Toxic anti-white diatribe
by Ron Felton,
President, Wilkes-Barre NAACP
Finally, it took federal indictments to convince the Wilkes-Barre Area School District that it needed to revise its hiring policy. I’m sorry that I missed the two public meetings that were held to solicit input from the community on the revision of the Wilkes-Barre Area School District’s hiring policy.
The Wilkes-Barre NAACP recommends that whatever new policy the district comes up with that diversity be an essential component of that policy. While minority students account for nearly forty percent of the student enrollment in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District. Minority teachers account for less than two percent. Those statistics alone should have served as an alarm to school administrators, and driven the need to include diversity as part of any hiring policy put forth by the school district.
The NAACP had put forth a five year proposal to the Wilkes-Barre Area School District that we felt would help increase the number of minority teachers from six to fifteen. Less than two teachers per year. Our ultimate goal was to see some correlation between the minority student enrollment, and the percentage of minority teachers in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District. The NAACP proposal suggested that the Wilkes-Barre Area School District be more aggressive in its outreach for minority teachers by extending its search for viable candidates beyond the boundaries of the City of Wilkes-Barre.
The school superintendent responded by saying that the school board was reluctant to look outside of the area.
Again, to this very date, I’m comfortable in saying that there’s not enough minority teachers in the school district for there to be at least one minority teacher in every school within the district. The attached statistics should serve as an incentive to any school administrator in a position of leadership to aggressively develop a policy that would provide for the inclusion of ethnic minorities in their teaching population. The following paragraph shows a dramatic increase in the enrollment of minority students from the 2004-05, and the 2009-10.
The percentage of minority student enrollment in 2004-05 was 23.7 percent, and the 2009-10 minority student enrollment had grown to 37.9 percent reflecting an increase of 14.2 percent. During this same time period the percentage of white student enrollment in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District went from 76.4 percent in 2004-05 to 62.1 percent in 2009-10 a decrease of 14.3 percent. Noting, that the Hispanic student enrollment had increased by more than 100 percent.
During this same period the increase in the minority teacher population in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District remained stagnant. Hardly reflecting any change. Also worth noting is that our sister city, Scranton experienced similar changes during this same time period. Even more astonishing, the Scranton School District appears to only have had one minority teacher within the last 20 years.
All of these statistics should have served as a flashing neon sign to school boards and administrators the need for a policy that would aggressively address the recruitment of minority teachers. The NAACP feels that a diverse teaching population benefits all students.
Ron Felton
President, Wilkes-Barre NAACP