Lafayette
Last summer, an unusually uninformed Boulder soccer mom asked me a question that has stuck in my mind ever since: “Where do you go to school?”
It wasn’t so much the question that struck me, but her response when I answered that I go to Centaurus.
She gave me a pitying glance, then said, “Oh. You must speak Spanish then.”
At first, I was confused. I had to rack my brain for a moment. Then it hit me. The woman assumed, incorrectly, that every student at Centaurus speaks Spanish.
In retrospect, I almost wish I had responded indignantly, chastising her for the ridiculous stereotype. I didn’t. I just changed the subject and filed the incident as one of the rare, but nonetheless all too common, stereotypes I have heard about my school and others like it throughout Colorado.
Centaurus is the only traditional public high school in Lafayette. Peak to Peak Charter School is also technically a public school, but students must undergo an application process to enter it. With 26 percent of my classmates being Hispanic, we have by far the largest minority enrollment of any mainstream Boulder Valley School District high school. That includes Nederland, Boulder, Fairview, Monarch, Peak to Peak and Broomfield.
Thirteen percent of Centaurus students are enrolled in the English as a Second Language program, which is at least 10 percent more than all the aforementioned schools except Boulder High. And Centaurus’ 30 percent of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch is remarkably higher than Fairview and Peak to Peak’s 6 percent, and Monarch’s 4 percent.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I feel sorry for the families in Lafayette and elsewhere in Colorado who send their children to what they perceive to be “better” schools across town or across the district where there is less diversity and a higher mean income. Their children miss out on what I consider to be the most valuable portion of the education I have been receiving for the past 13 years: spending my days with all the types of people who make up our great and multicultural state.
It is an unfortunate but inevitable fact that if a Lafayette resident enrolls their children at Monarch High School in Louisville, where 87 percent of the population is Caucasian and only 1 percent is enrolled in an ESL program, they will receive much less exposure to the vibrant and dynamic Hispanic/Latino/Mexicano culture that exists in eastern Boulder County. They will still meet students from diverse backgrounds, but those students will be, on the whole, from smaller spectrums of social, economic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds than the peers with whom they would study at Centaurus. And to me, that means that their education will be incomplete.
If there is one thing my Centaurus experience has taught me that is relevant not only in Boulder County, but throughout Colorado, it is that while statistics about ethnicity may determine how wide a spectrum of skin colors may be found in a yearbook, they determine absolutely nothing about the atmosphere of a school, the attitudes and personalities of its students, and, most importantly, the quality of education available at the school.
Just as I hesitated to use ethnicity statistics to praise my school’s diversity, I also hesitate to use the word “quality” to describe an education. Because in the end, you can only get out of an education what you put into it.
Regardless of whether a student attends Centaurus, Fairview, or the Rutherford Q. Billingsley College Preparatory School of the Fine Arts, the potential “quality” of their education is unaffected. If a student works hard and studies hard, they will emerge from school ready to face the world, regardless of what school they attend, and the same is true in reverse.
Which is why, I suppose, the false conclusion to which the Boulder soccer mom jumped has stuck with me for so long. Because the perception of education behind it is so opposite my own philosophy. The assumption that the quality of education available is any different at two public high schools in the same district, with the same curricular standards and the same pool of highly qualified teachers, is just plain silly. And the assumption that the linguistic and ethnic background of a school could negatively affect the “quality” of education available is even more ridiculous.
In a way, the Boulder soccer mom was right. I am, in fact, learning Spanish. And because I can hear it in the hallway every day, read it in the school newspaper, and make friends who speak Spanish at home, my educational experience has in fact been far more enriching than that of my peers who attend more culturally monogamous schools in the district.
Centaurus and schools like it may not have perfect test scores or pristine reputations, although Centaurus did make a “high” rating on the CSAP last year, but I can say with absolute conviction after my years spent at Centaurus that my classmates and I are all prepared academically, socially and culturally to hit the ground running towards wherever the rest of our lives will take us.
And isn’t that, in the end, the whole point of school?
Joel Minor (joelminor@comcast.net) is a senior at Centaurus High School. The contest for this year’s panel of Colorado Voices ends Tuesday. See www.denverpost.com/opinion to enter.
