## The Classroom That Was Not Available
To understand what the families in the Mendez case were actually challenging, it helps to understand what a Mexican school in Orange County in the 1940s actually was — not as an abstraction but as a daily experience for the children assigned to it.
The Hoover Elementary School in Westminster, where Sylvia and her brothers were directed after the rejection at 17th Street, was a frame building at the edge of the local colonia — the segregated Mexican neighborhood that many such communities contained. The building itself was small. The grounds were not maintained the way that Anglo schools were. There was a muddy cow pasture adjacent to the building, and the contrast with the green lawns and proper playground equipment at 17th Street was not subtle or deniable.
But the physical conditions, while telling, were not the whole story. The curriculum in Mexican schools in this period was structured differently from what Anglo children received. Academic subjects like geometry, biology, and advanced mathematics were offered at Anglo schools. Mexican schools concentrated their instruction in areas deemed appropriate for the labor futures their students were expected to have: vocational training for boys, domestic work for girls. The assumption embedded in this curriculum was that the children assigned to these schools did not need the educational foundation that would prepare them for professional or academic careers.
Teachers assigned to Mexican schools were, according to witnesses at the trial, generally less experienced than those at Anglo schools. The textbooks in use were the discarded materials from Anglo schools — passed down rather than purchased new, carrying the wear of previous classrooms with children who had moved on to new materials while the Mexican schools received what was left over. Class sizes were larger. Physical space was more constrained.