Cristal Salgado was tired of fighting for her son and not getting anywhere.

In sixth grade, Salgado’s son, Noe, was being bullied at school. With the negative social environment, he started to fall behind academically. Despite multiple conversations with staff at her son’s school and board members in a Marion County township school, nothing was being done to help Noe.

“I was not going to let my son fail,” Salgado said.

So she took matters into her own hands. She spoke with an advocate from the parent group Stand For Children Indiana. Through those conversations, she learned about resources to advocate within her son’s school, and about different school options. She found Paramount Englewood, a high-quality public charter school, and enrolled Noe in eighth grade.

“At first it was a big change for him,” she said, noting more structure and rigor. “He was able to get used to it pretty quickly. He was very impressed because he was like, ‘mom, there’s a huge difference in the behavior of the students, in how the teachers pay attention to us.’”

After a few weeks of being at Englewood, Noe was taking notes in class for what she recalls was the first time in years. “He was learning, he was excited about it,” Salgado said. “I’ve never seen him be excited about writing.”

She’s noticed bigger changes, too. Noe has more energy than he used to because, aligned with Paramount’s model of maximizing classroom learning and minimizing busywork after school, he’s focused on school during the day and is not swimming in homework at night. He feels motivated and engages in extracurricular activities like tae kwon do. He even helps his sister, who is in second grade, with her studies.

For Cristal, the biggest breakthrough moment was when he started talking about the possibility of enrolling in college, inspired by the fact that Paramount Englewood partners with Purdue Polytechnic High School, whose students are on a path to enrollment at Purdue University.

“He came home one day and he said if I keep going to this school and stay at the charter school, I’m going to be able to go to Purdue,” Salgado said. “That was one of the things that I was like, wow, that is huge for me.”

Noe’s positive experience has inspired her to become an advocate. She wants other parents like her to know they have options to send their kids to schools beyond those within geographic proximity. She feels this is especially important in the Hispanic community, where language barriers can make it difficult for families to navigate their options.

“I just want to be able to share all this information,” Salgado said. “At one point, I had no idea that charter schools even existed. I thought my only options were the schools that were close to us.”

Along with speaking to other families, Salgado has spoken to public school board members through the community-driven Better Together movement. She believes schools like Paramount Englewood, which have made such a difference for her son, should be able to expand and serve more students. And there should be transportation options to make it easier to access these high-quality public schools.

Salgado drives Noe 30 minutes each way from their Westside Indianapolis home to the city’s Near Eastside – and that’s especially demanding for her as a single working mom.

“I would love to be able to have this choice closer to home,” Salgado said. “I would love to see those types of schools multiply in our city so everybody has access to them.”

Better Together advocacy also is meaningful to her because she has seen the power of education as someone who immigrated from Mexico at age 16. She hopes to one day earn her own education beyond high school. For now, her focus lies on her kids.

“For me, education is number one,” Salgado said. “There’s nothing more powerful than knowledge. I want my son to be able to have what I was not able to achieve.”