[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 68 (Thursday, May 17, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5114-S5115]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       MIAMI EDISON MIDDLE SCHOOL

 Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to share with you a 
remarkable story.
  As sweeping a statement as this is, the story of Miami Edison Middle 
School is truly the story of America in the 20th Century.
  It is the story of immigration, with all its challenges, and all its 
rewards.
  It is the story of hard work, of culture differences, and cross-
cultural understanding.
  It is the story of a city, and a neighborhood and how each generation 
that passes through leaves behind a layer to build on.
  With its Art Deco auditorium and full-sized gymnasium, Miami Edison 
High School, originally called Dade County Agricultural High, was as 
magnificent a structure as you could imagine when it was built in 1928.
  Through the school, one can trace the growth and transformation of 
the face of Miami, and indeed, the country.
  When it opened in what was then Lemon City, a swath of land 
surrounded by lemon and orange groves, the entire student body was 
white.
  My wife, Adele, was a student there, as were many of the men and 
women who are today some of Florida's most respected citizens, 
including Congressman Clay Shaw and his wife, Emilie, historian Arva 
Moore Parks and Miami Dolphins football star Nat Moore.
  By the 1960s, most of the students were Hispanic.
  A new high school for the area was built in 1978 and Edison became a 
middle school.
  Today, the majority of students are of Haitian descent or are recent 
Haitian immigrants. Edison High School has the highest percentage in 
the state of students still learning English. It has the lowest math 
and reading tests scores. It has far too many students living in 
poverty.
  The original high-school building, however, looks much the same as it 
did when it was built, only better.

[[Page S5115]]

  For years Edison, like many urban schools, was left to crumble. 
Finally, school and county officials decided it was time to put this 
piece of Florida history in the path of the wrecking ball. To many 
Edison alumni, organized as the ``Over the Hill Gang, this was 
unconscionable.
  In an age when too many children are being taught in makeshift 
classrooms, trailers and former utility closets, we were sacrificing 
what could truly have been called a temple of learning. We were 
carelessly trampling our history and taking down with it the too-long-
lost tradition of teaching our children in school buildings that 
reflect that grandeur of what goes on inside their walls.
  A group of Edison alumni including Arva Moore Parks, one of Florida's 
great voices for preserving our history, fought to save the school.
  In 1992, Dade County agreed to keep the original school standing and 
refurbish it to meet the needs of today's students.
  While the alumni group had the best intentions, the parents of 
today's Edison students were wary, and not without cause.
  The neighborhood had been promised a new middle school in 1988. It 
was supposed to be completed by 1992. Instead, children were still 
trying to learn in a decaying, leaking building.
  The move to preserve the old school looked, to many neighborhood 
parents, like another broken promise.
  In the end, the families of that area got the best of both worlds. 
The building, restored by architect Richard Heisenbottle of Coral 
Gables, is a magnificent melding of old and new. The architectural 
elements of the past are bolstered by a new wing, new lighting, 
plumbing and air-conditioning. Old classrooms were gutted and 
refurbished. The original wood floor of the gymnasium remains in place 
along with a 1,700-seat auditorium with Deco light fixtures and a 
carved, wraparound balcony. In 1997 the architect, the alumni group, 
the Dade County School Board and the Dade Heritage Trust received one 
of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's prestigious honor 
awards for the project.
  The building itself is a tribute to all involved, but strangely 
enough, it may not be the most important structure that grew out of 
this effort. The men and women who fought to save the school also built 
a sturdy bridge connecting Miami's immigrants to its old guard, its 
present to its past.
  One United Band: The Edison Linkage Foundation was formed to reassure 
the community's parents that today's students mattered as much to the 
alumni as the school building.
  The foundation raises money for an aggressive mentoring program that 
offers a stipend to successful students at Edison High School to tutor 
younger, at-risk children and to serve as role models for navigating 
the challenging and often frightening world of adolescence.
  For some immigrant children, that world is even more frightening than 
for most young people.
  Language barriers are just a small part of the problem many of these 
children face. Some came from Haiti directly to middle school without 
having had any formal education before. They are illiterate in their 
own language as well as a new one.
  Many live in poverty, with families who cannot spend as much time 
with them as they'd like to and cannot help them with their homework.
  Tutors can help fill in the blanks, bridge the gaps that keep them 
from reading, understanding, learning and staying in school. They can 
offer a living, breathing vision of something to strive for.
  The program has been a resounding success. In the 1999-2000 school 
year, 26 middle-school students showed measurable academic gains after 
being tutored.
  Of the student's tutored, 15 percent were non-readers. Those students 
are now reading at a level three and above.
  Meanwhile, the graduating seniors who served as tutors are all headed 
for college this fall.
  The money to pay for the tutors' time is raised from Edison alumni 
scattered around the country and through fund-raisers including shows 
and sales of Haitian art.
  The art shows are both a fund-raising tool for the mentoring program 
and college scholarships, and a source of pride for children from 
Haitian families.
  The third of these will take place May 21, 2001, in the Florida House 
in Washington, D.C.
  All of this has been thanks to the hard work of a number of dedicated 
volunteers and professionals. These include: Martha Anne Collins, 
Linkage Foundation administrator; Ron Major, Edison Middle School 
principal; John Walker, coordinator of the tutoring program and an 
assistant principal at Miami Edison High School; Alma King-Jones, 
Middle School coordinator and administrative assistant to the 
principal; Betsy Kaplan of the Dade County School Board; historian Arva 
Moore Parks and my wife, Adele Khoury Graham, who co-chaired the 
Linkage Foundation; Charles Keye, Linkage Foundation treasurer; Fred 
and Mary Exum and the ``Over the Hill Gang'', who have helped 
coordinate the brick donation program for the Dade County Public School 
system.
  All these people, and many more, are responsible for the vision, and 
then the reality, that became the Edison Middle School and the Linkage 
Foundation.
  These men and women reached across generations and through racial and 
cultural divides to unite Miami today with the Miami of yesterday.
  In doing so, they have helped create a source of hope and opportunity 
for the Miami of tomorrow.

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