Content area
Full Text
Provision of an appropriate education for Mexican American children has been an issue in the schools of KyIe, Texas, for almost one hundred years. A small rural market town for most of the twentieth century, KyIe is located in northern Hays County, about 11 miles from San Marcos, the county seat, and some 20 miles south of Austin. Mexican Texans likely lived in the area before Texas independence in 1836. During the early twentieth century, increased numbers of Mexican immigrants came to the county to work as laborers on cotton farms (Foley 1997). Early provision of schools for Mexican and Mexican American children appears to have been non-existent and only haphazard and marginal provision did not begin until the early 190Os.
This neglect of education of local Hispanic s was noted as early as 1911 in a series of articles in La Crónica, a Spanish language newspaper published in Laredo. One article especially highlighted the educational situation in several south central Texas counties (San Miguel 1987, 87). Attention to such conditions was absent in area English-language newspapers. On June 15, 1948, following the decision in the Delgado v. Bastrop ISD case, State Superintendent of Education L. A. Woods instructed all Texas school districts that segregation of Mexican Americans was illegal and must be halted. However, as Mendiola (1993) observed, "Most school districts continued their discriminatory practices. School officials continued to ignore the mandates or, if brought to their attention, claimed they never received the notice. Many simply changed names and stopped listing "Mexican" schools in the Public School Directory" (90-91). After the 1950 confrontation of the Board of Trustees by local Hispanics, the educational neglect of KyIe's Mexican American children began to diminish.
The story of the marginal attention to the education of Mexican Americans in KyIe, specifically, and in Texas, generally, has been handicapped by two conditions. Interest in the subject has been overshadowed by contemporary concerns for needed improvements in the education of Mexican Americans. Also, research about Mexican American schooling, particularly in specific school districts, is rendered very difficult by the general paucity of local school records and the casual treatment of Mexican and Mexican American children in those records that are available.
Nevertheless, general studies of education in Hays County...