Latino Summit

"Gather up and learn, about Latinos, and education!"

by Elma Gonzalez

For more than a century the Latino population has been important part of California's community. The number of Latin immigrants to the United States has increased; as a result the number of Latin students enrolled in California schools -specially in southern California- has increased considerably. Despite this growth, the number of them who graduate and go to college has not seen a significant increase. But why? With Latino students making up almost half of the student population in CA, the San Diego County Chicano Federation (SDCCF) formed a committee to answer this question. They began by monitoring the educational progress of the Latino youth in the SD Unified school district. In 1982, SDCCF held an educational summit at SDSU to identify "points of concern regarding the low academic achievements" of Latino students. In 1997, they held another summit to revise these points. The result was the establishment of the SD County Latino Coalition on Education.

Since then, the coalition has directed 14 Latino Summits in San Diego with the goal of improving Latino Academic Achievement. Alberto Ochoa, a member of the committee that organizes the event, explains that the primary goals are "...to create awareness through statistics, to close the achievement gap between Latino students and white students, and to increase the academic rigor in classes offered to Latino students."

Although SOH students attend the summit as spectators every year, it was not until last October 17 that more than twenty SOH MEChA students led by Ms. Flores took part in this year's summit by presenting information and expressing their opinions to over 200 students, parents, teachers, and administrators. At the summit, important figures in our community spoke about the barriers Latino students face; they explained possible reasons and solutions for these obstacles; and they called the community to action by encouraging them to support the Latino in acquiring a college education. The event proceeded to workshops in which students were able directly to express their opinion on conflicts faced by Latino students today. Some students narrated personal experiences about obstacles they had faced or were facing.

By this description you might imagine several presenters speaking in front of an audience for

 five hours -not a very exciting experience-, but being a Latino student myself, I found 

most of the information presented there to be rather shocking and unbelievably inspiring. Every slide in the presentation showed a disappointing low number of academic achievement in Latino students; but trust me, there is nothing more motivating than someone telling you you can't do something-and I believe that was the point of the whole event; to annoy us, open our eyes, and force us to do something about it.

It is for this reason that I highly encourage students to attend future Latino Summits. More importantly though, I encourage students to set higher goals for themselves, to go to college, and to turn those statistics around and set high standards for future Latino generations.

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*For more information on the Latino Summit and similar events contact Ms. Flores or Mr. Rodriguez, MEChA advisers.