Education is a Human Right
“You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to
read.”
Addressing
the underrepresentation of Latino law students only touches upon the surface of
a greater need of equal access to education. This panel will attempt to address
this by looking at the numerous obstacles that Latino students face at each
step in their education. How do we increase representation in law schools
when 41% of Latinas do not graduate high school in four years or when Latino
students comprise 35% of NYC school suspensions in the past 10 years? Can NYC
youth receive an equal education in schools surrounded by NYPD
officers? How does the continued trend towards privatization of education
affect low-income students? The panelists will discuss the various responses to
these policies by advocates and will also discuss how these policies are made,
whom advocates can hold accountable, and what steps can be taken to remedy our
education system.
Moderator:
Dr. Edward Fergus is Deputy Director of the
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. He has published
various articles on disproportionality in special education, race/ethnicity in
schools, and author of Skin Color and Identity Formation:
Perceptions of Opportunity and Academic Orientation among Mexican and Puerto
Rican Youth
(Routledge Press, 2004). He is currently the Co-Principal Investigator of a
study of single-sex schools for boys of color (funded by the Gates Foundation),
the New York State Technical Assistance Center on Disproportionality, and
various other research and programmatic endeavors focused on disproportionality
and educational opportunity. Dr. Fergus received his doctorate and masters in
Social Foundations and Educational Policy from the University of Michigan. He
earned his bachelors in political science and teaching certificate from Beloit
College.
Panelists:
Stephen
Loffredo, Professor, earned his
undergraduate degree from Yale, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and clerked
for the New Jersey Supreme Court before entering practice at the Legal Aid
Society in the South Bronx. He is co-author of The Rights of the Poor
with his wife, Helen Hershkoff, and served as consultant to the late U.S.
Senator Paul Wellstone on the constitutional aspects of federal welfare
legislation. He teaches in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law,
health law, and social welfare law, and has co-directed the Immigrant and
Refugee Rights Clinic and the Workfare Advocacy Project Seminar/Economic
Justice Clinic, which received the Pro Bono Service Award of the New York State
Bar Association in 2002 and the Clinical Legal Education Association's Award
for Excellence in 2004.
Natalie M. Gomez-Velez, Professor, is a graduate of NYU School of Law where she
was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Fellow. She was
General Counsel/Agency Chief Contracting Officer at the NYC Department of Youth
Services and a staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. She has
worked at the Brennan Center for Justice, and as Special Counsel to the Chief
Administrative Judge of the NY State Unified Court System. She has served as
the Bronx Representative on the NYC Panel for Educational Policy and as the
representative of the Twelfth Judicial District on the NY State Board of
Regents. She currently serves on New York’s Statewide Judicial Screening
Committee appointed by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye. She was named an Outstanding
Latina of 2003 by El Diario/La Prensa.
Adriana Piñón, Staff
Attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union.
Ms. Piñón focuses her work on the
education system and various constitutional issues. Prior to working at the
NYCLU, Piñón served as a law clerk at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
in San José, Costa Rica and assisted the Center for Constitutional Rights with
its Alien Tort Statute litigation. She also worked on institutional reform
issues with the Centro por Estudios Legales y Sociales in Buenos Aires,
Argentina while studying abroad at the Universidad de Buenos Aires during law
school. Piñón graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1998 with an
A.B. in history and science, and she received her J.D. from Columbia Law School
in 2007 with special recognition for her work in international law.
Alexander Artz (Andy) is a staff attorney with the Education
Law Unit at Legal Services NYC - Bronx. His practice focuses on school
discipline and special education. A co-founder of the Suspension
Representation Project, he has advocated for students at Superintendent's
suspension hearings for four years. Andy earned his J.D. in 2009 from New
York University School of Law. His distinctions include the Order of
Barrister and the Christian Jarecki ’98 Memorial Prize.
