District 41 seeks more minority teachers
Glen Ellyn School District 41 is continuing its initiative to recruit minority teachers to better reflect the changing racial demographics of students, officials said at Monday’s board meeting.
In the past year, district representatives have participated in job fairs at colleges with significant minority populations, such as DePaul University and University of Illinois at Chicago, to attract more minority teachers, said Laura Campbell, director of human resources at the district, at a board meeting Monday.
“We really began focus work on this particular initiative probably mid-year last year, but definitely with this hiring season,” Campbell said.
District representatives met with about 95 candidates from DePaul University, University of Illinois at Chicago and Northeastern University. The candidates were vying for eight open positions that remained after eight of the original 16 open positions were filled internally.
“Our student demographics are not in alignment with our staff demographics,” Campbell said. “Our student demographics, the diversity within that group, is growing and our staff demographics have not changed to the same extent that our student demographics have.”
According to the Illinois School Report Card Web site, minorities in the district increased from 14.2 percent in 2002 to 24.8 percent in 2009. Minority teachers in the district increased from 1.8 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent in 2009, according to the report card.
Chris Dransoff, principal at Hadley Junior High School, said he thinks the district’s initiative is a positive one.
“It helps kids to see role models who they see (are) either racially or ethnically or culturally similar to them,” Dransoff said.
This article originally appeared in Glen Ellyn News.
