Walter, a tidbit for future reference...

Parents can bring educational programs into their school districts on their own. As you know, farmworker families are usually minorities, ESL, poor and coping with immigration issues, but good old fashioned activism, unity, creativity and determination can overcome the odds

Luckily, our little rural community had the benefit of experienced activists in the United Farmworkers movement who knew how to work together. For all intents and purposes, we, parents, unionized ourselves and went to work on behalf of our kids.

At the end of 7th grade, one of my daughters spent the next couple months taking the bus back and forth (57 miles each way) to a junior college. That summer she received As in her college classes (including algebra and communication) and skipped 8th grade entirely.

My youngest, enrolled herself in the AVID (Advance Via Independent Determination) program which required an additional 40 hours a month (after school, on weekends and school breaks) of additional instruction in things like critical thinking and Socratic inquiry. She applied to the Eisenhower Student to Student Ambassador program and spent her 8th grade summer in Australia. Today, this child manages a law firm specializing in labour law (for farmworkers).

We also worked with the county superintendent of schools and built an arts and science after-school program at our kids' schools. Our artists taught the curriculum through the arts.

While these programs are so successful (like 90+% college graduation rates), they also provide families lots of help raising per student costs. However, our families worked two jobs just to get by, so we went to our city council and made a case for these programs. Our city council unanimously agreed to cover all family costs for all students enrolled in these programs (and that was how our little town acquired its unusually high number of Ivy League graduates and innovators who moved home after college).

We also brought the Tall Ship science program to our kids' school. In the summer, our kids spent a week sailing the ocean blue and doing science projects on board a Tall Ship.

The hard part was listening to the white parents who showed up at school board meetings to object to our kids getting these "special" programs. I got into some really ugly confrontations with white parents over our kid's "special" treatment (which we had brought into the schools ourselves).

Long story short, the district realized that gerrymandering the entire district in such a way that all low-income, minority, or so called "disadvantaged" and "at-risk" (sarcasm quotes) students went to the same elementary school had created a critical mass of very effective parents. When the last of our kids graduated 6th grade, the district closed our elementary school and dispersed our kids into the other 3 elementary schools. IOW, they broke up our parent union and went back to their frigging white superiority games.

Just a little food for thought...