We’re sequestered in a portable classroom with a gaggle of squirming seventh- and eighth-graders at James Flood Magnet School in Menlo Park. A half-dozen cameramen, a handful of photographers, some reporters and a couple of Secret Service agents clump together along the periphery. We’re all waiting for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to show up.
This photo op, destined to become a 30-second clip on the evening news of a smiling politician hobnobbing with a gaggle of plucky, underprivileged kids, has been days in the making for the Center for a New Generation, an afterschool academic enrichment program now run by the Boys & Girls Club.
The kids completed worksheets on Ms. Rice, made a timeline of her life, hand-painted an American flag. They’ve come up with questions, been coached on how to introduce themselves, and dressed in matching T-shirts.
The program, known as CNG by the kids, was co-founded by Woodside philanthropist Susan Ford Dorsey and Ms. Rice in 1991, a professor at Stanford University at the time. It’s designed to help kids in the Ravenswood City School District gain the skills they’ll need to successfully navigate high school, graduate, and, it’s hoped, go onto college.
At the moment, these future achievers are a bunch of mildly bored kids stuck in a classroom with a bunch of increasingly squirmy media-types.
The kids rehearse their pre-approved questions, then collapse into their chairs. The girls fidget with the big, plastic bead necklaces that nearly all of them are wearing, trade seats, and reapply lip gloss.
Eventually, a motorcade carrying the secretary of state, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and their respective entourages will arrive at the school, take a quick tour, and then sit down in this unlovely trailer for a brief Q&A with the students. At that point, the kids will sit up in their chairs, obedient and slightly nervous, as cameras roll and reporters lean in, but it’s been a long wait. Two hours for the press, and at least half that long for the kids.
“Is this more boring or less boring than being back in class?” I ask a girl sitting nearby.
“Less boring,” she says, twisting sideways so she can rest her cheek against the back of her chair and stare into space.
An hour meanders by. It’s perpetually 1 p.m. according to the broken hour hand on the classroom clock, but out in the real world, it’s close to 3:30 p.m. when we get the word. The motorcade has arrived. Condoleeza Rice is here at the school.
“Good afternoon, Secretary Rice and Foreign Minster Downer,” the kids chorus as the population in the room suddenly doubles and the press springs to attention.
The kids launch into their questions.
“What obstacles do you face in politics being an African-American woman?” asks eighth-grader Kimmera Wilson.
“It doesn’t seem that there are any more obstacles,” says Ms. Rice. “That I am African-American is just part of the package.”
She explains the limitations they may face — those within themselves, and those within others — shouldn’t stop them. When she devoted herself to studying the Soviet Union, she said, her parents could have asked her, “What in the world is a young black girl from Birmingham, Alabama, doing?” she told the students. “But they didn’t. So don’t let anyone set limitations on you.”
Four of the kids’ nine questions are fielded before time is up. Mr. Downer allows that Australia could learn about baseball from Americans, if they wanted to, and Americans could learn a little something about cricket from the Aussies.
Ms. Rice says she plans to return to California “as soon as possible” after she gets done with being secretary of state.
“I’ll see some of you at Stanford when I get back,” she says.
Then, everyone crowds together for photos, and Mr. Downer hands out an Australian football before everyone troops out of the room.
There’s more waiting, as a bunch of smaller children brandishing American and Australian flags assemble for the big send-off. Ms. Rice has disappeared in an adjacent classroom.
The Secret Service attempts to contain the press on a median island, but it’s about as effective as sweeping back the tide. The flag-wielding children are slightly more tractable.
Also outside, waiting for the big send-off, is Clara Rice, the secretary of state’s stepmother and former principal of Menlo Oaks School.
When the motorcade departs amid a flurry of flag-waving, a quartet of dressed-up CNG alumni, now all attending local private high schools on scholarships, admire photos of Ms. Rice on their cell phones. Three of the kids, Demetrius Hill, Martell Winn and Hugo Lopez, met with Ms. Rice in Washington, D.C., in 2005, and they compare notes on the visits. Back East, they got more face time than they did here.
“We didn’t really get to talk to her,” says Demetrius. “We got a little shout out.”
Demetrius, 16, a sophomore at Sacred Heart School in Atherton, says he might not have done the private school application essays if not for the influence of his mentor at CNG.
“They have all kinds of extracurricular activities to keep us out of trouble,” he says, but then admits that he was never a trouble-making kid to begin with.
“My mother wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior,” he says.
