The Numbers in Black and White

 

Many years ago I worked in a small independent church school in Baltimore City. Of all the Baltimore Independent schools we were the most diverse, and the most affordable. Our students were able to walk to Baltimore Symphony concerts, the Walters Art Gallery, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Maryland Historical Society. For many years they walked down the street to the local Y for swimming and physical education, as well.

Small independent schools don’t have big budgets and often have crumbling physical plants. Ours certainly did. But the biggest challenge we faced, in my opinion, was our inability to successfully recruit, hire, and keep Black teachers. We were the most integrated Independent school in town but our faculty was always woefully white.

During the time that I worked there, it became clear that our school parents wanted a more diverse faculty and our Board was becoming more convinced that our students would benefit from diverse role models. (Educational studies consistently back that up, by the way.)

But our school had long functioned by hiring women whose husbands had the substantial incomes in the family. The wives worked for fulfillment and inspired by a mission to do good works, I guess. Salaries remained low because they could be. When our school made a concerted effort to recruit more Black teachers I often heard the headmaster shake his head in disappointment, saying, “they can make more with the County schools.”

In recent years I have come more aware of the other side of that story. Without generational wealth and/or a spouse able to bring home the big bucks, the financial needs of many Black applicants were quite different that those of our typical teachers. Just as Black college students have been traditionally shut out of valuable internship experiences because they were unpaid internships, our Black applicants were making very different financial decisions when they chose a teaching position.

Why? Because they had to. They may have had to take on more debt to complete their college educations and they might be contributing to the education of siblings, as well. Quite bluntly, they could not afford to take on the mission of our school for the sheer love of it. 

There was another hurdle.

These applicants looked at our little school with its special gifts and persistent challenges and saw that if they accepted the job they might be the only Black teacher. Or one of two or three. That’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. It’s an ongoing work environment where you never feel entirely safe. Teaching is already exhausting enough without adding rock bottom salaries and the sense that you are never, ever going to “fit in” in the faculty room.

I’m telling this story today because of an article in the Howard County Times.

Black teachers tell Howard County School Board there is a need for more staff diversity, Sherry Greenfield, BaltSun/HoCoTimes

Guilford Elementary School reading specialist Nikia Darden said that when she interviewed for a teaching job in Howard County Public Schools in 2013, she was struck by the lack of diversity among the applicants.

“I made the decision to apply to HCPSS because I had learned of the county’s reputation for valuing diversity,” Darden said. “I was surprised, for a county that values diversity, that a scan of the room only revealed a handful of visually Black and brown applicants. At the table where the interviewers sat from the county, there were even fewer.”

That’s disappointing. And should be unacceptable. If we say we want to provide our students with the best then we are falling short if we aren’t making a diverse school staff a bigger priority. We aren’t preparing our kids for the future if they have rarely seen Black teachers and admin and experienced their skills and talents as a part of their daily lives. Yes, there are proven benefits for Black children but white children are also learning something very powerful that they will keep with them as they form their views of the world.

Darden also recommended that human resources, the central office staff and administrators, all of whom participate in the hiring process, take regular anti-bias, anti-racist training. One professional development training course on bias awareness is not sufficient, she said.

“HCPSS employees who have any role in hiring need to not only be aware of racism and bias, and how they show up, and their impact, but also how to actively work to eliminate racist and bias practices,” she said.

That’s good advice. How will the Board act on what it has learned? How will that be reflected in HCPSS practice?