On May 30, 2002, the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy honored its first 24 graduates. Many of the young men and women are the first in their families to graduate from high school. All of them are planning to attend college.

Amidst the celebration, Monique Jackson remembered the school's opening, four years earlier, in the basement of a Safeway supermarket. “I kind of felt like we were guinea pigs,” she said . “Going in, I'm like, ‘Are we going to meet in this school? No windows? Partitions?'”

The school eventually moved out of the basement, and is now housed in an old laundry building in Northwest Washington. It is far from an ideal learning space. But part of what makes the Chavez community special is its refusal to be limited by what it doesn't have. As Shirley Monastra, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Resource Center, put it, “the accomplishment [here] is pretty incredible. There is a message here for all charter schools: You can do it.”

Chavez's success begins with its principal, Irasema Salcido. A veteran of the public school system, Ms. Salcido founded Chavez with a special focus on public policy. “It just seemed so obvious to me,” she said, “to make sure kids in the District would have a way of being involved in the decision-making of what's happening in the city . . . . Congress is here, think tanks are here – everything is here.”

To facilitate that activist spirit, the Chavez curriculum is infused with public policy standards to “help the students see themselves as members of the school, community, country and world.” According to Salcido, “our curriculum teaches students to be critical thinkers, writers and public speakers. They are encouraged to question, debate and express themselves.”

Despite their successes so far, Salcido envisions Chavez's selection as an inaugural First Amendment project school as an opportunity to “develop a more student-centered disciplinary model that honors due process and reflects First Amendment principles.”

“We've already come so far, but now it is time that we strengthen our culture so that we not only teach but reflect these rights in every aspect of the school.”

To learn more about Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy, visit their website: