Hollywood often stereotypes librarians as mousy women in horn-rimmed glasses who hide behind books. But the work of a librarian is not limited to searching databases and silencing noisy patrons. As mandated by the Young Adult Services Association (part of the American Library Association), an element of advocacy underlies the work that librarians do. For one Alameda County Librarian, she took the mandate of advocacy to heart to ensure that her patrons, the inmates of the Alameda Juvenile Detention Hall, were not disenfranchised during the 2008 Presidential Election.

As the Write-to-Read coordinator for the Alameda County juvenile justice program, Amy Cheney spends most of her days at the juvenile detention hall in San Leandro. Write-to-Read brings library services, programs and literacy to incarcerated youth. Because they are minors, these offenders were unable to comment for this report.

As the election approached, Cheney said that her job as a librarian was to provide these incarcerated youth with the voter registration forms and election information that would have been available to them at any public library in the free world.

“It wasn’t enough to just give them the registration forms,” she said, “I had to make sure their votes counted because if the registration process isn’t done correctly, they can’t vote.”

Cheney was targeting youth who would turn 18 by Election Day as well as those who were 18 and serving sentences for crimes they committed as a minor.

Cheney said she attended a voter registration program and began volunteering some of her personal time to ensure these youth were able to complete the often confusing registration and ballot-casting process.

Over a period of one month, Cheney said she managed to register every individual in the juvenile justice system who would be eligible to vote on Election Day — roughly 30 people. Of those 30, Cheney said all but ten were released before Election Day, and, she hopes, they received their ballots at home.

For those ten other inmates behind bars, Cheney said, the ballots were supposed to be mailed to them at the detention hall. With the election only two days away, the ballots had still not arrived.

“We had to find out where the ballots went. I asked the kids to call their parents to see if they had them. Then I took all the names and called the registrar of voters,” said Cheney.

Cheney said that the registrar’s office was unable to locate the registration forms without the registration numbers. As it happened, Cheney said she had made copies and given them to the local Wellstone Democratic Club for their records.

Larry Steinhart, who managed the voter registration efforts at the club, said that all registration information was entered into a database. Due to a glitch in the system, Steinhart had to manually search through thousands of entries, but was able to retrieve all but two of the form numbers.

Steinhart said he was happy to help but felt that Cheney was taking on a “Herculean” task. “I thought there was next to no chance that these kids would ever be able to vote from inside the institution. I thought she was out of her mind in a kind of Don Quixote manner, tilting at all the institutional windmills,” he said.

With registration numbers in hand, Cheney said she returned to the registrar’s office and was finally able to ensure that the names were in the system. She also made sure that official ballots were hand-delivered to the juvenile detention hall. Rather than risk the mail, she said that she physically delivered the ballots to the polling place on Election Day.

Cheney said the experience was frustrating. “What if you don’t have an advocate? It really irritates me. This might be human error, but could we not have a better system?” she said.

But Cheney said her effort was worth it. She said there was an overwhelming response to her educational efforts throughout the detention hall and the youth developed an interest in social and political issues that she had never witnessed before.

“Kids were wanting to register [to vote] who weren’t 18 and readership increased throughout the detention hall. I’ve never gotten anyone to read any book about a president. But everyone wanted to read [Barack] Obama’s book. People wanted to read Michael Moore’s ‘Election Guide.’ I even handed out a Nation magazine to a kid,” said Cheney.

Cheney was quick to assert that her efforts were bi-partisan and that she tried to fully explain the positions of the different political parties and both sides of each item on the ballots. She even provided the youth with contact information so they could do their own research in the detention hall’s library and when they were able to make phone calls.

That being said, Cheney said that many of the young offenders were immediately drawn to Barack Obama because they felt they were able to relate to him.

“I feel like they saw themselves [in him] and wanted to vote. It was great,” she said, adding,

“Obama is speaking in a way that youth can understand.  There’s an absolute connection to him, not just because he’s black but because of his circumstances. The fact that he didn’t know his father and was raised by a single mother; the kids in here can relate to that,” she said.

While Steinhart was never able to meet any of the youth, he said that Cheney’s work taught these juvenile offenders that they had an advocate who was willing to work on their behalf and that their voices matter.

“The voting opportunity which Amy provided was a teaching moment in individual exercise of choice and participation in the civic life of their country. Their voices in this election were equally as powerful as yours and mine, which is as it should be in a democracy,” said Steinhart.

Now that the election is over, Cheney said she is trying to make sure the youth understand that they need to re-register whenever they move, and they do so frequently.

Cheney said she continues to find ways to improve the Write-to-Read program, but hopes that with Obama as president, the youths will maintain an interest in current events and learning that many of them did not have before.

“I think his election is going to have a big impact on them and future generations,” she said.

Shirley Fok, 16, and Harshil Kanakia, 19, go door-to-door as part of Mayor Wasserman

Shyu is one of 130 students Mayor Bob Wasserman’s campaign recruited from high school classrooms and at school activities fairs. The campaign offered students like Shyu community service credit, an “intern” title for their resumes and college recommendation letters. While this all seemed like simply offering students campaign experience and activities for college applications, legal scholars say the recruitment actually violated state education law.

Soliciting students on school grounds for partisan purposes violates section 51520 of the California Education Code, according to Professor Lois Schwartz of U.C. Hastings College of Law.

“Looks like the Mayor really made a booboo here,” Schwartz said.

Wasserman’s campaign said the mayor was too busy to comment, but spokesman Mitchell Lester said: “Obviously, we had no idea” the on campus recruitment broke the law, adding the principals at the schools cleared the campaign to talk to students.

Approval from principals or even the school board would not satisfy the education code, according to Schwartz.

Two high schools, American and Kennedy, did not allow the campus recruitment, according to campaign officials.

Councilmember Steve Cho, one of Wasserman’s two opponents in the election, said when he ran for City Council in 2000 and 2004, he was advised that recruiting students on campus violated school policy. Because of this, Cho said he did not recruit students on campus in this or previous elections.

The third mayoral candidate, Gus Morrison, said he has no student volunteers.

Fontaine Ma, 16, phonebanks at Wasserman campaign headquarters.

According to interviews with students, teachers, and the campaign’s Field Director, Altin Dastmalchi, the campaign staff recruited students in classrooms and orientations by promising college recommendation letters from the mayor himself, in addition to service learning credit, an “internship” program for resumes, and an opportunity to learn about local elections. They asked students to commit four hours a week to phonebanking, door-to-door outreach, and other work like putting up lawn signs and preparing mailers.

“This has been a great program,” said Spokersperson Lester. “It is designed to bring students in to learn more about public service and campaigns.”

While education and legal experts interviewed stressed the importance of encouraging student involvement in politics, some teachers and educators expressed concern that the campaign’s encroachment into classrooms and the promise of recommendation letters was inappropriate.

“I like the kids to get involved in political life,” said Kennedy High School social science teacher Jerry Lapiroff, who did not allow the recruiters in his class, “but I hate to see them possibly working as mercenaries without really having been able to check out the issues in the campaigns and decide who they really wanted to support.”

Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Education, said teachers are often rightly eager to provide opportunities for students, but the school must actively pursue and provide a range of ideas — or, in this case, candidates — from which students can choose.

When one person recruits in a classroom, where students must attend, Syer-Ochi said “the authority that is invested in the teacher and class gets transferred to the presenter,” even if the teacher says the opportunity is optional.

If a classroom visitor fits with the pedagogical goals of the class, at a time that is appropriate in the curriculum, and with the other candidates presenting as well, Seyer-Ochi said having campaign visits in the classroom could be appropriate.

“That’s a really high bar for educators to train young people to be active decisions makers on their own,” she acknowledged.

Wassserman said that while he believed the campaign had to be “careful” about not seeming to coerce the students, he did not believe the schools had any obligation to notify the other candidates.

Government and Economics Teacher Roxanne Ponsi said she and her colleagues at Mission San Jose High School allowed the recruiters into the classroom because the campaign staff was not talking about issues. “It was more about seeing how a campaign works,” she said.

Legally, according the Professor Schartz, the opposite is true. “There is nothing saying the candidate can’t come on campus and speak as long as they have administration approval,” she said. “It’s the solicitation of the kids to help out on the campaign that really causes the problem.”

After visiting the classrooms, the mayor’s campaign required students to fill out a brief application and attend an information session about the basics of campaigning, students and Dastmalchi said. At most of the information sessions, the mayor spoke briefly about his policy positions.

Dastmalchi said he thought the internship provided a good opportunity for students to be politically involved before they could even vote.

Taking a break from phonebanking at campaign headquarters two weeks ago, Fontaine Ma, 16, said the recruiter told her the internship would be good for a college recommendation and would fulfill the mandatory 40-hour service requirement that all high school students must complete. Junior Shyu said promise of a recommendation letter from the mayor attracted most of her fellow students to the campaign.

Wasserman said before signing any letters, he would check with the campaign’s field director to make sure the students did a good job.

The Wasserman’s campaign offer of letters of recommendation in exchange for campaign help was not illegal, according to Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies and former general counsel for the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Despite initially signing up with internship credit on the mind, student Shyu said she has enjoyed learning more about the Mayor and the city more broadly. Though Shirley Fok, 16, did not find many Wasserman supporters on her first day going canvassing door-to-door, she said she liked getting to walk around the neighborhood and talk to people.

Professor Seyer-Ochi stressed the importance of developing dynamic learning experiences outside of the classroom.

“This has the possibility to be really good and build-up longer term relations about local politics, government classes, and internship possibilities,” she said, “but that needs to be done in the contexts that are meaning and right.”

By the time “Yellowjackets” closed Oct. 19 at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, the play helped raised more than $6,000 for the cash-strapped high school newspaper, the Berkeley High Jacket. But while the play—which follows a racial controversy involving the Jacket 14 years ago—helped to solve the newspaper’s financial crisis, it also brought to light a more persistent challenge that continues to face the paper today.

Set at Berkeley High School in 1994, the play follows the boycott of the Jacket by a group of minority students and teachers after the paper runs a story with a controversial reference to the race of the students involved in a fight. The play depicts the newspaper as a mostly-white club out of touch with the views of many minority students.

When the play ended on closing night, the theater invited the current student editors of today’s Jacket to the stage.

Berkeley high student Danita Sylvester, 16 (left), sitting with students Olivia Page, 15 (center) and Evan Achen, 16 (right). Sylvester and Achen said there is less racial tension at Berkeley High than depicted in “Yellowjackets,” but the theme of the play still resonated.

“We were all white, which was really interesting and a bit embarrassing,” said Hayley Beckett, 17, managing editor for the Jacket and a senior at Berkeley High.

White students make up a little over a third of the student body at Berkeley High, but for the last 15 years they have dominated the staffs—especially the editorial board—of the Jacket, according to interviews with students and current and former teachers.

Students both on and off the newspaper staff who saw the play said its themes still resonated today.

“It was still pretty accurate,” junior Danita Sylvester, 16, who is not on the Jacket staff, said of the play.

Sylvester, who is black, said she sees less racial tension at Berkeley High today than what is shown in the play. But as a Jacket reader, she said some of the paper’s articles are more appealing, culturally, to white students.

“I think it could have more opinions from the mainstream,” she said.

Jacket staff members said the newspaper has pushed to recruit a more diverse staff, but described a cycle whereby the paper covers stories from the perspective of the staff, which makes it more appealing to readers with similar backgrounds.

“We’re really working hard to change the make-up of our writers,” said Editor-In-Chief Megan Winkelman, 17, who is white. “Part of it is students feel unwelcome when coming in, you have students who are mostly one race.”

Racial imbalance is not unique to the Jacket, or high school journalism. Nationally, minorities make up only about 14 percent of journalists at daily newspapers, according to a survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. That is less than half the percentage represented by minorities in the population as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

At the high school level, the lack of diversity on student newspaper staffs could be a function of racial disparities in other aspects of education, according to Rick Ayers, a former Berkeley High teacher who was the paper’s faculty advisor from 1996 to 2003.

The Jacket “tends to be the province of elite students, the [advanced placement] track students, and there’s a lot of white students,” said Ayers, who is white.

Yellowjackets playwright Itamar Moses, 31, is a Berkeley native and was himself a Jacket editor during the 1990’s. He said the play is meant to encourage more discussion about social segregation at Berkeley High.

“It may be certain subcultures at the school are perceived to be welcoming to a certain subset of people and it’s a very hard cycle to break,” Moses said.

Franklin Elementary is one of the few schools in Oakland where Asians – many born outside the United States – make up the largest racial group. Combined with the Latinos, the district considers half the school’s students as English Language Learners.

That means the majority of the students speak another language besides English at home. Their families come from Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Laos, and, most recently, Burma.

For many of these immigrant parents, who face language barriers themselves, it can be difficult to help their children with homework.

“When kids do homework, new immigrant parents mostly don’t know any English,” said JinXia Liu, whose son is in the fifth grade. “So when they finish their homework under the supervision of high school students, we don’t have to rack our brains,” she said.

An after-school learning center run by the nonprofit East Bay Asian Youth Center aims to address these challenges in a culturally sensitive manner. EBAYC has five other after-school learning centers in Oakland. Operating with 250 kids, nearly a third of the student body participates. There are about 700 students at Franklin this year.

Every month, Liu attends a meeting along with other immigrant parents. Mostly mothers with little ones in tow, they fill the cafeteria tables, each one designated for a different language: Vietnamese, Cantonese, Spanish and English.

“They divide us into language groups, and get a high school student to translate what’s being covered today,” said Liu. The program staff includes 40 high school mentors, many who are bilingual.

There are other reasons why the Franklin learning center is popular with parents – it’s free. A federal grant covers the cost for Franklin. The families of the students are limited income earners; 70 percent of the students qualify for free lunches.

But with federal funding come other requirements. The after-school learning center uses the students’ scores from the California Standards Test to measure improvement and to hold themselves accountable to administrators of the grant.

Similar to the state testing requirements that begin in the second grade, EBAYC accepts students starting in the second grade.

Principal Jeanette MacDonald said that, since 2000, there has only been one year when the California Standards Test scores did not improve.

The latest scores put Franklin Elementary at 835, according to the Academic Performance Index. Schools that surpass the 800 benchmark are considered “excellent,” according to the California Department of Education.

“Absolutely (the test scores) have everything to do with the after-school program,” said MacDonald. “We work very closely.” Tommy Lee, director of the after-school learning center, and a designated teacher liaison collaborate on the program content based on the needs of the school.

High school mentors tutor the students in two subjects measured in the standardized test that ultimately determine the API score — reading and math. Currently, the students are focusing on remedial English in small groups.

“There’s a lot of pressure to focus on test scores and monitor them,” said Anthony Trujillo, a 20-year teacher at Franklin who now works as a liaison between the learning center and the teachers.

“But the real effects have been more time spent with reading, more time spent with math,” he said. “Subjects like science and social studies have suffered.”

But Trujillo said he doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.

“You certainly want kids to leave elementary school knowing how to read and function in math so they can go on to middle school and do well,” he said. “So that’s kind of a give a take. But it certainly looks like they’ve improved on test scores.”

The activities extend the school day by about two and a half hours.

Second grade teacher Angela Yapor said she appreciates having an extra hour at the end of the day to spend with ten of her students who need additional help.

“I think every teacher always feels frustrated because she can’t do enough individualized teaching,” she said. “There aren’t enough moments in the day to sit alongside a child or focus on the particular things that one child.”

On a recent afternoon, the class had a discussion on what languages they spoke. The second graders sat at their desks and went around—Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Cambodian, and Spanish. Two spoke Turkish.

“Only English,” said one child, regretfully.

“Oh, a lot of people wish they could speak only English,” said Yapor.

Students switch classrooms for the second hour, where high school mentors lead small groups in reading and comprehension using a set curriculum called Soar to Success.

Twice a week, students and staff put away pencils and books to engage in two hours of activity. Karate, soccer, arts and crafts, painting, hip-hop, Asian and Latino dance are among what’s offered—and there’s no pressure to pick based on gender or race.

Second grader Brandon Tran, 7, goes to cooking class.

But he gets embarrassed when his mother May says he could use improvement in pronunciation and vocabulary. She’s at school after the parent meeting, checking in with her child’s mentors.

“It’s helped him a lot because (the mentors are) all English speakers,” she said. “I speak with him in my own language at home because I want him to practice it more. His English has gotten better.”

“This was a great week,” exclaimed Thomas Hardy, Vice Principal at Ralph Bunche Continuation School in Oakland, “Kids showed up.” Designed for students who have flunked out of other Oakland high schools, the continuation school employs an expedited curriculum to help the 250 16 to 18-year-olds obtain the necessary credits to graduate.

Bunche is not a neighborhood school. Located in the remote West Oakland warehouse district, students travel from across the city, through gang-ridden neighborhoods, to attend. Despite their different backgrounds, the predominately Latino and African American students share similar problems. As a result, Hardy said, “the school’s faculty is responsible for caring for the students’ educational and emotional well-being.” Teacher turnover rate is high at the school, but morale is up this year said Hardy.

Even though security is tight, with towering fences, iron gates and security guards, the atmosphere is relaxed. Students wear baseball caps and listen to iPods. They use profanity around teachers and occasionally attempt to bribe them to let them leave. Not one student was spotted with a backpack or book and several just wandered in and out of class. “It’s not that we don’t adhere to the rules,” says Hardy, “but we have to adjust so we don’t alienate them. The school has become a safe haven for these kids, an embassy within West Oakland.”

Bunche is more like a fortified embassy within a war zone and does not receive many visitors. Marcus Douglas has been the physical education teacher at Bunche for five years, longer than any other teacher. “Since I’ve been here, not a single Superintendent or School Board member has visited,” he remarked.

With a population comprised of students on parole, on welfare, pregnant and with alcohol and drug addictions, Bunche has become the bastard child of the school district. Troy Flint, spokesperson for the Oakland Unified School District, said Bunche “doesn’t represent the OUSD. It’s not a normal school. It’s an at-risk school. The students have a reputation.” It is this reputation that the teachers and staff at Bunche are working so hard to erase. Hardy stressed, “It’s about equity here. We try to make the kids feel like they’re as a good as everyone else.”

Their good intentions may not be enough to keep kids in the classroom. According to Flint, last year, 42 students missed between five and nine days of school and 76 missed over ten. Teresa Drenick, the Deputy District Attorney for the Alameda County Truancy Unit, said, “it’s really hard to do anything when the kids are this old.” She went on to say that truancy cases can only begin with a formal procedure through the Board of Education. If the Board does not pursue the issue it never reaches Drenick’s desk. Even if every case was reported, it is unlikely that much progress would be made. With over 200 cases at any given time, Drenick said the biggest obstacle for combating truancy is the lack of manpower.

Even with these odds mounted against them, those working at Bunche continue to press on. While other schools may focus on standardized tests, No Child Left Behind, or the California Distinguished School Award, Bunche does not measure success through test scores. According to Hardy, “If a kid gets up and gets ready, makes a conscious effort to go to school, that speaks volumes.”