The Sister School Project

Sister School Project Newsletter

August 2005 

Background

The Sister School program was started by a group of students at Monticello High School with the help of their teacher Rusty Carlock and Salvadoran-American community member Roger Gonzalez.  Rusty Carlock traveled to El Salvador in January of 2005 to find a school in an impoverished area of El Salvador that Monticello High School and the Charlottesville community could adopt as a sister school to facilitate international understanding, alleviation of poverty, and basic development of an educational community in need.  With the help of the Charlottesville Sunday Night Salsa Club and a group of private donors, the Sister School Program raised $2,837 to meet the basic needs of a public school in Zaragoza, El Salvador that serves 400 students with only six teachers in a poor area plagued by gang violence. 

In July of 2005, Rusty Carlock moved to El Salvador to work at the private school La Escuela Americana in San Salvador, as well as to continue work with the sister school in Zaragoza, 20 minutes away.  Monticello High School teachers Marney Morrison and Kristin Copley, as well as Roger Gonzalez will continue to represent the Sister School Project in Charlottesville.

A Warm Welcome By Rusty Carlock

After being in El Salvador for a week I purchased a 1988 Mitsubishi Montero, rustic enough to allow me to traverse the dirt road in Zaragoza and get to the Centro Escolar Canton El Zaite.  I planned the initial visit to meet with the school director and discuss plans for beginning the infrastructure development with the funds we collected from the Sunday Night Salsa Club, Monticello High School, and numerous individual donors.  I also delivered boxes of crayons and notebooks that had been donated directly to the school by students at Monticello High School.

I was surprised to find the Student Council of the school had organized a grand welcome and celebration of the project.  The 8^th and 9^th grade students gathered in the biggest of the school’s small classrooms, and the Student Council president formally thanked Monticello High School and the community of Charlottesville for helping them to improve their school and “realize their dreams.”  One of the 8^th grade girls wrote a song in honor of the event and she and a guitar-playing classmate performed it. 

The students in each of the classes I visited had a handful of letters for their “amigos lejanos” at Monticello High School.  I will deliver these letters to MHS so that the pen-pal program can continue.

Changes in the Last Six Months

The school has already begun some developments on their own.  They have taken a vacant lot next to the school and begun to construct a small soccer field, even though they haven’t secured the legal title to the land because, according to the school director, it belongs to a corrupt politician who has moved to the United States.  Also, they have torn down the oldest of their aluminum siding classrooms, and are replacing it with cinderblock, a much more durable and cooler building material.  The director of the school put out a plea to the community to provide used fans for the classrooms since January.  Each classroom now has at least one fan, although when I visited on 7.25, the electricity was not working, so the fans didn’t do much to tame the stifling heat. 

An Important Need: Security

An unfortunate development in the community of El Zaite has been the continuation of gang violence between MS-13 and MS-18, the dominant gangs of El Salvador.  The director of the school says that just two weeks ago, the school was broken into and money that was to be used for a special celebration was stolen.  It has gotten so bad that nothing of any value can be kept in the school after dark.  Also, the director fears for the safety of the teenage boys who come to the school, because they are often recruited by the gangs.  She wants to make the school a safehaven in the midst of a dangerous community, a place where students can go to escape the violence that surrounds them.  In order to do this, and in order to make future investments in the school such as a library or a computer, the director believes that a secure wall is the greatest need of the school.  

The picture to the left shows the current state of the wall surrounding the school.  The first priority, according to the director, would be to construct a cinderblock wall high enough and strong enough to ensure the safety of the students during the day, and the security of school materials at night.  On Saturday, July 30^th, I will travel to Zaragoza with Manuel, Roger Gonzalez’s brother in law, and a private contractor he knows who builds walls to get an estimate on how much such a wall will cost.  Depending on the estimate of the contractor, and the legal and government permission involved, building a secure wall around the escuela in El Zaite may be the first development project we pursue to help the sister school. 

Thanks to the support of the Charlottesville community, we can begin to address the deep needs of the students in El Zaite.

Rusty Carlock

Phone:  2257-2512

Escuela Americana 


P.O. Box (01)35 


San Salvador, El Salvador, C. A.