Confronting Suburban School Resegregation in California
CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY
Kirin Narayan and Alma Gottlieb, Series Editors
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
CONFRONTING SUBURBAN SCHOOL RESEGREGATION IN CALIFORNIA
Clayton A. Hurd
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-8122-4634-6
CONTENTS
PART I. CONTEXTUALIZING EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY
Chapter 2. Historicizing Educational Politics in Pleasanton Valley
PART II. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALLENSTOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT SECESSION CAMPAIGN
Chapter 3. Latino Empowerment and Institutional Amnesia at Allenstown High
Chapter 4. The Road from Dissent to Secession
Chapter 5. Race and School District Secession: Allenstown’s District Reorganization Campaign, 1995–2004
PART III. ATTEMPTS TO MAKE HIGH-QUALITY, SHARED SCHOOLING WORK
Chapter 6. Cinco de Mayo, Normative Whiteness, and the Marginalization of Mexican-Descent Students at Allenstown High
Chapter 7. Waking the Sleeping Giant: The Emergence of Progressive, Latino-Led Coalitions for School Reform
Conclusion: Signifying Chavez
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
| Date | Chapter | Events |
| 1967 | 2 | Residential communities of Farmingville and Allenstown are consolidated into the Pleasanton Valley United School District (PVUSD) |
| 1971 | 2 | PVUSD cited by federal government for its racially segregated schools, falls under desegregation mandate |
| 1976 | 2 | PVUSD submits “good faith” desegregation plan to the state |
| 1987 | 3 | School overcrowding in Farmingville requires busing of two hundred Farmingville students to Allenstown High |
| 1991 | 3 | PVUSD begins busing 250 Farmingville students per year to Allenstown High |
| 1994 | 3 | Brown Berets chapter forms in Farmingville |
| 3 | MEChA Club founded at Allenstown High | |
| 3 | Mexican immigrant students are elected president and vice president of Associated Student Body (ASB) at Allenstown High | |
| 3 | Student walkouts opposing California Proposition 187 occur at Allenstown High | |
| 1995 | 3 | Allenstown High ASB president impeached |
| 4 | PVUSD call for parent meetings to address social unrest at Allenstown High | |
| 4 | PVUSD-sponsored parent meetings break down and dissolve | |
| (1995) | 4,5,7 | Allenstown citizen group goes public with intention to leave the PVUSD and establish their own school district (Allenstown secession campaign officially begins) |
| 1996 | 5 | California State Board of Education rejects Allenstown District Reorganization proposal |
| 1999 | Author begins field-based research at Allenstown High | |
| 2000 | 6 | Student conflicts emerge at AHS surrounding commemorations of Mexican holidays |
| 2002 | 6 | Over 1,100 Allenstown High students absent for Cinco de Mayo (May 5) |
| 2003 | 7 | Allenstown school secession plan publicly reemerges in PVUSD-commissioned District Reorganization Feasibility Study |
| 7 | Together for a United PVUSD (TFAU-PVUSD) coalition is formed | |
| 2004 | 7 | TFAU-PVUSD coalition shuts down school district-sponsored community forum in advance of the planned decision on the District Reorganization Plan |
| 7 | PVUSD decides to “indefinitely” shelve District Reorganization/Allenstown Secession Plan | |
| 2005 | 7 | TFAU-PVUSD coalition endorses three candidates for the PVUSD school board; all are elected |
Introduction
Time magazine has called the continuing racial segregation of U.S. public schools one of the most underreported news stories of our time (Fitzpatrick 2009). While it is historically viewed as an African American/White issue, Latinos1 are now in fact more segregated than African Americans in southern and western regions of the country. In the Western states,2 the number of Latinos in intensely segregated minority schools— that is, schools with a 90–100 percent racial minority population—increased from 19 percent in 1980 to over 40 percent in 2005 (Orfield and Lee 2007). California is now the national leader for the isolation of Latino youth, with approximately 90 percent attending majority minority schools and nearly half (47 percent) attending intensely segregated minority schools (Orfield and Lee 2006).
A distinguishing feature of this increasing White/Latino segregation is that it is no longer limited to metropolitan areas. Rapid increases in the ethnoracial and socioeconomic diversity of U.S. suburbs has led to thousands of communities experiencing significant shifts in their public school enrollments, many for the first time (Frankenberg and Orfield 2012; Frankenberg and Lee 2002). As Latino immigrant and nonimmigrant populations move beyond “suburban ring” satellite areas of metropolitan centers to further removed, more affluent, and traditionally White suburban areas as well as small to mid-sized towns across the United States (Orfield and Luce 2012), they often find themselves in communities that have relatively little experience in bringing youth and adults together across lines of racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic difference (Frankenberg and Orfield 2012), and that lack adequate services to facilitate the adaptation of immigrant students (Waters and Jiménez 2005).
Unfortunately, in a number of U.S. suburbs facing increased immigration and ethnic and racial diversification, public school