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  PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT AT PALMER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL As noted above, much of the early work of Valley Interfaith focused on improving conditions in the colonias, where concentrated poverty, poor housing conditions, and public health problems were most in evidence. Yet the problems of the colonias were scarcely contained within their geographical boundaries. Their impact was felt throughout all the Valley , affecting the ability of hospitals to serve their clients, schools to teach children, and employers to find skilled labor. For years teachers in the public schools had fretted over the conditions in the colonias; they knew that many of their students were growing up in unsanitary conditions while their parents tried to wrest a living from jobs paying the minimum wage or in the case of indocumentados, even less. Yet most teachers tolerated the conditions because they could not discover a means to transform them. Some educators, however, took an early interest in the initial organizing efforts of Valley Interfaith. One such figure was Salvador Flores, a new principal at Palmer Elementary School in Pharr. Flores’ school served children from Las Milpas and many other colonias located south of Pharr along Highway . Many of the children from the colonias came to school muddy when it rained; others came with their clothes dirty because their homes did not have water; some would not come at all when their buses could not reach homes over unpaved, rain-soaked roads. (Pharr is little more than one hundred feet above sea level, and because groundwater in the region is close to the surface, paved roads and excellent drainage are crucial to ensure safe transportation.) ‘‘I saw the great need that the children had,’’ Flores recalled. ‘‘When it rained, many of the kids were absent, because the school buses couldn’t get through, or they would walk to school and be all muddy.’’1 Flores had learned of the work of Valley Interfaith from Esmerejildo Ramos, a fellow parishioner at his church, Saint Margaret’s Catholic Church in Pharr. Ramos had years of social activism behind him. He was a former farmworker, citrus fruit packer, and veteran of the Korean War who had worked with the United Farm Workers on the Starr County strike. Inspired by the ministry of Father Alfonso Guevara at Saint Margaret ’s, he always sought to ‘‘help out the guys at the bottom who have no education.’’ Ramos recalled that he recruited members into Valley Interfaith ‘‘just through friendship alone’’; so since Salvador Flores was a friend, he invited Flores to one of the first accountability sessions. Flores was impressed when he found himself among six thousand other Valley residents at the assembly in McAllen, in which Governor Mark White pledged to support the Valley Interfaith agenda for colonia improvement and the equalization of school funding. ‘‘From the very beginning I knew that Valley Interfaith was something good that was going to help the community,’’ Flores said. ‘‘That’s why I got involved.’’2 Salvador Flores himself was no stranger to poverty. His father was a Mexican vaquero, or cowboy, who had married an American and settled in the small Texas town of Zapata, near Laredo. When his parents turned to migrant labor to earn their living, Flores followed along, leaving school each April and returning in late November. As a child, he had experienced first hand the incongruence between his work helping to support his family and schools in Zapata. ‘‘When I returned from picking the crops,’’ he said, ‘‘I often found myself taking a test on the material the other children had covered during the previous weeks on the first day I was back in school. They didn’t cut me one ounce of slack.’’ Animated by his mother’s concern that he find his way to a better life, however, he worked hard in school, did well, and eventually decided to become a teacher. He began teaching in  and became the principal of Palmer in .3 Salvador Flores is soft-spoken and rarely seeks the limelight for himself. ‘‘I don’t like to do too much work in front of large crowds,’’ he said. ‘‘I feel much more comfortable helping in the background and working with others to develop their abilities.’’ When Valley Interfaith sent busloads of Valley residents to Austin in  to petition legislators to support the equalization of school funding, Flores went with his parents and teachers and pounded the hallways of the capitol, buttonholing representatives and winning a decisive legislative battle that brought over...

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