Mary Gonzales Mend.

Sampling a Private School Across the Mexican Border

After seven years as superintendent of the Stockton Unified School District, Mary Mend has headed south of the border. But it's not for a vacation from the perpetual headaches of a California superintendency.

Mend is the new superintendent of the American School Foundation, a rather exclusive private school in Mexico City catering strictly to the college-bound sons and daughters of diplomats and professionals. The four-school campus enrolls 2,400 youngsters from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade (roughly the size of Stockton's largest high school). About 55 percent are offspring of foreign nationals; a third are Americans.

Five months into her new role, she has discovered some striking parallels in how she spends her time, despite the obvious differences in the student population.

For one thing, Mend still answers to a governing board full of demands that might seem more in line with the kind of issues raised by an informed PTA in the United States. "I'm trying to understand where the board members place their priorities. ... There are very many demands on the school because parents expect so much."

A spokesman for the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., confirmed that the 107-year-old American School Foundation is widely considered "the best stepping stone to an American university education by most Mexicans."

Earlier this fall, when asked about the items at the top of her agenda, Mend listed three things: developing a performance-based pay scheme for the school's 205 professional staff members; fund raising; and how best to deal with Mexico City's stifling air pollution. Regarding the latter, she's overseeing a pilot program for air and water purification on campus.

Mend knows she will be up to whatever task is thrown at her following 20 years of varied administrative duties in the California districts of Montebello and Pomona, as well as the top post in the 33,000-student Stockton system. She says her administrative style "is characterized by the ability to work effectively with controversy, radically conflicting personalities [and] opinions, and much persistence."

Charles Bloch, a member of the Stockton board of education, says Mend's calm, collected, even-handed manner brought stability, if not tranquility, to the multicultural district in recent years. She led the district through a teacher strike and established interest-based bargaining to improve employer/employee relations. Mend also created a magnet school program that ended busing under the district's court-ordered desegregation plan and provided second-language training for 600 teacher.

Bloch, a junior college 4 professor, says Mend had mixed feelings about leaving Stockton while knowing her board much wanted her to remain.

Mend says the private school position in Mexico, birthplace of her par parents, attracted her attention at a time when the North American Free Trade Agreement has put the spotlight on U.S.-Mexican relations. She says she welcomed the chance to deal with the related issues of immigration, bilingualism, and bicultural education from a different perspective.

Mend concedes that her Spanish language skills aren't where they need to be, though much of the instruction and other day-to-day dealings at the American School Foundation are in English. She believes her Hispanic heritage is an advantage on the job "being able to relate a wider spectrum of people. ... Sometimes there is a more natural affinity because of the way I look."

As a lifelong public school educator, she notes, "I've been besieged by claims over the years that private schools have all the answers. ... I'm anxious to see it up close."

Her move into the private sector, she insists, should not be seen as an abandonment of her commitment to urban schooling. "I just wanted to stand back and look at public education from a different point of view."

Mend says she expects to spend 3-4 years in her new role (she has a four-year contract). Then she may well return to an urban superintendency stateside.

In the meantime, she's enjoying the unaccustomed support and involvement of the schools parents and alumni, something she calls "a wonderful change. ... There's no comparing the circumstances, but it makes a huge difference."