Whether volunteering time to a civic, mentoring children or working behind a cause, many with local ties are making our neighborhoods a better place to live.
Angelica Victoriano
Angelica Victoriano’s family was poor and unable to send her to school past the second grade. Years later, she fought to transform a school so her children could receive the education she never did.
The youngest of 11 children from Guerrero, Mexico immigrated to New York for a better life at age 15. Six years ago, she married her husband, Galdino Ruiz, and relocated to the 1300 block of Federal Street with son Louis, but ran into trouble enrolling him in a Passyunk Square facility.
“I remember when I first came [to Andrew Jackson School, 1213 S. 13th St.,] to give the application for registration, I had to come three to four times,” Victoriano, 26, said through a translator. “There were no interpreters in the building.”
After successfully enrolling her son Louis in kindergarten, he struggled, so the now mother of three — Louis, 10, Karen, 6, and Joshua, 10 months — requested he be tested to no avail. Victoriano sought help from JUNTOS, 2029 S. Eighth St., a nonprofit working on behalf of Spanish-speaking immigrants, who placed a complaint that resulted in her son’s placement in part-time learning support.
“After what happened with his evaluation and everything else, I tried to come into the school and give my time, but they would not allow me that opportunity,” she said.
Instead a handful of parents met at her home to create requests, such as opening the library and adding more security officers, for the then-principal, but the school’s leader seemed unresponsive.
Although some parents and district staffers tried to discourage her, she testified before the School Reform Commission two years ago.
“If I had not done what I had done then the school district would not have paid me any attention,” she said. “They made it seem like what I was doing was wrong, but I was just trying to help the school.”
A committee of parents, community members and teachers hired principal Lisa Ciaranca-Kaplan, who led the school to Adequate Yearly Progress in reading and math on the state’s standardized tests for the first time and allowed parents to hold events that celebrate the school diverse ethnicities that include African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Caucasians among others, last year.
“Everything has been great,” Victoriano, Jackson’s Home and School Association’s president, said. “What we want as parents is to keep going and have this school be a multicultural school.”
While she has influenced the education of Louis, now a fourth-grader, she has also impacted the 400-pupil student body.
“I don’t see myself as anything,” Victoriano said. “I see that the school has changed. You can see the changes as soon as you walk in.”
Contact Managing Editor Amanda L. Snyder at asnyder@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
More 2011 Difference Makers:
Madeline Brinkman Louis DiRenzo Bonney DosSantos Andrew Emma Darren Fava
Sara Feinstein Greg Frangipani Gary Harkins Kelly Hile Mitch Little
Robert Malara Jessica Mammarella Chris Menna Anton Moore John Murawski
Cassie Plummer Sue Posternock Michelle Rumbaugh Letty Santarelli Christy Santoro
Marianne Squillaciotti Walter Stewart Jennifer Swain Joe Whelan
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