Named for pioneering Mexican American lawmaker, DISD school focused on empowering girls

High school Spanish teacher Esmeralda Martínez is nursing a bruise. Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School just started offering self-defense classes, and a few days ago, a twiggy senior flipped Martínez straight on her back.

Despite her sore arm, Martínez is satisfied. Every day, she teaches and mentors girls in a building named for the woman who guaranteed Martinez’s higher education 20 years ago.

Martínez is a first-generation college graduate from the University of Texas at San Antonio. This year, her daughter graduates from the Rangel School, the magnet middle and high school that maintains a 100% graduation and college acceptance rate.

The Rangel School was established in 2004 and named for Irma Lerma Rangel, the first Mexican American woman elected to the Texas House of Representatives. The institution is the state’s first public all-girls school.

“Being at Rangel is my life’s work,” Martínez said. “My passion is empowering women’s college education — for me, it was life-changing. I have always poured my heart into the school because I want my daughters to benefit from this.”

Legacy continues

Martínez was admitted to UTSA in 2002, five years after Rangel pioneered landmark legislation requiring all state colleges to admit automatically all students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Martínez, who has been at the school for 16 years, considers Irma Rangel a hero for the Texas Hispanic community.

“I make a 45-minute drive here, and then a 45-minute drive back home,” Martínez said. “I wouldn’t change that. I never see myself leaving the school.”

The school prioritizes a rigorous STEM-focused curriculum, leadership training and college preparation.

“To be named after a female with the power to help make decisions at the state level makes a very positive impact on our girls,” Principal Yvonne Rojas said. “They have a lot of pride in Irma Rangel, not just as an individual, but also what she represented.”

Rojas started at Rangel in August. She said she could feel the energy of the girls the second she got to the campus. Pictures and statues of Irma Rangel fill the halls of the school where students recite the motto: “Girls Today. Women Tomorrow. Leaders Forever.”

“It was just such a breath of fresh air walking in and seeing how the girls are, and I think Irma Rangel would feel the same,” Rojas said, “You walk the building and they’re studying, they’re pulling out their computers. I just had a little girl in here meeting with a college adviser.”

In Martínez’s junior and senior leadership classes, students practice and learn empowerment. Every senior at Rangel creates a leadership project, such as creating and implementing “toolkits” for sixth-graders based on what the older girls wish they knew when starting at Rangel.

The school’s faculty is predominantly composed of women of color, mirroring the population of the student body at large.

Physics and chemistry teacher Estefany Luna graduated from the Rangel School in 2013 and came back to teach at her alma mater. She says that the school made her feel so supported as a Hispanic woman that experiencing adversity related to her identity while attending Cornell University came as a shock.

“I knew the struggles that many minorities go through, but I wasn’t as aware of them when I was a student because I didn’t see my identity as a hardship,” Luna said. “Most of my teachers and peers were either Black Americans or Hispanic and we saw these women as strong leaders. I didn’t realize that that’s not the case for everyone — we were kind of in a bubble. When I went off to college, it was interesting to be not one of many, but one of the only ones that are Hispanic.”

Luna says the school being named for a Hispanic woman also aids in empowering the students through representation. Rojas agrees, noting her position as Rangel’s first Hispanic principal.

“I’m very excited, it’s cool to be the first Latina to take over a campus named after a Hispanic namesake that has majority Hispanic girls,” Rojas said. “I met with parents in August, and they all felt so welcoming.”

Support and service

The school heavily involves its students in fundraising and advocating for breast cancer awareness in minority communities. Irma Rangel died of breast cancer in 2003, and the Rangel School participates in the annual Susan G. Komen “More Than Pink” Walk in her honor.

Martínez has a personal connection to the school’s dedication to breast cancer awareness. Three years ago, her mother participated in the walk as a breast cancer survivor.

She remembers that her mother, who doesn’t speak English, kept asking Martínez what the signs along the path said.

“That next year, the girls saw this and stayed back after school one day to make all their signs in Spanish, so that when women like us participate, they understand what those signs mean,” Martínez said. “I was shedding tears.”

Since then, students at Rangel have made several multilingual signs for participants of the walk. Martínez described how several multiethnic people approach the girls at the finish line, hugging them in appreciation over seeing a language they understand.

“We have people who come to us and say, ‘I feel like even though I’m a breast cancer survivor, I’m not a part of this community because it’s not tailored to me – I don’t understand the speakers,’” Martínez said. “Our girls are given the space to think out loud and say, ‘Since our people don’t feel connected to this, we’re going to fix that.’”

The school’s League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Council created a Pink Out Committee charged with filling up the month of October with speakers, drives, and activities.

“That’s the power of educating a woman: you take care of that community,” Martínez said.

Irma Rangel was the first school to open with the Young Women’s Preparatory Network, a nonprofit agency dedicated to forming academically rigorous college preparatory schools in underserved areas.

With their high-achieving alumnae, invested teachers, and overnight trips at places from the Perot Museum to Washington, D.C., the school reflects Irma Rangel’s dedication to female empowerment through education.

“The opportunities are limitless for our girls,” Rojas said. “I think Irma would be very proud to see them be those leaders.”