Educator, CEO of ROADS Charter High Schools
(1975– )
I’ve been living in Harlem for almost fifteen years. I purposely chose the place where I live, 145th Street in the Sugar Hill area, because I can look out my window and see the 145th Street Bridge and, across it, the Bronx.
From my window I can see the building where I grew up, which happens to be the same building where my grandmother and aunt still live. That’s at 142nd Street and Brook Avenue, in the heart of the South Bronx. I can even see the public school that I went to, which was P.S. 31. I can also see Lincoln Hospital from my window. I was born there, although I was born in the old building. And then if I turn my head, I can see the new Yankee Stadium and the courthouse. Even though I now live in Harlem, I will never let go of being a Bronx girl—of being a Bronx native.
My memories have been, and still are, of family. My grandparents on my mom’s side are both from Puerto Rico. They moved here in the 1950s. My mom went off to boarding school in the ninth grade, but she got pregnant with me at fourteen, and ended up coming home in her junior year. It’s tough for me to say that I was a mistake since she gave birth to me, for which I’m so grateful. But I don’t think that my mom would be where she is, or I would be where I am, if it weren’t for the fact that my grandparents understood the value of family and of being there for you, no matter what. They clearly played a big role in raising me along with continuing to raise her. After coming back home she graduated from Morris High School.
I grew up in a setting where, frankly, I didn’t know what the terms “extended” and “immediate” family meant. I grew up with my mom, my grandparents, my mother’s brother, and my aunt, who was thirteen when I was born. At various times we also had other family members living with us, family from Puerto Rico or my uncle who came back to New York after being in the marines. He and his wife and kids also lived with us. I grew up thinking that’s what family meant. Wasn’t everyone’s family that way?
We lived in a HUD-owned building. It was low-income housing for sure. It had a lot of bedrooms—maybe five? I could be rewriting history here. It felt like we had a lot of space. Maybe it was closer to three or four bedrooms.
My godmother and her two kids lived on the third floor of the same building. My oldest aunt and her daughter lived on the twelfth floor. Another aunt and cousin lived on the fourteenth floor. My mother and I moved to the sixteenth floor. So while I didn’t at that point in my life have any siblings, our family ruled the building. On any given weekend, you would find me with my cousins Jasmine and Vanessa in one of our apartments. This concept of a lot of family being around was the norm for me. It wasn’t until seventh grade, when I was in private school, that this concept of “extended” versus “immediate” family came into play. My classmates at that point lived with their moms, their dads, and their siblings. They referred to their aunts, uncles, and grandparents as extended family. I was like—what are you talking about?
I would not be the person I am today if it weren’t for the love and nonstop constant support of my whole family. And frankly, you couldn’t even get away with stuff, right? There was this concept of everyone watching you for your own good. But you know what’s funny? I was a good girl in a lot of ways. I was the kind of girl who would say to my cousin, “You might want to think twice,” or “You know you’re gonna get caught.”
I’m blessed to know and love my father. He’s always been in my life. I love my dad, his wife, and my siblings on that side of my family just as much as I love my South Bronx family. But my grandfather, on my mother’s side, was the person who was in my life on a daily basis as I was growing up. He held my hand when Jasmine and I walked to school. Jasmine and I were the same age and so we were in the same classes because we were cousins and not siblings. My grandfather walked us to school every day. He was one of the very few parents who came to school at lunchtime to bring us our own lunch because we were picky eaters and he was afraid that we wouldn’t eat the school lunch. He would also pick us up after school. When I started taking the bus to school, he was the one who walked me to the bus stop every morning because my mom had to go to work. She was working in Manhattan at the time. And Pop (grandpa), at that point, wasn’t. When I think about eyes watching you—you couldn’t get away with a thing.
In second grade it became clear that I was on a different path than the other kids in the class. Mrs. Schwartz was my teacher. I’ll praise her day and night. Mrs. Schwartz put me in my own reading group. I didn’t understand it at the time, but over time I began to appreciate what she did because I was reading way above grade level. She had me in my own corner reading books, pushing my own ability to read, while she spent most of her time with everyone else. Everyone saw it, but no one said anything about it. At the end of the day, whether we were in the lunchroom or the library or back in the building where we lived, I was just Jemina. I was just another girl who sometimes was funny and wore funny things the way all kids do or said silly things, so at that point until second grade I definitely didn’t feel like an outsider. When I left to go to the Gifted Program in P.S. 31, I started going on a school bus to 149th Street and the Grand Concourse. It was then that I began to realize that even though the kids in my new school were not from my immediate neighborhood, they were all from the Bronx. I began to understand that the Bronx was bigger than just my neighborhood.
By contrast, the kids from where I lived were all black and Latino. My street was largely Puerto Rican. I happen to be half black and half Puerto Rican. My dad is African American, but I grew up in a very Puerto Rican household in a very Puerto Rican neighborhood. I wouldn’t even say Latino, because at that point Dominicans lived in Washington Heights.
But when I got to P.S. 31, there was more of a mix, even though it was largely black and Latino. In fifth or sixth grade, a Chinese family moved into the district. It was a big deal in our school because they were the only Chinese there. There was Lee, who was in my class, who also had a younger brother and a sister, Shirley, who I’ve since connected with, because she ended up going to boarding school with one of my very good friends from Yale. The sixth grade was the first time I got to know people other than those who were black or brown. Also, that was my first time getting to know kids who had to learn how to navigate the system because they didn’t know English. In our neighborhood, you could get away with not speaking English, because of the majority of Latinos in the area, but if you were a Chinese immigrant in the South Bronx at that point, it was much harder. It was fascinating to watch the teachers having to figure out how to help the kids learn, even if they didn’t speak their language. That was my first experience with real diversity, and it helped shape my life path, I think.
I had no idea until I started working at the Department of Education, years later, that I had grown up in the lowest-performing district in the whole city. You know how that saying goes, “You don’t know you’re poor until you’ve seen rich,” right? I had no idea. No idea.
I’m looking out the window in my Harlem apartment again. When I think about home and I think about the Bronx, it means so much to me to meet other people who grew up in the Bronx. We have this affinity. I appreciate it.