William McKenzie: Oak Cliff principal beats the odds

We all could roll out our lists of worries about the world, but only a handful really matters. To me, that includes educating the growing number of Latino children who will make or break Texas’ future and make up 47 percent of our state’s 4.6 million students.

That’s why Clarissa Plair strikes me as an excellent choice for the 2008 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year. She’s blazed trails. She’s had an uncommon impact. She’s stared down adversity.

And she’s probably escaped your notice. I hadn’t heard of her, either, until I began researching the social and economic gaps between Dallas’ northern and southern halves. An Oak Cliff pastor told me about her, and am I glad she did.

Not often do you come across a fluent Spanish-speaking African American woman who leads a Latino school challenged by the very socioeconomic factors that form roadblocks to learning. This 55-year old grandmother is the principal of Felix G. Botello Elementary School at Jefferson and Marsalis in Oak Cliff, and she’s turning that school into a model of excellence with against-the-grain leadership.

That would be the recognized Botello Elementary. And that’s far from some old award.

Botello’s recognized ranking from the Texas Education Agency sums up the creativity, devotion and leadership of the staff and students. Those qualities start with the determined woman who roams Botello’s brightly colored hallways with a broad smile and a firm hand. I’ve never found her in her office when I’ve called or visited. She’s always walking the floors so she knows what’s happening.

She spews out education ideas the way Newt Gingrich rat-a-tat-tats political ideas, which you might expect from a graduate of Indiana University who also earned a linguistics master’s from the University of Texas at Austin and two other grad certificates. I won’t forget one call, when she got out of her sickbed to immediately start drilling down into the strategies Botello uses to get its young learners ready for college.

Botello has been in existence only three years but has won Texas’ second highest ranking the last two. She has dragged achievement out of Botello’s 500 kids, putting her school on a par with high-achieving suburban campuses.

Ms. Plair naturally wants Botello to earn an exemplary rating, the highest rank. Its failure to reach that rung doesn’t diminish the accomplishments, not when you consider the school is in its infancy and especially not when you consider its demographics:

Hispanics made up 96 percent of its students last year; 98 percent of those students qualified for free or reduced lunches.

Those facts don’t doom a child. But they make it harder for them to learn at grade level. Ms. Plair experiences this reality every single day. And she keeps beating the odds.

One reason is because she has lived this experience. She and her family made Mexico their home for nearly four years while she taught school, background she uses to reach her students.

When I visited Botello recently, a roomful of Hispanic mothers worked with an instructor on preparing the infants and toddlers in their laps for pre-school. These mothers have older children at Botello and were in class themselves so their younger children wouldn’t enter school behind. The Avance program is part of Botello’s aggressive effort to connect parents to their children’s schooling.

Ms. Plair deflects praise, insisting that other principals and teachers also innovate. Still, she’s shown remarkable success in her first three years, including winning a new principal of the year award from the Dallas school district and being selected a master principal this year, a recognition that earned her school $10,000.

Most important, her triumph embodies what DISD – and Texas – must do to produce the next generation of engineers, teachers and doctors.

And to those who say that poor Latino kids will never learn as well as wealthier suburban kids, come south of the Trinity and see for yourselves. Clarissa Plair will make your cynicism disappear.