School workers lag behind in ethnic diversity

The Hispanic student population is nearing 30 percent and black students account for 17 percent of students but minorities are noticeably under represented in the ranks of teachers and administrators in Highlands County district schools.

Ninety-four percent of the district's administrators and 88 percent of teachers are white although only 48.3 percent of the district's students are Caucasian.

A preliminary district accreditation report released Nov. 11 noted the district's challenge in recruiting and retaining professional staff to represent its racial and ethnic diversity.

Superintendent Wally Cox said Thursday the school district is trying to work on bringing more minorities on board. It can be hard to get job seekers to consider relocating to a smaller county, he said.

"We've tried to do some recruiting efforts and targeting more minority candidates," he said. "I think we've made some improvements over the last 10 years or so."

Director of Human Resources Vivianne Waldron said the district has an online application system, which is open to anyone. The district also advertises its openings on the Web site, teachersteachers.com.

"We also actively recruit in different areas," she said. "We have physically gone to minority colleges and recruited there.

"We have gone to the Florida Teach-In every year and recruited there and interviewed numerous minority applicants, however, it is a challenge for Highlands County to entice minority applicants to come here because we do not have the cultural amenities that they are looking for."

Waldron noted that when the district had a teacher recruiter on staff, about two years ago, he was able to go out of state to seek applicants, but the district's budget and that position have been cut.

The district advertises its openings in minority periodicals and educational magazines and sends notices of its openings directly to colleges, but there is very little response, Waldron said.

The district is fairly competitive with salaries with the surrounding districts, but not as competitive compared to the urban or coastal areas in the state, she said.

"So it is very difficult for us to compete in the market for minority applicants, especially highly-qualified minority applicants," Waldron said.

Based on the averages of the Highlands County School District's ethnic data, a classroom with 25 students would have the following ethnic/racial makeup: 12.1 white, 7.3 Hispanic, 4.3 black and .8 mixed race .4 Asian and .15 Native American.

If you filled that classroom with 25 district administrators to represent the districtwide ethnic make up of administrators, there would be 23.5 white administrators and 1.5 percent black administrators.

A classroom with 25 teachers representing the district would have 22 white teachers, 1.5 black teachers, 1.2 Hispanic teachers, and virtually no Asian teachers nor Native American teachers.

The Racial Makeup

The Highlands County School District's racial/ethnic data for students and employees:

• Students: 48.3 percent white, 29.2 percent Hispanic, 17.2 percent black, 1.6 percent Asian, .6 percent Native American and 3.1 percent mixed race.

• Administrators: 94 percent white and 6 percent black.

• Instructional staff: 88 percent white, 6 percent black, 4.9 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent for both Asian and Native Americans.

• The teaching staff in actual numbers: 799 white, 55 black, 44 Hispanic, 2 Asian and 2 Native American.

• The non-instructional staff is: 71 percent white, 19 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic and about 1 percent for the remaining races/ethnicities.