From: Hector Flores <hflores@lulac.

org> Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 4:54 PMn Subject: Re: [REDLatinaDFW] Charges at Dallas Ebby Halliday Elementary are about abuse, not politics To: JESSE DIAZ COMMUNITY ACTIVIST <jessediaz7@att.net> Jesse and Bea Martinez, Discrimination or racism exists only until you shine the "light of day on this vicious disease"! Exposure to direct sunlight seems to eradicate this behavior very rapidly! Thanks to LULAC Dist. Director Bea Martinez and you for your efforts to bring theses horror stories to the public about the manner in which the Latino children (students) and parents at Ebby Halliday Elementary were being mistreated. Kudos to you and team for a job well done!

Hector M. Flores On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:38 AM, JESSE DIAZ COMMUNITY ACTIVIST <jessediaz7@att.net> wrote: Charges at Dallas Ebby Halliday Elementary are about abuse, not politics Jacquielynn Floyd jfloyd@dallasnews.com Published: 03 October 2011 10:59 PM Related

Dallas principal requests transfer amid abuse allegations at Ebby Halliday Eleme

Something ugly has been alleged at a Dallas elementary school, something so awful that, if its true, it makes me sick. The ugly thing is making a lot of people boil over with fury because they think they know what its about: race, immigration, cultural tradition. These are all white-hot topics that have the power to make people go completely berserk. But if the tales about what has been happening at Ebby Halliday Elementary School are factual, what were really talking about is child abuse, which sorry is infinitely more urgent than any of the above. And if adults are bullying, threatening or humiliating helpless kids who trust them, thats abuse.

The political debates can wait. The new elementary school in southeast Dallas, named to honor the famed Dallas businesswoman, opened in August. Some parents are now saying they want their children transferred back to neighboring schools the campus was built to relieve. Acting Superintendent Alan King, no doubt getting yet another taste of what an astoundingly difficult barge the DISD is to pilot, met Monday for the second time in a week with distraught parents who believe their children have been mistreated. The meeting was closed to reporters, so I dont know exactly what he said. What I hope he said is: We will find out what happened. We will tell you the truth. We will fix this. At least principal Kamalia Cotton wisely requested a transfer to another campus. Her last day at Halliday is Thursday. Sadly, much of what the parents are claiming happened to their children at Halliday is the type of brainless cruelty that teachers are supposed to red-flag as warning signs of abuse at home. The stories parents have said their kids told them include such humiliations as being required to eat like dogs with their hands behind their backs or being denied bathroom privileges to the point that they wet their pants. Some children said they were physically manhandled, subjected to anti-Hispanic slurs or threatened with deportation. The matter goes farther than the kids complaints. Parents say they were stonewalled when they tried to talk to school officials or were told they werent needed when they offered to work as campus volunteers. Im not saying that none of this has been inflated by rumor or exaggeration. Maybe thats the case. But a lot of families have disturbingly similar anecdotes to report, and they are clearly upset, as anyone would be under the circumstances. Bizarre punishments, belittling insults, threats, secrecy these are hallmarks of abuse. If a kid says these are happening, you investigate. You do not say, Well, its just the friction that goes with demographic change or, despicably, If you dont speak English, nobody cares what happens to your kids. Culture warriors have been launching missiles from their blog holes, saying some truly reprehensible stuff about this story. The threats and behaviors described at EH dont add up, wrote one commenter, ostensibly a teacher, who thinks the allegations are a LULAC fabrication designed to replace the schools black principal with one who is Hispanic. Another commenter says that children whose parents are in this country illegally are not entitled to protection or decent treatment: If these parents are AMERICAN CITIZENS of Hispanic heritage then they have a right to protest. If they are a bunch of illegal outlaws, living in this nation, who foist their kids on our public education system and whose foreign speaking children require much in the way of special needs, then I say forget it. In other words, slap their kids, shoot their dogs vent as much cruelty as you like. Another said the students, all between kindergarten and fifth grade, are lying, then deliberately mistranslating discussions between their teachers and non-English-speaking parents.

Not everybody commenting on this story thinks this way, of course, but Im left wondering if political hysteria has completely blinded the others to simple human decency. I cant think of a single thing a 10-year-old child could do that warrants being hit with a book, barred from the bathroom or threatened with deportation. Bad enough for a child to be called wetback by the playground bully, but its sickening to imagine hearing it from a teacher. Racial conflicts, language barriers, resentment over immigration none of these explain or excuse tormenting children. If these things really happened if even a fraction of these things happened the DISD has an appalling failure on its hands. Because we dont abuse children. No matter whose child were talking about.

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