The 2006 Educators of the Year Award will not be going to the Ontario, California, De Anza Middle School, where a ranking administrator helped shape at least one young mind into something wholly unusable. Anthony Soltero believed he was doing the right thing by participating in a student walk-out in protest of anti-immigration laws. Apparently the assistant principal did not. She told Soltero he’d be barred from graduation activities, that his family would be fined for his truancy and that he’d be going to jail. Distressed and frightened by the fate described to him, 14-year-old Anthony went home and shot himself.

“Anthony was learning about the importance of civic duties and rights,” his mother says. “He died because the vice principal... threatened him for speaking out and exercising those rights.” The school has offered no comment.

Anthony was to be among thousands of students to participate in walk-outs on April 28 to voice opposition to a bill being discussed in Washington that’d make helping or being an undocumented immigrant a criminal offence.

» Scott Saxon