union rules that prevent the assessment of candidates’ knowledge. “Most teachers are not even two grade levels above students in their math content knowledge,” she said.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

The best big-city district leaders know that their jobs now include resetting how public education operates. “What’s happening in schools is not just incompatible with what we want kids to do but also with the outside workforce,” a former superintendent said. “Everything outside of schools is getting more modern, hybrid, etc. Yet schools are still the same.”

These district leaders believe that learning must now be a 12-month enterprise, especially for the kids who fell behind during the pandemic.

Several leaders pointed to data showing that advances in teaching strategies are starting to work and noted that innovations in generative AI and team-based staffing could make teachers’ jobs easier, and partnerships with community services could help students with mental health challenges. 

But superintendents cannot make these changes alone: Their only route to survival is with support from their cities and states. 

When the fiscal cliff collides with enrollment declines, many states may be forced to put urban districts into receivership. Here are five ways state and city leaders can help urban superintendents and students now:

1. Provide political protection and regulatory relief for bold leaders.

States should provide financial relief, political cover and regulatory flexibility for districts that demonstrate solid plans and strong leadership. Superintendents must not be hamstrung by local rules preventing them from, for example, screening new teachers for math knowledge or insisting that teachers use evidence-based instructional materials. 

2. Update old policies to meet new challenges.

States can help by updating their assessment and accountability systems so they better measure and incentivize career-linked skills and credentials. As one leader said, “I do see a lot of potential” for more “paid apprenticeships, etc., but none of them fit in the state and federal accountability systems.”

3. Stay in the game.

State leaders cannot expect to intervene briefly and then return to serene detachment. Improving urban districts takes fortitude, vision and a willingness to persist through objections from entrenched interest groups. New York City and New Orleans demonstrated significant gains under state and city intervention, but status quo forces and flagging state support upended their progress. 

4. Help districts forge new alliances to adopt new strategies.

States can facilitate partnerships with employers, social services and higher education institutions by providing tax incentives and grants. They can encourage new, more sustainable staffing models, such as working in teams, and the use of AI to ease teacher workloads. They can bring in nonprofit transformation experts. 

5. Have a Plan B.

Not all urban school districts have bold leadership that can help them overcome the odds, even with strong state-level support. State leaders must be willing to make alternative provisions for students, such as authorizing the establishment of high-performing public charter schools, mandating tutoring and supporting community-led initiatives to address student needs.

Related: New superintendents need ‘a fighting chance for success’

Millions of young people are leaving high school without being ready for college. Generational poverty and its accompanying social ills are being hardwired into our cities. Inaction is not an option. State and city leaders must recognize that urban districts can and must be transformed — and it will not happen without their help. 

Governors, mayors, state legislators and state school chiefs must back courageous urban district leadership. And they must prepare to intervene when urban district leaders cannot overcome the overwhelming odds stacked against them. 

Robin J. Lake is director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a nonpartisan research and policy center at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. 

This story about urban school districts was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

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Rates of chronic absenteeism are at record-high levels. More than 1 in 4 students missed 10 percent or more of the 2021-22 school year. That means millions of students missed out on regular instruction, not to mention the social and emotional benefits of interacting with peers and trusted adults.

Moreover, two-thirds of the nation’s students attended a school where chronic absence rates reached at least 20 percent. Such levels disrupt entire school communities, including the students who are regularly attending.

The scope and scale of this absenteeism crisis necessitate the implementation of the next generation of student support.

Fortunately, a recent study suggests a promising path for getting students back in school and back on track to graduation. A group of nearly 50 middle and high schools saw reductions in chronic absenteeism and course failure rates after one year of harnessing the twin powers of data and relationships.

From the 2021-22 to 2022-23 school years, the schools’ chronic absenteeism rates dropped by 5.4 percentage points, and the share of students failing one or more courses went from 25.5 percent to 20.5 percent. In the crucial ninth grade, course failure rates declined by 9.2 percentage points.

These encouraging results come from the first cohort of rural and urban schools and communities partnering with the GRAD Partnership, a collective of nine organizations, to grow  the use of “student success systems” into a common practice.

Student success systems take an evidence-based approach to organizing school communities to better support the academic progress and well-being of all students.

They were developed with input from hundreds of educators and build on the successes of earlier student support efforts — like early warning systems and on-track initiatives — to meet students’ post-pandemic needs.

Related: Widen your perspective. Our free biweekly newsletter consults critical voices on innovation in education.

Importantly, student success systems offer schools a way to identify school, grade-level and classroom factors that impact attendance; they then deliver timely supports to meet individual students’ needs. They do this, in part, by explicitly valuing supportive relationships and responding to the insights that students and the adults who know them bring to the table.

Valuable relationships include not only those between students and teachers, and schools and families, but also those among peer groups and within the entire school community. Schools cannot address the attendance crisis without rebuilding and fostering these relationships.

When students feel a sense of connection to school they are more likely to show up.

For some students, this connection comes through extracurricular activities like athletics, robotics or band. For others, it may be a different connection to school.

Schools haven’t always focused on connections in a concrete way, partly because relationships can feel fuzzy and hard to track. We’re much better at tracking things like grades and attendance.

Still, schools in the GRAD Partnership cohort show that it can be done.

These schools established “student success teams” of teachers, counselors and others. The teams meet regularly to look at up-to-date student data and identify and address the root causes of absenteeism with insight and input from families and communities, as well as the students themselves.

The teams often use low-tech relationship-mapping tools to help identify students who are disconnected from activities or mentors. One school’s student success team used these tools to ensure that all students were connected to at least one activity — and even created new clubs for students with unique interests. Their method was one that any school could replicate —collaborating on a Google spreadsheet.

Another school identified students who would benefit from a new student mentoring program focused on building trusting relationships.

Related: PROOF POINTS: The chronic absenteeism puzzle

Some schools have used surveys of student well-being to gain insight on how students feel about school, themselves and life in general — and have then used the information to develop supports.

And in an example of building supportive community relationships, one of the GRAD Partnership schools worked with local community organizations to host a resource night event at which families were connected on the spot to local providers who could help them overcome obstacles to regular attendance — such as medical and food needs, transportation and housing issues and unemployment.

Turning the tide against our current absenteeism crisis does not have a one-and-done solution — it will involve ongoing collaborative efforts guided by data and grounded in relationships that take time to build.

Without these efforts, the consequences will be severe both for individual students and our country as a whole.

Robert Balfanz is a research professor at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, where he is the director of the Everyone Graduates Center.

This story about post-pandemic education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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In matters both big and small, women in education leadership are treated, spoken to and viewed differently than their male colleagues. And it impacts everything from their assignments and salaries to promotions.

The career moves that are open to aspiring women leaders often propel them toward a very real glass cliff — leadership roles in which the risk of failure is high. By failing to address this bias, states and districts are constraining the rise of some of their most capable current and would-be leaders.

New survey data and research illuminates the experiences and perspectives of women who confront this bias and demonstrates the need for systemic change to dismantle the bias driving the gender gap.

The glass cliff for women is real, but it is not insurmountable. If more leaders — both women and, critically, men — take even a few steps forward, we can build a bridge to a future in which every leader can reach their full potential.

Here are some ways district and state leaders can transform the pipeline for who advances and leads their systems.

First, women in education leadership need more active support, with a shift from mentoring to sponsorship. That calls for women and men to take an engaged role in advancing up-and-coming women leaders — and all leaders, at all stages, who can benefit from on-the-job coaching.

These relationships can be game-changers, results from the first annual Women Leading Ed insight survey found. What’s more, they provide excellent opportunities for men to be allies in advancing gender equality.

Related: Widen your perspective. Our free biweekly newsletter consults critical voices on innovation in education.

For example, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, the superintendent of schools in Oakland, recently recalled having a male coach when she started out. He served as her sponsor, providing coaching and introducing her to other experienced leaders.

“When I started as superintendent of Oakland Unified School District, one of the former superintendents called me. This man coached me for two years every Friday,” Johnson-Trammell recounted. “He helped me and pushed me to be the leader I wanted to be as a Black woman. . . . His sponsorship helped open doors to accessing people, it helped me to connect to other superintendents.”

Second, rebalanced evaluation, promotion and hiring processes can be key levers in undoing bias. That means creating diverse applicant pools and hiring committees and providing bias training for those making key personnel decisions.

Seemingly small changes can have big effects. For example, having a finalist pool with two women candidates — instead of just one — made the likelihood of a woman getting hired 79 times greater, recent research in the Harvard Business Review found.

More broadly, the existing education leadership pipeline continues to disadvantage women. Data from the U.S. Department of Education shows — and the Women Leading Ed survey results verify — that women are predominantly funneled toward elementary school leadership and instructional leadership pathways that keep their trajectories below the top jobs in the district or state.

Men, however, are elevated to high school principalships and district positions that include fiscal or operational roles — precisely the kind of experiences that are prioritized during superintendent search processes.

The Women Leading Ed survey results underscore this divergence. Of respondents who had been principals, fewer than 20 percent served in a high school. Overall, just over one in 20 respondents had held finance or operations roles.

In one response to the survey, a woman who was a senior leader in a large urban school district described the bias of the skewed leadership pipeline succinctly: “I was told I’m too petite to be anything but an elementary principal.”

Third, bolstered family and well-being supports are essential to advancing more women leaders. These include parental leave, childcare, eldercare time and scheduling flexibility.

Rising to top district leadership positions comes with costs for women that are typically not shouldered by men.

Respondents to the Women Leading Ed survey reported feeling pressure to overperform professionally to prove their competency. Fully 95 percent of women superintendents believe that they must make professional sacrifices that their male colleagues do not, the survey data show.

Some women reported working long hours while neglecting family, under pressure to maintain unrealistic expectations at the office. One pointed out the additional responsibilities that women often carry in their personal lives, including the care of children or parents, attending and organizing school events, providing homework help and taking family members to doctor appointments.

Related: OPINION: We need more women in top leadership positions in our nation’s public schools

Added pressure at work and greater responsibilities at home lead to burnout: Roughly six out of 10 survey respondents said they think about leaving their current position due to the stress and strain; three-quarters said they think about leaving daily, weekly or monthly.

Providing high-quality benefits can be a key lever for addressing these underlying gender inequalities. So can offering flexible work schedules, hybrid work arrangements and remote work options that provide elasticity in where and when work gets done.

Finally, systems — not just individuals — must be accountable. Setting public goals for female leadership on boards and in senior management is a start. Reporting on progress toward those public goals is vital. So too is ensuring equal pay for equal work.

More than half the superintendents surveyed said that they have had conversations or negotiations about their salaries in which they felt their gender influenced the outcome.

One solution: establish audits for pay equity and increased transparency around compensation. Another: include salary ranges in job postings. These can be powerful steps toward the goal of pay equality.

Over 700 leaders have signed Women Leading Ed’s open letter calling for the adoption of these strategies. The strategies are already taking root through the advocacy and actions of women in education leadership and their allies of all genders.

It is a movement that is both growing and vital, as research makes clear that women continue to face a different set of rules than men in leadership, and districts too often give women window-dressing roles instead of actually reforming their practices to achieve gender equality.

The time for change is now.

Julia Rafal-Baer is the founder and CEO of Women Leading Ed, a national nonprofit network for women in education leadership, and co-founder and CEO of ILO Group, a women-owned education and policy strategy firm.

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SPOKANE, Wash. — Before giving birth to her daughter, Kaleeya Baldwin, 19, had given up on education.

She’d dropped out of school as a seventh grader, after behavior problems had banished her to alternative schools. Growing up in foster homes and later landing in juvenile court had convinced her to disappear from every system that claimed responsibility for her.

“I was just really angry with everything,” said Kaleeya.

But in early 2020, during what would have been her freshman year in high school, Kaleeya discovered she was pregnant. At her first ultrasound appointment, a nurse handed her a stack of pamphlets. One, advertising a new school for pregnant and parenting teens, caught her attention.

“Something switched when Akylah got here,” Kaleeya said, referring to her daughter. “I was a whole different person. Now it’s high school that matters. It’s a legacy — and it’s hope for her.”

Four years ago, and two months pregnant, Kaleeya enrolled as one of the first students at Lumen High School. The Spokane charter school — its name, which means a unit of light, was selected by young parents who wished someone had shone a light on education for them — today enrolls about five dozen expectant and parenting teens, including fathers. Inside a three-story office building in the city’s downtown business core, Lumen provides full-day child care, baby supplies, mental health counseling and other support as students work toward graduation based on customized education plans.

When the Spokane school district authorized the charter school, it acknowledged that these students had been underserved in traditional high schools and that alternatives were needed. Nationwide, only about half of teen mothers receive a high school degree by the age of 22. Researchers say common school policies like strict attendance rules and dress codes often contribute to young parents deciding to drop out. In April, the U.S. Department of Education issued new regulations to strengthen protections for pregnant and parenting students, though it’s unclear whether the revisions, which also include protections for LGBTQ+ youth, will survive legal challenges.

Solutions for these young parents have become even more urgent after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. Lumen is located about 20 miles from the Idaho border, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans. Recently, representatives from a network of charter schools in the state toured Lumen to evaluate whether they might bring a similar program to the Boise area. Researchers have also visited the school to study how educators elsewhere might replicate its supportive services, not only for pregnant students, but those facing crises like substance use.

“There are some bright spots. Lumen is one,” said Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, president of the Justice + Joy National Collaborative, which advocates for young women, including teen mothers, referring to support in K-12 schools for pregnant and parenting teens. “By and large it’s just not really a priority on the list of many, many things schools are challenged with and facing now.”

Related: If we see more pregnant students post-Roe, are we prepared to serve them?

Nationally, teenage birth rates have fallen for the past three decades, reaching an all-time low in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, the decline in teen births skidded to a halt in Texas, one year after the state’s Republican lawmakers had enacted a six-week abortion ban. Experts fear Texas’ change in direction could foreshadow a national uptick in teen pregnancy now that adolescents face more hurdles to abortion access in red states.

Decades of research have revealed the long-term effects of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: The CDC reports children of teen mothers tend to have lower performance in school and higher chances of dropping out of high school. They’re more likely to have health problems and give birth as teenagers themselves.

Shauna Edwards witnessed such outcomes as part of her work with pregnant and parenting teens for a religious nonprofit and in high schools along the Idaho-Washington border. She also learned the limits of trying to shoehorn services for those students into a school’s existing budget. At one campus, where Edwards helped as a counselor, she said the principal assigned just one teacher for all subjects and two classroom aides to handle child care for the babies of 60 students.

Frustrated, she tried to convince the superintendent of another school district to offer a similar teen parent program, but with more funding. He couldn’t justify the costs, Edwards said. Instead, he suggested she open her own school.

“I could serve all of Spokane, ideally, and wouldn’t have the risk of getting shut down by a school district trying to balance its budget,” said Edwards, executive director for Lumen.

Every morning, students from across Spokane County — at 1,800 square miles, it’s a bit larger than Rhode Island — trek to the Lumen campus downtown. Many take public transit, which is free for youth under 18, and end their rides at a regional bus hub across the street from the school. Once their children reach six months, Lumen students can drop them off at an on-site child care and preschool center, operated by a nonprofit partner, before heading upstairs to start their day. Before then, parents can bring their babies to class.

Funding for small schools in Washington state helps Lumen afford a full teaching staff — one adult each for English, history, math, science and special education. The charter also has a full-time principal, social worker and counselor. Other adults manage student internships or donations to the school’s food bank and “baby boutique,” where students can “shop” for a stroller, formula, diapers and clothes — all free of charge.

It’s common to see an infant cradled in a teacher’s arm, allowing students to focus on their classwork. On a recent afternoon, two couples traded cradling duties with their newborns during a parenting class on lactation.

“Delivering is something that happens to you. Not so with nursing. You have to do it,” said Megan Macy, a guest teacher, who introduced herself as “the official milk lady.”

Kaleeya shared a bit about her daughter Akylah’s delivery: “I was so depleted. I was her chew toy, her crying shoulder, her feeding bag. Once we got home, she wouldn’t latch at all.”

Her friend Keelah, 17, rocked her newborn in a car seat. (The Hechinger Report is identifying the parents who are minors by first name only to protect their privacy.) “It’s hard, and it’s scary,” she said of the first week home with the baby. “She lost a pound between the hospital and pediatrician.”

Related: ‘They just tried to scare us’: How anti-abortion centers teach sex ed in public schools

Lumen contracts with the Shades of Motherhood Network, a Spokane-based nonprofit founded to support Black mothers, to run the parenting classes. The school reserves space for health officials to meet with mothers and babies for routine checkups and government food programs. And founding principal Melissa Pettey has pushed — and paid for — teachers to make home visits with each student.

For each student, Lumen staff develops an individual graduation plan based on earned and missing credits from previous high schools. The school uses an instructional approach, called mastery-based learning, that allows students to earn credits based on competency in academic skills, often applied in projects. The parenting class, for example, counts as a credit for career and technical education, depending on how the contracted teachers evaluate each student.

The learn-as-you-go approach also allows Lumen to work around the instability in the lives of their students, who are often coping with children’s illnesses, daycare challenges, housing insecurity and other issues.

But the chaos in a young parent’s life can look like inconsistent attendance or even truancy on state accountability reports. Just a tenth of Lumen students attend school regularly, which the state defines as missing no more than two days of class each month.

Next year, the Spokane school district will review Lumen’s operations and performance to decide whether to renew the school’s charter. State data shows less than a fifth of Lumen’s students graduate on time, while a third dropped out. The state doesn’t publicly report testing data from Lumen, due to its size. But Edwards and Pettey said proficiency on state exams isn’t their main goal.

“One student attended 16 elementary schools. Six high schools before junior year,” Pettey said. “Think of the learning missed. How do we get that student to an 11th grade level?”

Added Edwards: “If you can grow them to read baby books to their kids, that’s a success.”

Lumen’s authorizer, Spokane Public Schools, will modify how it evaluates the charter’s performance to take its nontraditional students into account, according to Kristin Whiteaker, who oversees charter schools for the district.

She noted that about a third of Lumen’s incoming high schoolers test at an elementary level; another third test at middle school levels. But during the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent of students posted growth in math while at Lumen, and nearly two-thirds performed better on English language arts exams, according to the school. All of the students who make it to graduation have been accepted into college; 95 percent actually enrolled or started working six months after graduation.

“They’re serving such a unique population,” Whiteaker said. “If you can provide a pathway for students to the next stage of their lives, that’s accomplishing their goals.”

Lumen, she added, removes many of the barriers that pregnant and parenting teens face at Spokane’s traditional high schools. Some struggle to complete make-up work after missing weeks or months of classes for parental leave. Most have no access to child care, and regular schools don’t allow babies in the classroom.

Ideally, some experts say, expecting and parenting teens could remain in their original schools and receive these supports. That’s rarely the case, though, and the social stigma alone can keep young parents from finishing their education.

At the national level, a 2010 law that provided funding to help these students expired in 2019. Jessica Harding and Susan Zief, with the research firm Mathematica, studied the effectiveness of those federally-funded programs and found that successful ones work hard to provide flexibility, for excused absences or adding maternity clothes to dress codes. Others get creative, helping students navigate public transportation and modify their work schedules to meet with students after hours.

“Sometimes,” Harding said, “the solutions are not complicated.”

Related: Teen pregnancy is still a problem — school districts just stopped paying attention

In 2022, when the Supreme Court upended abortion care nationwide, Edwards expected students without reproductive choice in Idaho to attempt to enroll in Lumen. A handful have inquired with the school, said Edwards, but to enroll they would have to move across the state border to Washington where housing costs are significantly higher.

In fact, Lumen recently lost one student whose father found a cheaper home in Idaho. Average rents across Spokane County have risen more than 50 percent over the past five years. And as of March, about half of Lumen students qualified as homeless. One young mother slept outside during winter break while her newborn stayed with a friend. Three students, asked what they would change about Lumen, cited affordable housing or temporary shelter that could help them.

Across Washington, pregnant and parenting teens account for 12 percent of all unaccompanied youth in the homeless system. But the state has a severe shortage of shelter beds available for youth under 18, with even fewer supportive housing options that allow young families to stay together, according to a February 2024 state report. Edwards, meanwhile, has talked with developers to see if they could reserve affordable units for students or loosen rules that prevent minors from signing a lease.

“We missed a whole month of class. It was a long month,” said Mena, a 17-year-old junior who convinced her boyfriend, Rene, to enroll before their son’s delivery, in January.

Rene Jr., or RJ, had already lived with the couple in several homes during his first few months. A restraining order with one set of RJ’s grandparents and guardianship battle with the other pushed Mena and Rene to couch-surf with friends.

“School was the only way we could see each other,” Rene said. “I’m surprised, honestly, they can get me to graduation,” he added, while burping RJ. “He’s going to have a future.”

Later, as Mena suctioned RJ’s stuffy nose in another classroom, Rene struggled to stay awake in math. He had forgotten what he’d learned in some earlier lessons on graphing linear equations, and retreated into social media on his phone. Another student badgered him to “put in some effort,” but Rene resisted.

His teacher, Trevor Bradley, intervened. “What’s special about today? Why don’t you want to try?” he said. “You told me you’re tired because the baby’s keeping you up at night.”

After drawing another set of equations on the whiteboard, Bradley asked Rene and the other student for help with finding the values of x and y. Rene barely whispered his answer.

“That’s it! You do remember,” Bradley said, as Rene yawned.

From the start, Lumen’s founders planned to include fathers in the school. Pai-Espinosa, with the National Collaborative, said it’s unusual for K-12 systems to focus on fathers, since mothers often have custodial rights. And at Lumen, the inclusion of “baby daddies” — as students and staff refer to them — sometimes adds teen drama to the mix of emotions and hormones already present at the school.

Lumen’s lack of diversity among adults there has also bothered some students, including Kaleeya. Only 40 percent of her peers identify as white, and all of the school’s teachers and administrators are white. Edwards said it has been difficult to recruit a diverse staff. As a temporary solution the school contracted with the Shades of Motherhood Network for parenting classes.

“It’s hard being in a white space with no Black teachers,” Kaleeya said.

Still, she said she liked the school’s emphasis on engaging students in semester-long projects in different subjects and on real-world problems. Last year, confronted with drug-use problems near the downtown campus, students researched and presented options for the city to consider on safe needle disposal in public places. Each student’s individual graduation plan also includes an internship.

Payton, 17, has wanted to be a school counselor since before giving birth to her daughter in late 2022. Her internship at nearby Sacajawea Middle School convinced her to stay on that career path. Another mother, Alana, started an internship this spring with a local credit union and plans to use the marketing experience to help her advocate for children with disabilities in the future.

Kaleeya recently turned her internship, with a downtown restaurant, into a part-time job. She planned to save for college, but no longer needs to. Gonzaga University notified her in March of a full-ride scholarship to study there this fall.

“Lumen didn’t change who I was,” Kaleeya said. “I did this for my daughter. I didn’t want to be that low-income family. So I got my ass up, got into this school and I got an education.”

This story about teen parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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PITTSBURGH — Maria Hubal sent one student back to class just as another walked in. The sixth grader, slouched over with his hood pulled low, made a beeline to a hammock chair and curled up.

Hubal, Bellevue Elementary’s behavioral health school educator, gently asked if everything was OK and what she could do to help. He said he was at a “red” — based on a color thermometer posted by the door that students can use to describe their stress level.

“OK. Give me something so I know what’s going on,” Hubal responded.

The student finally mumbled, “I’m very, very stressed.” He sighed, continuing, “There’s a lot of stuff going on at my home, and also here at school.”

Conversations like this are common in Hubal’s class, the school’s appointed “Chill Room,” where students know her as the chill therapist. The room has an open-door policy — students who are feeling anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, or just need to reset can ask for a room pass at any time during the school day. They have 10 minutes in the room before they have to head back to class, unless Hubal decides they need more.

Bellevue Elementary is one of three school buildings in the Northgate School District, a district of 1,100 students two miles from downtown Pittsburgh. As Northgate returned fully to in-person learning in 2021, educators here noticed that student mental health had worsened, and decided to dedicate nearly a fifth of the district’s federal Covid-relief funds — about $800,000 — to building out its mental health programs.

It contracted with the Allegheny Health Network’s Chill Project, a school-based mindfulness and behavioral health initiative, enabling the district to add six full-time therapists to its staff. The district also partnered with a nearby farm specializing in equine-assisted therapy, and in February, hired a full-time horticulture therapist to expand a horticulture therapy initiative launched last year.

Three years in, educators and district leaders say they’ve seen a noticeable change in their students — both in their academics and their behavior and mental well-being. Behavioral incidents, particularly physical confrontations between students, have dropped in the past three years, according to Caroline Johns, the district’s superintendent. The district’s graduation rate has increased by nearly 11 percent in that time, to 94 percent.

That said, the effort has come with challenges: Northgate spent many months getting buy-in from school staff and families at a time when school-based mental health had become a target of the culture wars elsewhere. The federal funding that propelled these programs is set to expire this year, so the district will need to find other ways of sustaining the work.

“Covid lit the house on fire,” said Jeff Evancho, Northgate’s director of partnerships and equity. “In a lot of ways, this became a method to tackle that problem.”

Related: The school psychologist pipeline is broken. Can new federal money fix it?

The Northgate school district serves students from two small boroughs nestled along the Ohio River, about 90 percent of whom are eligible for the free and reduced-price meal program. Even before the pandemic, the district was dealing with poor academic performance, low attendance, disengaged family members, and student mental and behavioral health challenges.

When students returned to school after months of social isolation, many were grieving family members lost to Covid or coping with parents who had lost their jobs or homes, according to district officials. The district’s guidance counselors had to shift from academic to mental health counseling.

“The needs we saw when the kids came back were more significant than anything we’d ever seen,” said Johns, the superintendent.

A few months before the pandemic, Johns had seen a presentation about AHN’s Chill Project, launched in 2019, and longed to bring it to her district. Its founder and director, William Davies, had worked in urban and suburban schools and seen firsthand the lack of mental health supports. In the 2022-23 academic year, counselors nationwide served an average of 385 students; the numbers were even more stark for school psychologists — 1 to 1,119 students.

“There’s this perfect recipe and perfect storm for an absolute disaster scenario where kids are falling through the cracks, and they’re suffering greatly,” Davies said.

Davies sought to help schools create a culture that prioritized student and teacher mental health in several ways: by establishing universal interventions such as monthly lessons on coping with peer conflict, self harm and other issues; by providing a dedicated space that allows students and teachers to decompress or get immediate help from a therapist; and providing in-school therapy or crisis therapeutic sessions of the sort that are typically offered by a hospital or clinic.

When federal Covid relief funds became available, Johns was able to plow some of the money into bringing the AHN model to her district. Nationwide, other districts made similar calculations: More than a third of 5,000 school districts surveyed by the group FutureEd in 2022 said they planned to use at least some of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds on mental health programs or staff. That said, the overall share of spending on those programs appears to be low, according to the group.

Today, Northgate’s three school buildings each have two full-time therapists who, like Hubal in Bellevue, are AHN Chill Program employees, in addition to three school counselors. One therapist at each school provides traditional talk therapy, while the other manages the Chill room and teaches monthly Chill lessons to help students develop strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety.

Sydney Jackson, a senior who has been a regular in the middle/high school’s Chill room since it opened, comes in every day to water the plants that line the window sills. There’s also a “nest” filled with bean bags, and comfy couches and chairs framing an electric fireplace.

Before the Chill room, Sydney said she would often go into the bathroom and cry. Now she visits “Miss Krissy” — Krissy Rohr, the middle/high school’s Chill therapist and educator — who helps her manage her feelings and develop coping skills.

“I’ve gotten so much better at identifying my feelings,” she said. “The thing that I do the most is called “catastrophizing,” which is finding the worst possible outcome of any situation. Miss Krissy has taught me what it is and how to deal with it. I’ve learned how to challenge those thoughts and feelings.”

The regular chill lessons have helped too, she said. On a Tuesday morning, Sydney sat in a classroom with the nine other students in her advisory group, listening as Rohr taught a lesson on healthy relationships.

Rohr opened the discussion by asking the class what friendship meant to them, then asked them to consider what they expect from their friends and the qualities they’re drawn to.

Later, Rohr divided the students into smaller groups and asked each to come up with answers to two questions: “What do you say to a friend that’s pressuring you to do something that you aren’t comfortable with?” and “Why is it better to talk something out with a person as opposed to talking about them with other people?”

As Rohr walked around the class observing, she told one group, “No matter what you do your whole life, you’re never going to be everybody’s cup of tea, somebody is always going to take an issue with something.”

Nevaeh Bonner, a senior, responded: “I try to remind myself of that every day. Just do what you do, do what you want to do, because someone’s just gonna find a reason.”

Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

About a 20-minute drive away, Orchardview Stables sits on an expanse of green fields home to 16 horses, two goats, chickens and a resident cat.

Each semester, the district selects eight or nine middle schoolers to care for a horse on the farm — feeding, cleaning and riding it. Mary Kay Soergel, a riding instructor and the director of Orchardview Stables, said when kids come to work with the horses, “they learn compassion” and how to be responsible for another living being.

The farm is a family business for the Soergel family, who not only work but live on the farm. Soergel’s daughter, Tessa Maxwell, is a former special education teacher who serves as the farm’s executive director and the lead certified therapeutic riding instructor. The farm also employs a clinical trauma mental health professional, who also offers expertise as an equine-assisted psychotherapist.

“Horses are pretty honest through their body language. Horses are very accepting as long as you respect them,” said Maxwell. “It’s very therapeutic because kids don’t have to pretend to be something they’re not. They don’t have to worry about the shoes they’re wearing or the clothes they have on or the grades they’re getting.”

This year, the district is trying to align the equine therapy program more closely with the Chill program by having Maxwell and other professionals at the stables work with the district’s Chill therapists. The Orchardview staff try to keep the same themes and lessons the kids might be working through in school in their conversations with kids at the farm, while the Chill therapists help students debrief lessons or emotions they experienced in their work with horses.

The district has also started to embrace horticulture therapy, thanks to a $70,000 “moonshot” grant in 2022 from the organization Remake Learning. Horticulture therapy uses plant-based and gardening activities to help individuals struggling with stress, anxiety and depression.

Through a donation from nearby Chatham University, Northgate received its first greenhouse, built next to the football field outside the middle/high school. Chill therapists have run summer camps there and a gardening club started by the high school art teacher now numbers more than 55 members.

In January, the district hired a certified horticulture therapist to lead the program, including working in the greenhouse with ninth graders who participate in a mandatory life skills class.

Aside from building out specific mental health programs, the district’s elementary schools launched a “Kindness Club” in 2022 and the high school has a “No Place for Hate” club.

Related: Mental health: Is that a job for schools?

Northgate leaders know their level of investment in mental health programs is unusual.  It has also come with risks: School districts in Pennsylvania and across the country have faced opposition from community and school board members when they’ve tried to create programs that address students’ emotional and behavioral needs. Groups such as Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education have sued districts and targeted social-emotional learning programs in Bucks County and Cumberland County.

But Northgate has avoided that so far, in part by taking a gradual approach and being transparent with parents and school board members, say administrators. The district first invested in professional development to educate teachers about, and train them on, the Chill program. The district also started holding family engagement nights to showcase the mental health services and acquaint parents with the Chill lessons.

Cheryl Patalano, who serves on the district’s board of directors, said she is glad that her middle schooler and her high schooler have a safe space in the school they can visit to decompress.

Patalano said that the Chill Room is a place where students can go during the school day when they can’t go home to “get away from things.”

“Now we have this whole room, so I think it’s great,” she said. “They are very non judgmental, and I feel like just knowing that it’s there is also a huge help.”

Evancho, the partnerships and equity director, said the programs have begun to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable talking about mental health. “There’s no problem for a kid to leave class and say ‘I gotta go to the Chill Room.’ The kids don’t feel weird about it, it’s just built into our school culture in a pretty authentic way.”

Nearly three times as many students access therapy now than before the district partnered with the Chill Project, according to Johns, the superintendent. The district is still collecting data to determine the programs’ effectiveness, and will spend the next school year analyzing the information collected over the past two years, Johns said.

The changes the district has seen in its students are driving it to find funding to keep the programs going when ESSER money evaporates later this year. So far it has secured some additional funding through statewide grants for mental health and school safety, and it is applying for other federal and philanthropic support. Eventually, Johns said, the district will have to find ways to fund the programs directly out of its own budget, which is about $28.5 million a year. All told, Northgate has dedicated about $920,000 in private and public money to the new programs, the vast majority of it for the Chill Project.

On a Tuesday afternoon just after recess, first grader McKenna ran into Bellevue Elementary’s Chill Room for a quick chat with Hubal. She pulled a tub of Lego bricks over to the table and sat down — it’s her favorite activity when talking with Hubal. McKenna said the room is calming, especially if she hugs a Squishmello, one of the many stuffed animals in the room.

She comes into the room when she has a “really, really bad attitude or is angry with somebody,” she said. But she said going to the Chill Room — and the lessons she gets there — has helped her learn to control her emotions and better communicate with her mother and classmates even when she’s frustrated.

Just knowing the room and Hubal are near reassures her, McKenna said: “I can come in here whenever I need and she helps me.”

This story about mental health support in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Although state and local leaders are building comprehensive plans to increase the number of Black teachers, few plans include the recruitment of more Black principals, who play a critical role in Black teachers’ development.

Only 10 percent of public school principals nationwide are Black, which helps explain why hiring and retaining Black teachers has been so problematic.

The roots of this issue go back to the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which declared that laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students were unconstitutional. While the Brown decision required faculty, administration and student bodies to be integrated, that’s not what happened; as student bodies integrated, Black teachers and principals were dismissed.

This year marks the decision’s 70th anniversary, yet the promise of Brown has not been fulfilled, nor has integration led to taking more seriously the role of Black educators in the lives of Black children.

Before 1954, Black principals played a unique and transformational role in ensuring Black students had Black teachers. Horace Tate, for example, featured in Vanessa Siddle Walker’s book, “The Lost Education of Horace Tate,” was a hero who, beginning in the 1940s, aggressively recruited undergraduate students from historically Black colleges and universities to teach in rural Georgia. He saw Black teacher recruitment and retention as critical to uplifting the Black community. Tate and the Georgia Teachers and Education Association also fought against unfair credentialing practices that strained the Black teacher pipeline.

Related: How to hire more black principals

In the wake of Brown, Leslie T. Fenwick tells in her groundbreaking book “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip,” Black principals lost their jobs in such devastating numbers that a Senate committee hearing was called to investigate the problem in 1971. Lack of support from the Nixon administration meant that those principals had no redress; however, testimony from the riveting hearing preserved the historical record.

Fenwick notes that policy efforts today must acknowledge and deal with the relics of that “systematic dismissal of Black educators from public schools.” Her book calls for a deeper understanding of what has been, should be and can be.

If states are committed to fulfilling the promise of Brown, they must not only rebuild the Black teacher pipeline but also come to grips with the critical role Black principals have played and can play in developing Black teachers. Horace Tate is no relic of history; Black principals are still fighting that fight today. I did.

During my first year as principal of a Mississippi middle school, I fought to recruit Black teachers and retain the ones I already had on my campus. I spent countless hours calling teachers who once taught at the school and trying to convince Black graduates of HBCUs to give our kids a chance to be taught by someone who looked like them and shared their values.

Later, while working at the Mississippi Department of Education, I led state-level efforts to address the state’s critical teacher shortage and increase the share of Black, Latino and indigenous teachers. We built a comprehensive plan that focused on such policy changes.

We worked with the legislature to amend the law to include more entry points into teacher education programs by adding a provision that takes into account prospective teachers’ GPAs, instead of relying solely on ACT and Praxis scores.

We provided statewide access to training and tutoring for assessments in partnership with our teacher advocacy organizations and focused on building community among Black educators. And we launched the nation’s first state-run teacher residency program for teachers: Our first class of residents, as I recall, was over 70 percent Black.

Related: OPINION: A Black principal’s case against educator neutrality

Many educators, including me, see this work as following in the legacy of Black principals like Tate, and as embodying what activist Mary Church Terrell refers to as “lifting as we climb.”

These stories underline a growing need for state education agency leaders to truly engage with Black principals, understand the need for more of them and recognize how they have effectively done the work of increasing the share of Black teachers.

Any strategy that does not engage Black principals is short-sighted. Professor Jarvis Givens, in his book “Fugitive Pedagogy,” describes “defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence,” as a marker of Black educational leaders who saw their subversive acts as paramount to improving Black education.

Today’s efforts should no longer be fugitive. In fact, educational leaders should consider these efforts necessary. To start, leaders might support the work of Black school leaders to recruit high-caliber, diverse teachers by scaling grow-your-own and teacher residency programs like we did in Mississippi.

State policymakers must also invest in HBCUs and other institutions (such as Hispanic-serving institutions and institutions serving Native Americans) serving populations underrepresented in teaching and reform existing loan forgiveness programs to make them better recruiting tools for teachers.

If educational leaders fully grasp the profound impact Black principals have on the Black teacher pipeline, they’ll push to increase the share of Black principals — who, for decades, have called for greater attention to Black teacher recruitment and retention.

Phelton Moss is the acting director of American University’s Education Policy and Leadership Program. He is a professor of Education Policy at American University and a fellow in the center for Education Innovation at the NAACP.

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Why do rural students have to “beat the odds” in order to get to college?

That’s the question Jim Shelton asked his fellow panelists during last week’s sixth annual Rural Summit, a gathering focused on addressing the needs of rural students.  Shelton is president of the philanthropic group Blue Meridian Partners and deputy secretary of the Department of Education during the Obama administration.

While rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their urban and suburban peers, only about 55 percent go directly to college. Those who do drop out at high rates due to financial barriers, transportation, internet connectivity and family responsibilities, noted speakers at the summit.

While acknowledging the differences among and the diversity of rural communities in places like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Hawaii and Pennsylvania, speakers made the case that these communities all have the knowledge, talent and systems to help their students succeed academically in college and beyond — they just need the resources.

Education leaders and advocates say one answer is “place-based partnerships,” collaborations among local organizations working together to improve outcomes for students and families.

“Schools are only part of the solution,” said Russell Booker, CEO of the Spartanburg Academic Movement, a place-based partnership in the South Carolina city. He said it takes community partnerships that include the school system, housing, healthcare, the criminal justice system and local government to improve outcomes for rural students.

The summit was hosted by Appalachian Kentucky-based nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact. Dreama Gentry, the group’s president and CEO, said the goal is to bring together people working in pre-K, K-12 and higher ed to discuss the opportunities students need from “the cradle to career spectrum.”

Too often, Gentry said, educators focus on a single indicator — kindergarten readiness, for example — without considering how that relates to student preparedness and success at each stage of their education. “It’s actually taking that holistic look to make sure we’re supporting them at every step,” she said.

Here are a few of the initiatives highlighted at the three-day summit: 

• The Community Colleges of Appalachia launched a Rural Educator Academy in fall 2022 to train faculty and staff to better understand and meet the needs of students in rural Appalachia, particularly those from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds.

The six community colleges in the first cohort worked to identify and alleviate a specific issue facing students on their campuses. For example, Tri-County Technical College, in Pendleton, South Carolina, focused on educating faculty and staff about the barriers preventing students in poverty from succeeding in college, while Mountain Empire Community College, in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, developed a mentorship program to create a sense of belonging among first-generation as well as all incoming college students.

• The Hawaii-based nonprofit organization Kinai ʻEha launched in 2017 with the goal of disrupting the state’s school-to-prison pipeline, primarily for native Hawaiian and Micronesian youth. It runs a trauma-informed program, rooted in Hawaiian culture and language, that works with high schoolers who’ve dropped out of high school, as well as those who’ve experienced homelessness, poverty, incarceration or drug use. Students live and work on a farm, receive food and clothing, attend classes to complete their GED or HISET, and participate in work-based learning or vocational programs. In 2019, Kinai ʻEha helped to secure a state law requiring the creation of a task force to implement a system for evaluating and supporting kids who are struggling with trauma, behavioral or mental health problems and chronic absenteeism.

• Rural alliances in states including Indiana and Texas are providing high schoolers with career and technical education, part of an effort to expand access to post-secondary pathways in rural areas and combat rural shortages of skilled workers. For example, the nonprofit Rural Schools Innovation Zone launched in South Texas in 2019 to bring together five rural districts, five higher ed institutions and workforce groups to create more opportunities for students to access college and careers that are prevalent in their regions. The collaboration has established five career and tech academies at each high school focused on sectors like health and sciences, the military or skilled trade jobs; as of the 2022-23 school year, 54 percent of RSIZ students had received a certification in an industry of their choice. In 2023, the Texas legislature passed a bill to expand the program to other parts of Texas.

This story about rural students in higher education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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