The Struggle To Be Heard

Cambridge resident Guy Stuart serves as treasurer of his son's nursery school program. He is eager to volunteer in the classroom. He regularly attends school committee meetings.

But because Stuart is not a U.S. citizen, he is prohibited from voting in school committee elections and helping to choose the people who make the policies about his son's education.

So just last week, Stuart joined 60 other parents and activists at a city council hearing on extending the right to vote in school committee elections to all parents--not just those who are citizens. Many parents who would be affected by this law are immigrants who have not yet gone through naturalization.

At the hearing, while his two children whined and clung to his legs, Stuart argued his case to the city council government ordinance committee.

"When I come to the public schools, I find myself excluded," he says. "I cannot vote or really have any say in the running of my child's school."

The Background

Last week's city council meeting was the latest step in a 10-year campaign.

Initiated in the early 1990's, the proposal lost momentum when the battle over rent control took center stage.

But last year, the immigrant voting rights campaign began working again to gain support before bringing the issue to city council.

In June of last year, the Cambridge school committee voted 5-2 in favor of immigrant voting rights.

The City Council's government ordinance committee will now review a written proposal before sending it to the entire council later this week. The council will then decide whether to send the proposal to the state legislature.

The Argument

The campaign touches upon some volatile issues--parenthood, democracy and immigration--the debate in Cambridge has been fierce.

Voting rights campaign organizer Natalie Smith, an immigrant from England whose 9-year-old daughter attends public school in Cambridge, says she sees the current policy as an injustice to both her and her child.

"I pay taxes for my child's representation, which she does not get," she says. "I care very much about who is on the school committee. I need to know that there are people on the committee who know who my child is and what her world is like."

Smith says it is "painful" to watch her child grow and go from grade to grade without being able to participate fully in her daughter's education.

But 25-year Cambridge resident John Downing said at last week's city council meeting that parents should find ways to be involved without voting for school committee members.

"The parent who is concerned has many avenues, not least of which is to help with homework and to attend parent-teacher conferences," he says.

"If parents are really concerned they should get active and supervise their children," he continued, "that would be far more important than one vote."

The opportunities for involvement through attending meetings and helping with homework are simply not adequate, Smith says.

"These are immigrant families often working two or three jobs," she says. "They do not have the luxury of attending weekly meetings. They need to be able to elect someone on the governing board to speak for them."

The debate is about even more than parental involvement, says school Committee member Alice L. Turkel. The children of non-citizen parents are also denied a lesson in democracy, she says,

"We teach by what we do," Turkel says. "Many of the children are citizens. What is the message we want to send them--your parents don't count?"

Besides, says state representative Jarrett T. Barrios '90, who has supported the cause, involved parents are simply the best way to ensure academic success.

The estimated 20 percent of school-age children in Cambridge with immigrant parents enter school with an unjust disadvantage.

"The reason this is important is reflected in the faces of the children in our public schools," he says. "There is no more effective way to increase performance. We simply have no time to waste."

The Red Tape

The lengthy wait to become a citizen makes the voting rights campaign all the more necessary, Smith says.

To prepare for last week's city council meeting, the campaign leaders prepared scenarios following eight immigrants from entry to citizenship. The routes to naturalization ranged from five to 25 years, for a Liberian refugee on a student visa.

Cambridge resident Mario Davila, for instance, immigrated from El Salvador 17 years ago. He says that a backlog of paperwork has left him waiting 15 years for citizenship. All the while, he says he has waited for the chance to vote in school committee elections.

"I speak as a parent who is just concerned about what goes on," he says.

Opponents caution that immigrants might be discouraged from pursuing citizenship once they had the right to vote in a local election.

Joe Grassi was one of two school committee members to vote against the proposal.

"I'm a first generation Italian-American," Grassi says, "I agree with the established process of immigrants gaining citizenship and, with that, the right to vote."

But the road to citizenship simply takes too long, Barrios says.

"The reality is that by the time they can vote, these people's children are out of school and the committee has lost the opportunity to hear their concerns," he continues.

Barrios says that the right to vote could encourage immigrant parents by giving them a taste of what it is like to participate in the political process.

"The moment you enfranchise parents is the moment school committee members come knocking on their doors," Barrios says.

In this way, he says, the immigrant parents--an oft-ignored minority--will be approached for their opinions and get to know the elected officials.

And this involvement is particularly important to immigrant parents, says Elena Letona, director of Centro Presente, a Latino advocacy group.

"Education is an extremely important issue to these people," Letona says. "They intuitively understand that education is the way out of their situation for their children."

This proposal is particularly important given the lack of participation in school committee elections, says city councillor Jim Braude. Only 8 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in the most recent election, Barrios says.

"I am a firm believer that elected officials must work every day to expand participation," Braude says. "I can't think of a better way than to give the franchise to people who want it more, sadly, than those who have it," he continues.

The Precedent

This sort of proposal is not without historical precedent, Smith says. Throughout history, she says, the requirements for voting have not always included citizenship.

The Precedent

In addition, she says, women were allowed to vote in local school committee elections before they were given general franchise.

She suggests that changing the ballot would be a simple matter of deleting the word "citizen" from the school committee ballot.

And other cities have already instituted similar policies.

If the immigrant voting rights initiative is approved, Cambridge will join a handful of cities--including New York and Chicago--where non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections.

But some cited this as just the type of precedent Cambridge should strive to avoid, saying it's made life easier for illegal immigrants, rather than empowering the legal aliens it was designed to help.

"It's just another incentive to them," Downing says. "What you're proposing to do is to dilute my vote. I think it's improper and dangerous."