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Tuesday, June 13,1989
The Battalion
Page 5
—
Nation in need of Hispanic teachers
Educators: Students will be deprived of positive role models
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CORPUS CHRISTI — There is a
national shortage of Hispanic teach
ers at a time when minority enroll
ment is at an all-time high, and edu
cators say students will be deprived
of multicultural role models in the
classrooms.
The number of Hispanic college
students choosing teaching careers is
dwindling as they opt for higher
paying professions, according to the
Washington, D.C.-based American
Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education.
“We are cheating minority stu
dents of positive role models who
can bolster their pride and self-es
teem,” Mary Dilworth, research di
rector for AACTE, told the Corpus
Christi Caller-Times. “Our schools
must help every student understand
what the American heritage is all
about. In effect, we also are cheating
non-minority students.”
According to the AACTE, one
U.S. teacher in eight was a minority
in 1980. By the year 2000, the ratio
is expected to drop to one in 20, un
less more minorities are attracted to
teaching.
In Texas, 20 percent of the state’s
teachers are Hispanic, compared to
32 percent of public school students.
“There are too many other op
tions available to students other than
becoming teachers,” said Grace
it
We are cheating
minority students of
positive role models who
can bolster their pride and
self-esteem.”
— Mary Dilworth,
AACTE research director
Hopkins, dean of education at Texas
A&I at Kingsville. “We have to im
prove salaries, for example, as well
as improving the image of the teach
ing profession.”
But the shortage cannot be solved
by trying to draw minority students
away from schools of business, law
or medicine, Dilworth said.
“We simply must encourage mi
nority students to pursue their
goals,” she said. “With proper role
models and motivation, those goals
will include careers in teaching.”
Texas A&I and Pan American
University at Edinburg are seeing
school districts recruiting from out
of the region.
“We all are fishing from a shrink
ing pond when it comes to recruiting
teachers in South Texas,” spokes
man Rodney Davis of the Dallas In
dependent School District said. “I
don’t know how many (Hispanic)
teachers we have recruited from
South Texas and the (Lower Rio
Grande) Valley the past few years,
but we don’t have much luck keep
ing them. They stay a couple of
years, get homesick, and go back to
South Texas.”
Nine percent of DISD’s elemen
tary teachers and 5 percent of sec
ondary teachers are Hispanic, but
31.7 percent of students in the dis
trict are Hispanic, Davis said.
Some college students choose tea
ching regardless of the profession’s
financial benefits or disadvantages.
“I can touch a person’s life as a
teacher,” Rosamar Martinez told the
Caller-Times. “There is no way you
can do that in business.”
Martinez, 24, changed majors
while at A&I, leaving behind com
puter science and a $26,800 annual
salary promised her upon gradua
tion.
She started teaching in 1987 at
Noonan Elementary in her native
South Texas city of Alice for
$16,800 a year.
She said her mostly Hispanic stu
dents need assistance jumping from
Spanish to English, and she is able to
help them make the transition.
Hispamcs are projected to be the
nation’s largest minority by the year
2000, when they will represent 36
percent of the population, according
to the Institute for Educational
Leadership in Washington, D.C.
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School officials
question plan
to convert buses
AUSTIN (AP) — Public school
transportation workers appear
dubious of legislation that would
require them to convert buses to
natural gas power, and their
doubt frustrates Texas Land
Commissioner Garry Mauro.
“Some of you all have been up
set about something you don’t
know anything about,” Mauro
told a convention of the Texas
Association for Pupil Transporta
tion on Monday.
The legislation, sponsored by
state Sen. Don Henderson, R-
Houston, and state Rep. David
Cain, D-Dallas, requires gradual
conversion to natural gas power
of non-emergency state vehicles,
public school buses and city
buses. Ninety percent conversion
is required by 1998.
Some audience members told
Mauro the cost of converting
school buses, estinj^ted at $1,500
to $2,000 per vehicle, was too
high and would burden local
school districts and taxpayers.
They also said they were un
convinced of the safety, conve
nience or availability of natural
gas as a motor fuel.
Mauro said the legislation,
which awaits Gov. Bill Clements’
signature, would allow a waiver
for school districts that couldn’t
afford the conversion.
He also said natural gas was
less likely to explode during a col
lision, could easily be made avail
able in pump stations for vehicles
and would reduce air pollution.
In addition, increased use of
natural gas — a bountiful Texas
resource — would spur the state
economy, he said.
“I really don’t think you’re lis
tening to me,” Mauro said.
“There are school districts with
50 or more buses running (them)
successfully on propane and nat
ural gas all over the country,”
Mauro said.
“Don’t start off with a negative
attitude. Look at it. If you’re
right, tell me to go to hell. You’ve
already done that, effectively,”
Mauro said, garnering a brief
burst of applause.
“But if I’m right, you give me a
fair hearing, and you burn Texas
natural gas,” Mauro said.
Afterwards, mechanics, dis
patchers, transportation directors
and others from many of the
state’s 1,100 school districts
seemed undecided.
“We are not saying that natural
gas is a bad alternative,” said Den
nis Daniel, director of administra
tive services for Winona Indepen
dent School District in East
Texas, which has 20 school buses.
“But, we hate to have it man
dated to us in a short period of
time and not let the research
catch up. It’s too experimental,”
Daniel said.
But Mike McCIung, president
of the group and transportation
director of Northside Indepen
dent School District in San Anto
nio, said 190 of his 255 buses use
natural gas.
“It has worked for us,”
McCIung said.
“I don’t think they’re resisting
it,” McCIung said of association
members.
Flaw in immigration laws hurts
children of amnesty recipients
HOUSTON (AP) — Unless legislators correct a flaw
in immigration laws, many children of illegal aliens who
have been granted amnesty will remain illegal aliens
and have trouble finding legitimate work or attending
college, experts say.
Amnesty advocates contend this leaves children in
the position of having to live off their parents rather
than entering the job market after graduation, because
it is against the law to hire illegal aliens.
“What we are seeing is that whole families are now in
worse (financial) consequences because only the legal
ized members can work without fear” of being de
ported, said Norma Plascecia-Almanza of the National
Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum office in
Austin.
Children who arrived in the United States after the
amnesty cutoff of Jan. 1, 1982, are considered illegal
aliens, even though one or both parents may have qual
ified for amnesty.
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials
said they have no estimate of how many children are in
the predicament of being illegal aliens while one or
both of their parents has obtained legal immigration
status by qualifying for amnesty.
The U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986 offered amnesty to qualified illegal immigrants
who entered the United States before the cutoff.
Qualified applicants can obtain permanent residency
and, after five years, apply for citizenship.
borne adults who quanried for amnesty came to tlie
United States alone from Mexico and other countries in
search of work and sent for their families later. Only
family members who arrived before Jan. 1, 1982, also
would have qualified for amnesty.
The immigration law allows illegal immigrant depen
dents of amnesty applicants to become legalized, but
the process for applicants from Mexico — the country
of origin for most applicants — takes five to 10
years.
The situation will force many high school graduates
to settle for menial labor jobs, where they risk being ar
rested and deported, advocates say.
“They will be a sad group of young people in terms
of opportunities available to them,” Vanna Slaughter,
director of the Catholic Charities immigration counsel
ing services program in Dallas, told the Houston Post.
INS District Director Ron Parra in Houston said he is
hopeful that legislation will be passed to grant relief to
families with children in illegal status.
Until then, amnesty applicants may apply under the
INS “family fairness” policy to try and allow their chil
dren who arrived before Nov. 6, 1986, to remain in the
country legally.
He said few people have applied for the program be
cause it offers no guarantees tlie children will not be de
ported.
“We work at it on a case-by-case basis,” Parra said.
“There is no formula. It’s subjective with broad
guidelines that allow for discretion.”
Teen-age Soviet pianist enjoys
basking in American luxuries
FORT WORTH (AP) — As Fort
Worth was discovering Aleksei Sul
tanov, he was discovering a new
world — at the video store.
He checked out kung fu movies —
up to three a day and horror flicks
— like “Friday the 13th.” Then he
spotted Charlie Chaplin.
Yesterday, this boyish Soviet was
named the best of 38 young pianists
from around the world. He is 19,
trying not too successfully to grow a
mustache, and possessed of the ex
citement that the Eighth Van Cli-
burn International Piano Competi
tion had charged itself with
identifying.
Of the six finalists, only Sultanov
looked like he was having a good
time at the piano. He plays power
fully, teasing the audience with body
language.
His favorite scene, from “The
Gold Rush,” is one in which Chaplin
sticks forks into his dinner rolls, pre
tends they are people and performs
the dance of the buns.
“You don’t need to speak English
to understand Charlie Chaplin,” Su
san Wilcox, Sultanov’s host in Fort
Worth, said.
When Sultanov arrived at the Wil
cox doorstep, he’d never heard En
glish outside the classroom. “I think
his English was good to begin with,
but he was afraid to speak it because
it was completely untried,” Jon Wil
cox, said.
So at first they stuck with Russian,
relying on Wilcox’s three years of
the language at Texas Christian Uni
versity and Mrs. Wilcox’s command
of Polish. By Sunday, they were up
to 25 percent English.
And Sultanov understood the
meaning of a scream — like the
shriek Mrs. Wilcox emitted when she
spotted two garden snakes taking a
dip in her back yard pool.
“He knew I hated snakes. We had
talked about it,” she said.
Sultanov picked the snakes out of
the water . . . and surreptitiously car
ried them to his hosts’ bedroom.
“At that point, I knew he was part
of the family, because he thought
that was very funny,” Mrs. Wilcox
said.
Sultanov was so proud of the
prank that when a reporter tele
phoned for details, he gave his first
English interview.
The incident endeared Sultanov
to the couple, who have a cat but no
children, and they began calling him
their “adopted son.”
AUSTIN (AP) — The president
of GTE Southwest Inc. said Monday
his company would be in “deep trou
ble” if forced to refund more than
$128 million to customers.
President E.L. “Buddy” Langley
testified before state District Judge
Joe Hart, who will decide whether to
issue a temporary injunction against
the refund ordered by the Public
Utility Commission.
The telephone company filed a
lawsuit fighting the refund and a
$59.2 million annual rate reduction,
also ordered by the PUC.
GTE has said it will begin comply
ing with the rate reduction, but that
refunding money while the question
is in court would have harmful con
sequences. The company earlier won
a temporary restraining order that
put the refund on hold.
Hart said he would try to make a
decision on the temporary injunc-
They knew he was an accom
plished martial artist — he has
earned a black belt — but it was not
until the Cliburn competition that
they knew the kind of pianist he was.
At their house, Sultanov would
never play a piece from beginning to
end.
“He practices a few bars at a time,
slowly so he can hear every note,”
Wilcox said. Then he gets on stage
and rips through a piece in record
time. “We never heard a full piece
until the concerts.”
tion by Thursday, when the re
straining r>rder is scheduled to ex
pire.
GTE was “in a sad state of affairs”
in 1981, Langley said, and he was
told: “Fix it.”
Since then, GTE has regained the
confidence of customers and em
ployees, he said.
The $59.2 million rate reduction
would cause layoffs and reduced
state investment, he said. The im
pact would be multiplied if refunds
are required, he said.
The state-paid advocate for con
sumers in the GTE case said during
a break in the hearing that refunds
should be made as soon as possible.
“The longer you delay the re
funds, the more problem you have
in the money going to the right peo
ple,” said C. Kingsbery Ottmers of
the Office of Public Utility Counsel.
GTE had sought an $81.4 million
rate increase from the PUC.
GTE fights court order
to refund $128 million
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