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Oblate Leads Effort for Kids Voting USA Project |
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On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, the Brownsville Independent School District (BISD) Board of Trustees voted unanimously (8-0) to bring the Kids Voting USA (KVUSA) curriculum into all fifty schools of the District, grades K-12. BISD IS THE ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF TEXAS IN WHICH THIS CURRICULUM WILL BE TAUGHT. The BISD Board vote is the culmination of an 18-month effort by Father Armand Mathew, OMI, formerly Director of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College (UTB/TSC), now the Center’s Community Relations Coordinator, to bring KVUSA to Brownsville under the auspices of the CCE.
Kids Voting USA is a national, nonpartisan, non-sectarian, non-profit organization based in Tempe, Arizona. It was begun by three Arizona businessmen who, on a fishing trip to Costa Rica in 1985, discovered that that country enjoyed an 80% voter turnout rate which citizens attributed to the tradition of parents taking their kids to the polls on Election Day. They returned home determined to do something about voter apathy in the United States. After two pilot projects in Arizona proved to be very successful, they launched the national program in 1988. The organization now has 100 affiliates in 30 states, with 4.3 million students, 200,000 teachers in 10,600 schools, and 50,000 volunteers in 17,000 voter precincts. Every student in the program has an actual experience of voting at election time, filling out a ballot and casting a vote in a booth next to the official polling places. But KVUSA is not just about voting. It is an around-the-calendar academic program that teaches the basics of responsible citizenship: know the issues, know the candidates, vote, hold the elected accountable.
The BISD Board vote clears the way for the CCE to become an affiliate of KVUSA. The application for affiliation can be submitted immediately because the CCE has in hand from Mary Yturria, a prominent civic leader of Brownsville, a check for $2500. to cover the affiliation fee. Cynthia K. Dunn, Director of Affiliate Services at the national KVUSA office, estimates that it will cost CCE $50,000.00 a year to implement the curriculum in its entirety, roughly fifty cents-one dollar a year per student. To kick off the fundraising effort, CCE has in hand $25,000.00, a gift from Mary Rose Cardenas, another prominent Brownsville civic leader, businesswoman and member of the UTB/TSC Board of Trustees.
Now that BISD is on board, it is all but certain that CCE’s effort to get the KVUSA curriculum into all of Brownsville’s private schools will be successful. The process is already under way and off to a very promising start.
The history of the effort to bring KVUSA to Brownsville is rooted in Brownsville’s longstanding voter apathy. For decades, voter turnout in Brownsville has hovered around 10%, a bit higher in national elections, generally lower in local and state elections. It seemed to Armand that the CCE was the logical entity to address the problem and that bringing KVUSA to Brownsville under the auspices of the CCE might be an effective way to begin to deal with it.
First step, visits with city and county officials and citizens throughout the community to assess the level of support. Armand found great support at every professional, economic and social level of the Brownsville community. Next, he sought and received letters of support from the Mayor of Brownsville, the Cameron County Judge, the Cameron County Elections Administrator, the President and CEO of the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce, the Executive Director of the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation, the President and CEO of the Port of Brownsville (Raul Besteiro, former BISD Superintendent for 13 years), the Superintendent of Catholic Schools and other civic, professional and business leaders in the community. With these letters of support in hand, Armand visited the BISD Vice-President for Curriculum. She expressed interest and laid out the BISD requirements, the principal one being the alignment of the KVUSA curriculum with the Texas Education and Knowledge Standards. Meeting this requirement was a rather daunting, time-consuming, relatively costly endeavor. To meet it, Armand enlisted the help of Judy Goodwin, a UTB/TSC curriculum specialist, Ms Dunn and Betsy Williamson, a North Carolina colleague of Ms. Dunn. With the alignment completed, it was quite easy to meet the other requirements, and CCE was thus ready to approach the BISD Board of Trustees. The Board’s historic unanimous vote on November 4 brought the long, complicated and rather arduous effort to a successful conclusion.
Ms. Dunn will be coming to Brownsville in the near future to conduct teacher training. At the time of her visit, CCE will stage an official kickoff event involving UTB/TSC, BISD, the Brownsville Association of Non-public School Administrators (BANSA), city and county officials, religious, professional, business and civic leaders and the general populace of Brownsville. Keynote speaker will be Mr. Henry Cisneros, former Mayor of San Antonio, former Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and presently Chairman/CEO of American CityVista.
Submitted by Armand Mathew, OMI, November 5, 2003. |
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| Click on pictures from the event to enlarge: Who's who? See first picture: Mary Yturria (seated), prominent Browsnville citizen and civic leader, comes to the University of Texas at
Brownsville/Texas Southmost College to present to Dr. Julieta García
(right), President, a check for $2500.00 to cover the fee for the UTB/TSC
Center for Civic Engagement to become an affiliate of National Kids Voting
USA. Also pictured are Fr. Armand Mathew, OMI (left), and Dr. Joseph
A. Zavaletta, Jr. (center), Director, UTB/TSC Center for Civic Engagement. |
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