SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Diversity In Education

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Alleged bias in hiring in a Suffolk County school district could lead to a statewide law prohibiting discriminatory practices “in relation to the qualifications of professionals in education.”

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor is a co-sponsor. The legislation has been introduced in the State Assembly by Michaelle Solages of Elmont, chair of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus. She is also the deputy Assembly Democratic leader. 

The bill cites a 2019 state Department of Education study, titled “Education Diversity Report,” that states that “New York’s student population of students of color is 50 percent. The racial and ethnic composition of the teacher workforce does not reflect the diversity of the student population.” 

It goes on: “Access to a racially and culturally diverse teacher workforce is beneficial for all students, particularly for students of color, who often thrive in classrooms led by teachers who share their racial and cultural backgrounds. This bill would encourage educational institutions to signal and embrace the importance of teacher and school leader diversity as well as change the recruitment practices to identify qualified applications.”

Mr. Thiele commented: “I think that everyone can point to a teacher in their lives as they went through school—whether grade school or high school—who made a difference as a role model or mentor.” But he said, in many schools in the state, commonly “nobody on the faculty looks like students they are teaching. The bill is designed to make hiring patterns more transparent and provide greater diversity. I think it is of critical importance.”

The measure grows out of an investigation by the Islip Town branch of the NAACP which “has identified racially discriminatory policies and practices that are used by the Brentwood Union Free School District to increase the employability of whites and reduce the employability of Blacks.”

The branch president, William King Moss III, said that “the Brentwood School District often times does not interview any Black applicants for a given teaching position even though the Black applicant is more qualified than white counterparts.”

There are 18,500 students in the district, nine percent of whom are Black, while of its 1,300 teachers, 2.5 percent are African-American. 

The district has an 80 percent Latino student population and 20 percent of teachers are Latino but this, said Mr. Moss, is largely due to a New York regulation that holds that “English-language learners” require specialized instruction. So, there is hiring of Spanish-speaking teachers because the district “does not have a choice even though it has an apparent white-first agenda.”

Mr. Moss was the 1995 salutatorian at Brentwood High School. He went on to Harvard where he received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a masters’ in mathematics education. A Brentwood resident, he taught mathematics for 11 years in Brentwood and was involved in developing the “fair hiring policy” for the district which, he says, it “fought tooth and nail” and now “often ignores.” For the past 11 years he has been director of academic affairs in the Lawrence School District. 

The Brentwood School District denies bias in hiring with its attorney having declared: “Brentwood has been a leader in increasing the diversity of its teaching and administrative staff.”

“Teacher Diversity in Long Island’s Public Schools” was the title of an extensive report issued in 2019 by The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University—which reflected Brentwood as not being alone on Long Island.

Prepared by William Mangino, chairperson of and professor in Hofstra’s Department of Sociology, and Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the center, it noted that, “For example, 61 percent of Long Island public schools do not have a single Black teacher…”

It said: “Because diversity brings different viewpoints, understandings and cultural frames, people who are exposed to diversity blend these various ideas.” Further, “if people of color are not adequately represented among the teaching force, whites and non-whites alike will gain the mistaken impression that people of color are not appropriate for such roles.”  The report spoke of a “lack of effective efforts to recruit and retain minority teachers. Most of the minority educators dispute the contention of many school district officials that they are being aggressive and creative but that the pool of qualified minority applicants is too small.” It said that “racial disparities could even widen” without an effort to make “the hiring of minority teachers a priority.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.