Last week, we attended one of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans’ “community conversations,” this one held at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. This initiative, led by Juan Sepulveda, seems to be taking a qualitative approach with “community conversations” to collect information on what works best in certain communities to help Hispanic Americans. 

Sepulveda, the executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, requested feedback on where the Department of Education should spend its time and funds to help Hispanic Americans achieve educational excellence. The meeting, attended by several hundred people, was organized into sessions designed to generate feedback from various constituency groups: elected leaders, business leaders, the campus community, and the broader community.

Sepulveda used a Native American form of circular communication to help participants identify key issues and challenges from preschool to post-secondary education. He noted that 25 to 30 percent of our nation’s children from birth to age 5 are Hispanic Americans and that 23 states have a majority of Hispanic American students in this age range. Because the Department of Education places Latino/a student success as a high priority, Sepulveda said he would be visiting 16 of these states in the next few months.

For many of us who teach in south Texas, Washington, D.C., is a distant place, far removed from our communities and our particular success and challenges with Hispanic American students. Based on Sepulveda’s outreach, we’re confident Washington will seem like a less distant place to some of these communities, and they will be more likely to voice their concerns and innovative ideas at a national level.

Already, Sepulveda’s outreach has generated tremendous interest. The Brownsville faculty/student session was well attended even though the event occurred on short notice and took place during the summer when many faculty members are not on campus. We were particularly encouraged by the interactions we saw among  teachers, students, and administrators at the Campus Community session.