Dancing close amid flashing lights and thumping music, dazzling prom-goers from Gaithersburg High School proved Friday night that some traditions transcend achievement gaps and demographic change.
Corixa Alfaro was a part of the festivities, and also a part of one of the most significant changes at Montgomery County schools in the past 20 years: an influx of Hispanic immigrants and English-language learners.
The number of Hispanic students in Montgomery County has grown steadily from 6,376 students, or 7 percent of the system, in 1988, to 29,723, or 22 percent, in 2008. At Gaithersburg, one of the district’s most diverse schools, 31 percent of the student population is Hispanic, and 12 percent of its students have limited English skills.
Alfaro, a graduating senior, and two siblings moved to the United States to join their mother. Their father fled political and economic instability resulting from El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.
Now reunited and living in a modest, spotless Gaithersburg home, Alfaro’s parents looked on proudly as their oldest daughter put small white flowers in her hair and donned a deep purple dress in preparation for the dance.
Her father, Amado, laughed as he tried to recall a similar experience in El Salvador. “I didn’t even go to school,” he said.
Maria, her mother, wore a long lavender sundress to match her daughter and said she felt very “contente,” a Spanish word that translates as “happy” but with a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Alfaro and a friend from her English classes went stag to the dance, held in a banquet room at the Rockville Hilton where near-equal proportions of black, white and Hispanic students appeared to mingle freely.
Manifestations of the Hispanic influence came in small doses, and practically without notice by the students, by now accustomed to each other even as the school system doggedly attempts to close the persistent achievement gaps between them.
“Some of my Spanish-speaking friends were talking the other day, and we were saying we hope they play some Spanish music,” Alfaro said, citing Puerto Rican stars Wisin & Yandel and Daddy Yankee as two of her favorites.
To the prom’s deejay, the selections were obvious. “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna play them. They’re both really popular now.”
