WON’T BACK DOWN

DESPITE RAMPANT POVERTY, REAGAN ELEMENTARY IS THRIVING

More than a third of the teachers and staff members at Reagan Elementary School graduated from Dallas ISD schools. Many of those attended Reagan themselves (DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa attended Reagan as well).

Don’t try to tell them DISD schools aren’t great.

“I didn’t have private tutors or help at home,” says Reagan principal Ruby Ramirez, a firstgeneration American, who graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas. “Our great teachers in this district put me where I wanted to be.”

The majority of Reagan’s students are poor; 94 percent receive free or reduced lunch, the poverty indicator used by schools. About 98 percent of the school’s 400 students are Hispanic.

Many start school knowing little or no English.

Fourth-grade teacher Alma Garcia, who attended Rosemont, Greiner and Sunset, knows what that’s like. She is the oldest of five children, a daughter of immigrants from Mexico. She was the first to go to an American school and the first in her family to learn English.

She says she was the “pioneer” who helped guide her younger siblings through school. By second estate. This is a school where at least 376 of 400 children are living in poverty while $500,000 townhomes are being built a block away.

West Dallas-based Hunger Busters brings free lunch to Reagan all through the summer. And every student receives a Christmas gift from local churches.

Amid the constant battle against poverty, Reagan students are achievers.