Residents bolster support for Alvarez

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- Closure of the Shalimar Learning Center has added

emotional fuel to an already passionate fire.

The center shut down last week after children and parents protested

the firing of Maria Alvarez, a longtime staff member.

“Maria is a good person -- she has helped me so much,” said Leticia

Vasquez, a Shalimar Drive resident. Vasquez has three children, two of

whom have been tutored at the center for years, she said. Her other child

is 2 months old.

“They should keep her and keep the center open. But the parents need

the center to be open. It’s necessary. They need to have the meeting soon

so we can talk about it,” Vasquez added.

Randy Barth, volunteer chairman of Think Together, the organization

that oversees Shalimar and five other learning centers, said staff

members decided to close the center because they felt threatened by the

community.

But Garick Shebesta, a Park Drive resident, said he doesn’t think the

protest warranted the closure.

“I think that’s just more of an easy way out, a way to dodge a social

community issue,” he said. “[Other staff members] should have been more

open and had some type of public hearing with proponents of both her view

and theirs. It doesn’t seem like she was given a fair shake. I think the

community did the right thing by backing her up, but it’s sad it made

them turn their backs on the whole thing.”

Alvarez was fired because she didn’t follow a new schedule for the

tutoring program, Barth said. The learning center rents three apartments

to house its program, which serves about 300 children. Because of space

limits, the program established “teams” of students who were scheduled to

come to the center at different times.

Alvarez said she didn’t agree with the scheduling, but did not refuse

to go along with it.

She did admit that she never turned children away if they needed

academic help, however, and some community members said that personal

policy helped win their support.

Maribel Lara, a Shalimar Drive resident who attended the protest, said

the center’s closing is irrelevant now that Alvarez is gone. Lara said

she didn’t even know the center was closed because she has kept her

children from going back.

“We don’t want to go there anymore if she’s not there anyway,” Lara

said, speaking in Spanish. “We want her back and we won’t go back to the

center until she’s there again.”

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