TOM CRIST : Principal, Alessandro Elementary School, San Bernardino

While our student body is predominantly Latino, we have a magnet program that lets us receive about 11 busloads of students from other areas who come from the gifted and talented program--which is mostly made up of Anglo students. In the process, these gifted kids are mainstreamed with other classes for an hour a day doing projects, music, physical education and other academic activity. These same kids will also go on field trips, to plays and other activities. For example, we had a whale-watching field trip which allowed these kids to experience this with various groups of kids from different backgrounds.

The key is to expose and educate at an early age. We don’t isolate these kids from the other students. We want them, along with the other students, to be exposed to other ethnic groups. We want them to learn to get along and understand that there are differences in this world. As a result, we don’t seem to have any interracial difficulties. The end result is that the kids, no matter their cultural makeup or their residence, consider Alessandro their home. It’s their school.