The papers include a small amount of personal material, but primarily relate to his work with Milwaukee schools, as well as other districts, specifically involving bilingual education. The collection also contains numerous records of Milwaukee educational and community organizations with which Baéz was active from 1972 through 2008. His interests in bilingual education and Puerto Rican culture are represented by subject files and by some materials from several educational conferences.
The collection consists of nine series: PERSONAL FILES, 1989-2005; MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS, 1970-2008; NON-MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS, 1968-2003; ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMITTEES, 1985-1998; PRESENTATIONS, CONFERENCES, AND EVENTS, 1980-2005; RESEARCH AND WRITING, 1887-2006; AUDIO RECORDINGS; ELECTRONIC FILES; and VISUAL MATERIALS.
There are a few PERSONAL FILES, comprised primarily of correspondence, commendations, and resumes. Other biographical information is also present, including a copy of his baptismal certificate and a Milwaukee Journal article written when he left the city. A small number of financial records in the form of canceled checks and statements of account from 1973 to 1975 are also included, as are two of his brief, unpublished writings and other notes on Latin education.
The MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS materials pertain to his work at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). The bulk of the material relates to his work in the field of bilingual education, but material relating to other work in the Hispanic community of Milwaukee is also present. MPS materials also include information about partnership or alternative schools; a considerable amount of material is present that documents the challenges and development of South Division High School, an alternative school in Milwaukee that was a forerunner of the charter schools movement.
Much of the NON-MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS materials relate to Hostos Community College in New York City, a controversial bilingual education program. There is also material documenting the educational consulting work that Baéz did for many cities and schools throughout the country, primarily regarding bilingual education.
The material in the ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMITTEES series represents the numerous educational and Hispanic organizations and committees at the local, state, and national level in which Baéz was involved. Organizations for which there are numerous records include the Advocate Education Agency (LEA), which administered the Advocate Education Program-Teacher Corps for Corrections-Milwaukee (AEP-TCC-M) and the Community Independent Learning Program; the Community Independent Learning Program (CILP); and La Causa.
The materials within the PRESENTATIONS, CONFERENCES, and EVENTS series reflect Baéz's work in both education and the Hispanic community. RESEARCH AND WRITING includes articles and papers authored by Baéz himself, reports written by Baéz for MATC and MPS, as well as general educational and diversity-related writings and resources by other authors or organizations. A few of the works are in Spanish, among them one regarding multinationals in Puerto Rico, a publication by the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and a report from the University of Puerto Rico on unemployment, dated November 1973.
The AUDIO RECORDINGS series includes a cassette series on Hispanics in the United States. The ELECTRONIC FILES series includes CD-ROMs consisting of Baéz's computer files relating to his research and other personal files. The VISUAL MATERIALS series contains photographs of Baéz, including two CD-ROMs of digital photographs primarily of Baéz and his family. Nearly all donated photographs were on CDs. A selection has been printed and filed in this series. There are also a large number of VHS tapes, including numerous episodes of a local PBS Milwaukee television program co-hosted by Tony Baéz called Adelante, which explores the culture and concerns of the southeastern Wisconsin Latino community.
