New school aims to aid immigrant children

Oct. 5—HIGH POINT — Several hundred people gathered Wednesday outside the latest school to open in High Point, one that promises to educate children from around the world and is named after a national Hispanic leader who helped end segregation in education.

Gov. Roy Cooper was among the dignitaries who attended the ribbon-cutting for the Sylvia Mendez Newcomers School in a building adjacent to High Point Central High School along Ferndale Boulevard.

Mendez, a native of California who is now 87 years old, traveled across the country for the ceremony. As a child in the 1940s, Mendez was part of a legal challenge to the practice of segregated schools for Hispanic children. The success of the lawsuit served as a precursor to eliminating racial segregation in all U.S. public schools.

Mendez was visibly moved as she spoke at the end of the outdoor ceremony on a sunny, breezy morning.

"I never imagined I would be here," she told the audience members, who were sitting in fold-out chairs under two mammoth white tents. "I'm so honored to have a school named after me."

The school is the first in North Carolina named after a Latina leader. Guilford County Schools officials also say GCS is the only school system in the state with two newcomers schools, which help immigrant children transition into the local school system. The first opened at Western Guilford High School in Greensboro.

The Sylvia Mendez Newcomers School is for third- through 11th-grade students who live in and around High Point and are new to the United States. Students will attend the school for one year before transitioning to a traditional-calendar or choice school. One goal of newcomers schools is to boost the English language proficiency of students.

The new school will hold its first classes on Monday, GCS public information officer Gabrielle Brown told The High Point Enterprise prior to the ceremony. The school will open with more than 100 students from 20 countries. Flags representing the countries of the students attending the school ringed part of the area where the ceremony was held.

In his remarks, Cooper said offering newcomers schools not only is the moral stance to take but the prosperous one.

"It's the right thing because all children deserve a good education, and it's the smart thing because our international population in North Carolina makes an annual positive impact on our economy of more than $3.5 billion, and education will help that grow," he said.

Guilford County Board of Education Chairwoman Deena Hayes said the newcomers schools provide an education to children who might not have that opportunity in their native land.

Speakers at the ceremony said the school's opening shows how far the nation has advanced since Mendez's family launched their legal challenge, Mendez v. Westminster, just after the end of World War II, when Mendez was 8 years old.

Her father, Gonzalo Mendez, had sought to enroll her and two of his sons in public schools in Orange County, California, but was told he couldn't because they were Hispanic. Four other families joined in the class-action lawsuit.

A federal judge in California ruled in 1946 that having separate schools for Hispanics was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection. The ruling was affirmed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1947.

The decision preceded the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that ruled segregated schools of any kind are unconstitutional.

pjohnson@hpenews.com — 336-888-3528 — @HPEpaul