Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month (Part 1)

It is the first week of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 16-Oct. 15) and this time of year is always packed with activities. There are galas, award ceremonies, and workshops. I attended a few and also received multiple invitations to events that recognize/celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with workshops on cooking and dancing. The events invite participants to: "Learn to dance salsa!" "Try Latin food!" "Taste tequila!"

While galas, award ceremonies, and workshops are wonderful celebrations of our contributions as a community, there are too few events during Hispanic Heritage Month focused on educating the broader public about the critical role Latino communities have played in the advocacy for a quality education for all in the United States and the impact those contributions have on every American today.

The legacy of the Latino communities' advocacy through our legal system has been seminal in the evolution of national education policy. From the 1930s to the present, the Latino community has been at the forefront of legal fights to improve education in the United States to benefit all students in areas as diverse as access, finance, bilingual education, and equity. This legacy of advocacy is not widely known among policymakers or broader national audiences and rarely even recognized within our own community.

I have wanted to write about the legacy of Latinos in education advocacy for several years. My interest started during my involvement in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1998 as a policy analyst in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education. I spent a lot of time trying to strengthen the case being made to create a separate section in the law for the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) program (which eventually became Title V). In the process I was fortunate enough to meet and work with some very intelligent staff at MALDEF and NCLR. Our collective research and efforts to "translate" the legal cases was quite an education for me. Since then, I have tried to expand my awareness and knowledge.

In the spirit of Hispanic Heritage Month, I will share in upcoming blogs a little of what I have learned about our legacy. I will summarize the importance of selected legal cases brought to the court by Latinos and their influence on education policy. However, for this posting I simply share some of the legal cases in access, finance, and bilingual education I believe are important.

School access

Salvatierra v. Del Rio Independent School District (1930, Texas)
Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District (1931, California)
Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County (1946, California)
Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District (1948, Texas)
Hernandez v. Driscoll Consolidated Independent School District (1957, Texas)
Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District (1970, Texas)
Keyes v. School District Number 1 (1973, Colorado)
Plyler v. Doe (1982, Texas)

School finance

San Antonio School District v. Rodríguez (1968, Texas)
Serrano v. Priest (1971, California)
Lujan v. Colorado State Board of Education (1979, Colorado)

Bilingual education

Aspira v. Board of Education of the City of New York (1972, New York)
Serna v. Portales Municipal School (1974, New Mexico)