IN THE SCHOOLS

A Press to Find Teachers As Diverse as Students

 Westchester
 Sunday, July 10, 2005
 By Merri Rosenberg

Efforts to promote diversity at the Hackley School in Tarrytown are bearing fruit. This fall, three minorities will join the teaching staff: a Hispanic woman, an alumna, will be teaching fourth grade; an African-American woman will become a first-grade teaching assistant; and an Indian woman will be teaching English to freshmen and sophomores. In recent years, said Walter Johnson, headmaster at Hackley, the proportion of nonwhite students has risen to about 22 percent of the student body, but only 11 percent to 12 percent of the faculty were from minority groups.

“We have been more successful in having diversity of students than faculty,” Mr. Johnson said. “There is a smaller pool of faculty members coming from historically underrepresented groups. The competition to attract faculty of diverse backgrounds is key.

“We need to get more of a critical mass. Parents from historically underrepresented groups are eager to have role models for their children-bright, talented people who understand their experience.”

As a result Hackley, as well as other schools and colleges in the area, embarked upon strategies to improve the situation, trying to make sure that the faces in front of the students represent as diverse a background as the students themselves.

Over all, according to 2002-3 data from the New York State Department of Education, about 13 percent of Westchester teachers are nonwhite; the percentage of nonwhite students, 44.1.

In November 2003, Hackley, an independent kindergarten-to-12 college preparatory school divided into Lower, Middle and Upper Schools, received a $50,000 matching grant from the Edward E. Ford Foundation, a private group in Towson, Md., that finances projects in independent secondary education, to support its Teaching Fellows Program. With matching funds, Hackley has a $100,000 pool for its initiative.

The program aims to attract talented nonwhite sophomore or junior college students with an offer of a $5,000-a-year stipend toward their college tuition in exchange for a two-year teaching commitment at Hackley after graduation. The fellows would be eligible for a $5,000-a-year stipend toward graduate school, once they had completed their two-year teaching stint.

“This is intended as an initiative to help us gain strength,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s not the single answer.”

A committee is interviewing the first group of Edward E. Ford fellows’ candidates, with the expectation that the first fellow will be named by this fall.

Hackley has made contact with two historically black institutions, Morehouse College and Spelman College, as well as Wesleyan, Colgate and Williams for prospects. “We’re looking to be as creative as possible,” said Natalie Herring, dean of enrollment management at Hackley, which also has a diversity hiring coordinator and a Committee on Diversity and Traditions.

At Rye Country Day, another independent school, Scott Nelson, principal, said: “It’s not just having a more diverse student body. We’ve taken a comprehensive approach to diversity, in terms of faculty staff, students and supporting parents. When we’re recruiting students, we’re trying to address the diversity issue on multiple levels.”

For Rye Country Day, that meant developing an internship program about three years ago for “candidates of color,” Mr. Nelson said. “We’ve tried to be creative in terms of putting together a program tailored to individual needs and the needs of the school.”

The program costs the school about $100,000 a year, with housing additional. As part of this recruitment effort, Rye Country Day also offers candidates in the two-year positions help with graduate school tuition. One intern who came through this pipeline, Blue Powell, is an alumna. She now teaches art and digital photography and runs the school’s summer program.

There are other approaches to recruit nonwhite teachers into the classroom.

Manhattanville College, through its Jump Start program, which is an accelerated teacher-training program, received a $220,000 grant from the federal Department of Education to spur more minorities and other underrepresented teaching candidates to pursue a career in education. The college distributes grants that range from $10,000 to $22,000 to assist these students with tuition and the like.

“It’s not a new concern,” Robert W. Hallett, executive director of the Edward E. Ford Foundation, said of the diversity issue. “The danger is that you reach a plateau with teachers and it’s hard to get the numbers up. The number of minority students at independent schools is going up.

“Getting adult minorities to see this as an opportunity is a harder nut to crack.”