Dr. Goldman discusses the lawsuit and ensuing "war" that resulted in the school district hiring more minorities in teacher and administrator positions.
In 1988, there was a big lawsuit against the district by the Hispanic community, I don't know who the specific plaintiff organizations were. It was a massive lawsuit against the district for discriminating against Hispanic Americans. Minorities were only African Americans and they were excluded from there because they were the fastest growing group. We had a lot of friends who were involved with that. Then it was sort of like, why is this limited to Hispanics? They're not hiring Jews either; they're only their friends and relatives was the term of art. Or the only minorities they recognized are African Americans. Well, they've got to learn to share the pot and it includes Jews, too. As I said, there was one Jewish principal. We organized within the Jewish community, including with the Jewish Federation. There was no Jewish Family Services or any others; it was the Federation. They were supportive. We went to see the superintendent, Bob Wentz. We said, ""You've got to start hiring Jewish people, too. There isn't a single Jewish principal except one and he'd been here forever. That's ridiculous. There are like eighty thousand Jews in town."" He said, ""Yeah, of course, of course."" Didn't do anything. Eventually it got ugly and it was just open warfare. People showed up at the board meeting; we're screaming at them. We helped get sympathetic board members elected to the school board who happened not to like him period; it had nothing to do with the Jewish wars. It was like this Jewish Hispanic war. Finally, he was forced out and Dr. Cram was absolutely committed to diversity. We had Jewish principals, Jewish administrators, and more Jewish teachers, as well as Hispanic administrators and so on.