EDITOR’S PAGE

Flashing a grin familiar to anyone who follows the 10 o’clock news. School Board Representative Robert Medrano rises to his feet, proudly pats his thinning waistline, and leans across my desk to confess: “Hey, my troubles last year with the police, with my drinking and all-which I’ve quit-even that bad exposure it got me, even that kind of thing isn’t too bad in my district, where, you know, all kinds of families can relate to troubles like that. They have a son who’s been busted for marijuana, or a husband with a DWI or something like that. And they’re, you know, sympathetic.”

And with that classic jockeying of apolitical liability into a political asset, this scion of the Medrano political machine-a man who once said that no media coverage is bad media coverage as long as Medrano is spelled correctly-is off and running in his fifth bid for the District 8 seat on the DISD School Board. It is a post he has held-and some would say abused-since Dallas adopted single-member board districts in 1974.

Three of the current school board members are up for reelection. Medrano’s District 8, which encompasses neighborhoods in West Dallas. Oak Lawn, and Love Field, is the combat zone for the hottest contest in the April 4 school board elections. School board president Robert Hester, who as a moderate black has worked to break the board’s racial gridlock, is opposed in District 5 by former DISD administrator and long-time black activist Yvonne Ewell. Pleasant Grove’s Richard Curry, who has gained a reputation as the group’s “swing vote” (sometimes siding with the board’s minority faction, and sometimes not), has reportedly been “born again” as an Anglo establishmentarian, and is currently running unopposed in District 4. Curry took a bold step when he announced for reelection, one that I believe is prudent: he called fora limit of school board terms to two three-year stints. Currently, board members, who are unpaid, may serve as long as they can win reelection. The move is sure to anger certain board members, especially Medrano and long-time board member Kathlyn Gilliam, but has been well received by others who seek to ease the tension between the moderates on the board and the power-hungry “dynasties” of these two venerable politicians. Critics of Curry, who is white, insist that he converted to the Anglo cause in an attempt to curry favor with the Breakfast Group (the business powerhouse that was formed to encourage qualified candidates for public service) and ward off any attempt of theirs to recruit an opponent.

As if all that weren’t convoluted enough, the campaign to unseat Medrano is an outright labyrinth of political maneuverings. Medrano is opposed by two other candidates with Hispanic surnames-journalism professor and former reporter Rene Castilla, and Albert Garcia, Dallas newcomer. Hispanic activist, and attorney. Castilla says he got into the race because “Medrano is an embarrassment to the Mexican-American community.” Castilla covered the education beat on the old, highly acclaimed KERA television program, “Newsroom,” and later as a reporter for Channel 8. He is moderate, soft-spoken, articulate, and backed by businessmen who care about Dallas schools. In other words, he is the antithesis of Medrano.

The third man in the race, Albert Garcia, is something of an enigma. Garcia moved to Dallas eighteen months ago. At thiriy-one, he says he is running for the school board because he is a product of public schools (Garcia grew up in South Texas and graduated from Texas Southern University with a law degree) and wants to follow his parents’ admonition to “not forget where you’ve come from.” Garcia served a six-month appointment to the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School Board prior to moving here. His opposition, including the ever-gabby Medrano, charges that Garcia has no hopes of winning and is simply seeking to attract attention to himself and his politically ambitious law partners.

Ain’t politics grand? While the juicy accusations fuel a ravenous rumor mill, the voter gets lost in the political shuffle. It’s easy to overlook a little thing like the fact that this school board will determine the future of Dallas schools.

Consider this: in the next year, the school board will choose a successor to Superintendent Linus Wright. Whether he is a black, a brown, or a she, the new leader should be the best darn superintendent in the country. This school board either will mire itself in debilitating racial squabbles, or rise above them and move Dallas toward a mature ethnic harmony. This school board may, with inventive, fair, far-sighted solutions to a myriad of problems, get Dallas schools out of court. It may prove to all of the citizens of Dallas that our neighborhood schools are viable for children of all colors and economic circumstances. Or it may move us into a new era of chaos.

Every good student of the history of cities knows one thing: as the schools go, so goes the city. Education is the only hope we have of breaking the cycle of poverty and its attendant problems of apathy, dependence, and crime.

Yet when it comes to school board elections, apathy is the name of the game. A hotly contested school board race in 1986 was decided by a vote of 1,240 to 1,214, a margin of twenty-six votes. A recent study published by the Insiitute for Educational Leadership in Washington, D.C., shines a glaring light on one of the more mystifying paradoxes of our times: while just about everybody who is in a position to know or care about the need for public school reform believes that the initiative should begin at the local level, there is widespread indifference as to who those local elected leaders are. Public apathy is “reflected in the difficulty of attracting quality candidates to serve as board members in many communities, and in the abysmally low voter turnout for board elections,” according to the report.

Even voters sophisticated enough to accept the petty pragmatics of politics as inherent in any elected body may justifiably turn away in disgust when the tawdry tap dancing extends to a school board. We expect higher levels of reasoning from a group charged with safeguarding as precious a commodity as education. But we owe it to our children to care. We owe it to our hard-earned tax dollars to care. Those in Districts 4. 5, and 8 owe it to themselves to be informed and to vote. In District 8. it is clearly time for a change. Rene Castilla knows education; he is an educator. He speaks a language of conciliation and healing.

Albert Garcia, given the benefit of the doubt, is smart and sincere. But as a “voice for the disenfranchised,” as he puts it, he stands to further polarize a racially divided board rather than unite it.

It’s time we began to misspell Medano.