Latino students in the Syracuse City School District practice vocabulary with flash cards. The language barriers between them and the teachers make it difficult for them to succeed.

Written and Produced By Stephanie Claytor

This fall, Latino community leaders from Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo met at the Upstate Latino Summit. The summit– held in downtown Syracuse–  gave Latinos from all over Upstate New York the opportunity to discuss issues in their community, such as education.

Nationwide, Latinos have the highest drop-out rate. And according the latest statistics revealed on the New York State Report card, Syracuse City School District is following that trend– a concern for some local leaders.

” We all know that, based on demographics, if we do not change that drop-out rate… this country is not going to survive,” said Syracuse Common Council President Bea Gonzalez.

During the education workshop, Margarita Reyes, a representative of the Rochester City School District showcased a survey she conducted at Monroe High School in Rochester. She asked the Latino students why their peers failed to finish school. Reyes said work, absence of parental guidance, pregnancies and lack of support from faculty were the main reasons why students said their peers quit school.

And some of the students in Syracuse shared similar sentiments.

“I didn’t like the class scheduling, I didn’t like some of the teachers, they were very rude, “said Keisha Encarnacion, a 21-year old Latina who quit attending Nottingham High school in the last semester of her senior  year. “When you did need help there, it was very hard because the classes were so large.”

“There’s a lot of percent of them that drop out because they get picked on,” said April Keller, a student at Fowler High school.

Social worker Donna Lucente has assisted students at Syracuse’s Fowler High School for more than a decade. She said a lack of vision is the reason students quit school.

“A lot of students don’t have a vision for their future that they could go to college or that college could be affordable for them,” Lucente said.

The Syracuse City School District has around 20,000 students enrolled in school this year. About 1200 of them are Latinos. Fowler High School has the largest percentage of Latinos out of all of the high schools.  There, Latinos make up about a quarter of the student body.  According to the New York State Report card, which gives statistics and evaluates the performances of schools in the state, only 32 percent of the Latino students at Fowler High School in the class of 2007 graduated by August of that year. That’s about 22 Latino students out of the 68 students in the class.

Principal James Palumbo said the school’s dropout rate is “unacceptable.” He states the school’s six-year Latino graduation rate is somewhere around 50 percent. And he said he is willing to bet that if he had more Spanish speaking teachers, the graduation rate for Latino students would rise.

But, year after year, Palumbo said there aren’t any Spanish speaking certified candidates applying.  Syracuse City School Superintendent Lowengard echoed Palumbo’s concern.

“We believe in bilingual education,” Lowengard said. “But, it’s an issue for us, finding teachers that are certified and that speak Spanish. ”

**If you want to learn more about how your child’s school scored on the New York State Report card, click here.

Anthony Lewis

Written By Sierra Jiminez

Syracuse, N.Y.—Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was all it took for Angelik Mitchell’s life to change.

On August 15^th, 2009, Anthony Lewis went downtown to the Latin American Festival in Clinton Square. Later that evening, police said there was an altercation at the festival between a group of teenage girls—and Lewis was asked to leave.

Lewis ran down South Salina Street amidst a mob of more than 200 people. As he crossed the intersection of Fayette and South Salina Street, police said he was surrounded and stabbed in the heart.

He was 20-years-old.

In twenty minutes, Mitchell lost her only son. Now, she and the rest of Lewis’ family protest on the streets where Lewis was killed.

“That day we were moving here and we stopped and went to the festival,” Mitchell said as she sat on her son’s bed in their new apartment. “We probably stayed maybe 15, 20 minutes… I had wanted him to come home with us, but he was like ‘I’m ok, I’m good. ’”

“I just wish he would have come,” Mitchell said. “I wish I would have made him. If I would have known, I would have made him.”

Mitchell said her son made an impact on almost everyone he met—including his girlfriend at the time of his death.

“It’s just hard. I didn’t think I would be here like this,” said girlfriend Ana Dourdas as she sat in his room. “I knew I would be here but I didn’t know I’d be here without him.”

“I really do miss him because I spent every day with him. I don’t know who’s gonna call me in the middle of the night. I don’t hear his ringtone anymore. And I never will. I want him to call me, I’m waiting for his phone call,” Dourdas said.

Lewis’ family said they believe his murder was an act of racial violence. And they said they know who was involved. They’ve even gone as far as to look them up on MySpace.

But police said without a witness to come forward, there’s nothing they can do.

“I feel like his life was cut short. I really do,” Mitchell said. “He wasn’t hurting anybody… I mean they all got chased because they were black.”

Ana Dourdas kneels by her boyfriend's vigil a month after he was stabbed to death in Downtown Syracuse.

Mitchell said police have tried to stop her protesting multiple times, stating it’s time to move on. But every Tuesday and Thursday, Lewis’ support group is back out on the streets—fighting for justice.

“Were not going anywhere so they might as well just arrest the people and do what they have to do. Because we’re gonna still be here,” Mitchell said. “We’re gonna be rallying and we don’t care if the officer said we’re making people mad. So what!? I really don’t care. I’m mad because they murdered my son. If they didn’t want to be made mad, then they shouldn’t of murdered my son. I don’t care how other people feel right now. Because my son is not here. So what if I’m making people mad? So what?”

As millions of spectators in Washington took their seats for the President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, the students at Nottingham High School did the same. More than 600 students filed into the school’s auditorium on the East Side of Syracuse hoping to watch Obama take his oath of office.

Only a few rows of seats were empty, as teachers stood in the aisles and watched from the back of the room, but for a brief moment it seemed as if everyone would miss the chance to witness history.

The coverage of the inauguration projected on the screen at the front of the room suddenly become pixilated.

“We wanna hear Obama,” yelled one student from the middle of the auditorium.

The crowd echoed similar sentiments as the Librarian Manami Tezuka struggled to fix the inauguration feed.

“Right now it’s through the district network, we’re hoping it doesn’t crash since everyone is watching right now. The access to cable isn’t great and not everyone has access to cable,” Tezuka said. She laughed in relief as the coverage started back up.

Students stood and applauded throughout the pre-inauguration performances and speeches, but the atmosphere was very different when Obama stood and faced Chief Justice John Roberts. As Obama recited the oath of office, students and faculty were transfixed on the screen. The room erupted in applause and screams as Obama was officially sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

“We’re here, we’re going to remember this for the rest of our lives,” said student Dawn Dawson, 17. “It’s history we’re able to witness, like MLK and JFK, we read about it but were never really able to experience it. “

Senior Summer Kelly said she wasn’t able to vote in the 2008 election because she wasn’t 18 yet. “But I’m always going be really proud that I was alive in a time that the first black president was elected,” she said.

Thomas Little teaches advanced placement government at Nottingham and had been preparing his students for inauguration day since Obama won the election on Nov. 4. “They look at it as seeing a new president,” Little said. “For them it’s about seeing a new face, new idea, new image, and a new focus and I think for them that part is amazing. It’s exciting, very very exciting.”

In a classroom upstairs from the auditorium, the inauguration was more than a memory for Marquie Little. For this graduating senior, it was a milestone.

Little said members of his family had been waiting their whole lives to see an African American president take office. “They’ve been looking so forward to it,” Little said. “I know my grandmother and my grandfather has been for about forty to fifty something years.”
When asked what Obama’s presidency means to him, Little replied, “Change. A change in ourselves, more pride in where we come from.”