By Anne L. Bryant
3/15/05 -- Two weeks ago, my husband Peter and I visited Ellis Island with two good friends from England. Okay, I have an admission. Although I had visited the Statue of Liberty as a child, I had never been to Ellis Island.
Magnificently restored and reopened in 1990, it stands in elegant fashion as a fitting tribute to the 12 million immigrants who passed through its doors from 1892 until 1954. Because I found our four-hour journey so moving, I’d like to share a little of the history for those of you who have not yet visited this institution.
Ellis Island was first built to house Fort Gibson for the War of 1812. It was not needed for that purpose, however, and was used instead as an ammunition storehouse.
The island later was expanded as huge amounts of landfill were transported there from the excavations for the New York City subway tunnels and Grand Central Station. After a devastating fire in 1897, the current structure, designed as the Ellis Island Immigration Station, opened Dec. 17, 1900.
The designers thought the center would serve more than half a million immigrants a year. Their estimate was wildly wrong, rising to millions in some years.
As you enter the building, which was the original main receiving area, you see a long wall of suitcases, trunks, shoulder bags, hatboxes, and baskets from many years ago. I was reminded of a story told by Mossi White, NSBA president in 2003-04, about a boy and his family who left their home country with an empty suitcase -- empty because they had no worldly possessions, just their hopes and dreams for life in the new world.
As one climbs the stairs to the huge registry room, where long lines of immigrants waited to be registered, one cannot help but think of the courage, exhaustion, and fear in the hearts of the men, women, and children who came to this land so long ago.
These immigrants had already gone through a 10 to 30-day journey in conditions worse than most prisons -- overcrowded and unsanitary with foul air, poor food, and no light -- and arrived physically and mentally in a state of shock.
Medical and mental exams were conducted by doctors and staff, beginning with a doctor watching the immigrants climb the stairs I had just climbed. He was looking for signs of disease, lice, and instability. The doctor and an interpreter (who often spoke six to 15 languages) examined each person’s face, hair, and hands. Approximately two out of every 10 or 11 were marked with chalk indicating the need for an additional medical inspection.
Although seemingly cruel, the fear of cholera, plague, typhoid, measles, scarlet fever, and smallpox was real. Thus two large medical hospitals were also erected on manmade islands adjacent to Ellis Island.
Most of the people who made this journey were joining family in America. If they were the first, they usually would be joined later by wives, children, sisters, brothers, and parents.
There were a few rules: You had to have $30, could never have been in prison or an institution, and could not be a polygamist. At least these were among the questions they were asked. I was amused that you could not be a single woman. Thus there were an extraordinary number of “marriages” that occurred on the spot on Ellis Island.
About 2 percent of would-be immigrants were rejected and deported to their home country.
If all of this sounds arcane, it might have been, but let’s think of the times. There was a great deal of pressure on legislators to balance economic interests, which were pro-immigration, with anti-immigrant sentiments among many citizens.
Fast forward to today. It seems as if in some ways the issues are strikingly similar. But Sept. 11 has changed the type of questions asked of would-be immigrants, and our borders have become much more porous, especially in the Southwestern border states.
Several years ago, the state school boards associations of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas commissioned a report on the challenges facing the 206 school districts on the U.S.-Mexico border, an area called La Frontera. The results are informative and deeply disturbing. These districts serve 1.1 million children, most of them poor Latinos. The study, Voices from La Frontera, was conducted by WestEd, a nonprofit research and development agency.
These families’ “border crossings” are often as harrowing as those of the Ellis Island immigrants. They often pay people, called “coyotes,” as much as $3,500 to get them across the border safely, and many do not make it.
Some of the children in La Frontera schools cross the border daily; they live in Mexico and go to school in the United States.
These school districts, especially those within 10 miles of the border, face huge challenges. Among the most acute is a shortage of qualified teachers. In recruiting teachers, superintendents place a priority on applicants with “classroom management skills.”
The rural nature of the communities, the low salaries and housing shortages, and the need for dual language skills, plus the mobile student population, make it hard to attract teachers with any experience.
Poverty reins in these communities, and families have critical needs for health care, dental care, and social services. The school system usually must become the provider of these services, along with free and reduced-price school meals, which often are the only consistent source of food for these children. Schools also provide classes for parents who want to be integrated into the American “system.”
Extremes also exist in a few of these districts. For example, in San Diego, with a student population of nearly 144,000, there are families living in million-dollar homes while others reside in makeshift housing developments with poor-quality drinking water and open sewers.
Immigrants are a vital part of our democracy. They have literally provided the engine of our social, economic, cultural, and political development as a nation. Their brains, their brawn, their courage, and determination have built industry, farmed our lands, invented new ways to operate, and created art and music.
To this day, recent immigrants populate our most successful companies at every level. They are members of Congress, state legislators, and jurors. They are mayors, city council members, and school board members. They are teachers, staff, and learners in our schools.
But we often forget children’s promise as we deal with their hardships. For those without resources or hope, we allow them to be a piece of disaggregated data -- an English language learner, or sometimes erroneously, a special ed child.
That is why the movement by the state school boards associations in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona to launch an annual conference focused on Hispanic children is so important.
Titled “Celebrating Educational Opportunities for Hispanic Students,” this event regularly draws up to 600 school board members who come together to focus on how we can better serve the needs of Hispanic children.
Inspired by the success of these conferences, the school boards associations of Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington began hosting a similar annual conference two years ago.
These meetings are phenomenal. Having just attended my first conference, in San Antonio, Texas, I came away inspired by the good ideas, serious problem solving, and strategies that school board members will take back to their school districts.
The program focused on the exchange of best practices among school districts on closing the achievement gap.
But there was also time to elaborate on the big ideas through such speakers as Henry Cisneros, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio.
I was mesmerized by the students who performed (they danced, played, sang, and videotaped) and the luncheon presentation of a mini-play on the importance of integrating all cultures into our schools. This conference is a winner!