City High grad learned to draw and read — then lead

IOWA CITY — After she’d finished reading all the Spanish-language books in the Lucas Elementary School library, Rosangel Flores Rubio started checking out “learn to draw” books because they required only minimal English.

She spent hours drawing horses and Ladybug from the “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir” television series. Before long, her classmates thought of her as the “art kid” — not just an English Language Learner.

“Part of it probably stems from being first generation,” Flores Rubio, 18, of Iowa City, said about her skill with cartooning and graphic design.

Flores Rubio — who immigrated from Honduras in third grade with her mother and younger sisters — has grown into other roles: City High Student Senate co-president, executive editor of the Little Hawk newspaper, tennis player, mock trial team member and founder of Latino Hawks.

She will graduate with 409 other Iowa City High seniors at 7 p.m. today at Xtream Arena in Coralville.

Jonathan Rogers, the City High journalism adviser, described why he picked Flores Rubio as executive editor of the Little Hawk, which has a staff of 40 and publishes in print and online.

“Not only is she a bit of a unicorn in that she’s an artist and writer and a leader, ” he said, “but she’s the quiet leader everyone respects.”

Flores Rubio illustrates staff pieces, writes stories and leads the daily publication class.

On a recent Friday night, she sat behind her laptop screen at a coffee house, trying to figure out where a page of an upcoming edition had gone in the online design system. Earlier in the day, she’d helped put on Culture Day, a celebration of clothing and food from students’ countries of origin.

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Grades are important — she’s headed to Macalester College, a prestigious liberal arts school in Minnesota — but not as important to Flores Rubio as the teams and clubs she joins.

“When people start getting stressed and they are looking at their grades, the first thing they sacrifice are their extracurriculars,” she said. “I try not to do that because I know that if I start sacrificing that, that work falls on another person.”

Flores Rubio and Lulu Roarick, Student Senate co-president, led an initiative this year that raised $4,000 to pay for yearbooks for seniors for whom the $50 keepsake is a financial burden. They got 57 requests for aid, which means they’ll have about $1,200 to help pay for next year’s seniors.

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