The students in the town’s public schools have more diverse backgrounds than the teachers, support staff and administrators who work in the school system, but the district’s hiring efforts in the last couple of years have made modest improvements in closing that gap, according to a report presented at the School Committee meeting on Oct. 10.
“When you look at the comparison in most demographic categories, the staff representation is not aligned with the student representation,” said Robert Spiegel, director of human resources for the Arlington Public Schools. “That is not new. It is something that we’ve been talking about for years and the goal is to increase the representation to more match the student representation.”
The Arlington Public Schools employees – teachers, administrators and support staff – are nearly 81 percent white and new hires are just over 72 percent white, according to the report, while 66.6 percent of students in the town, grades kindergarten through 12, identified as white. Just over 4 percent of the staff identified as black with 6.13 percent of new hires identifying as white and 3.2 percent of students identified as black.
By the numbers
Of all the employees reporting their ethnicity, nearly 6 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander, while new hires are 9.2 percent, and students are nearly 13 percent Asian or Pacific Islander. And 2.03 percent of the staff listed Hispanic as their race or ethnicity code, with 2.45 percent of the new hires and 8 percent of the students listed as Hispanic. Just 1.43 percent of staff listed “two or more” ethnicities, while 5.52 percent of new hires and 9.1 percent did so, according to the report.
There are “units” of staff – broken down by how the educators union, the Arlington Education Association, designates the positions – including three designations for this survey: Unit A, classroom teachers, specialists, librarians, nurses and special educators; Unit D, the paraprofessionals; and, AAA, which is the principals, deans and other administrators.
The most ethnically diverse segment of the school staff is Unit D, which identified as 74.75 percent white, 8.42 percent black or African American, 7.43 percent Asian, and .50 percent Hispanic, according to the report. One area where there was an increase, in the number of all staff reporting they identify as white, came about when fewer people left the categories blank rather than in hiring, Spiegel said.
Another area covered by Spiegel’s presentation covered staff “onboarding” (new hires) and retention. Arlington hired 61 people for positions on or since Aug. 24, which represents 59 full-time equivalents, Spiegel said. (Additionally, ten educators started in their positions between October 2023 and May 2024.) Forty-two of the newly hired educators have a master’s degree, Spiegel said. “We do have a very well-educated workforce here,” he said.
6 new positions
Of those 61 new hires, six are new positions in the budget “or added because of the needs this year,” one new hire who directly replaced a person who retired, 12 people replaced educators who moved to another position within the Arlington Public Schools, seven replaced educators who are on leaves of absence, and 12 who had been teaching assistants, student teachers or substitutes.
Thirty-five educators were hired to replace teachers who resigned from their positions in the Arlington schools. The chief reasons cited by those leaving were: professional move within education, 17 responses; moved away from the area, 5; left education, 7; personal reasons, 3; retirement, 3; or got a job that paid more, 2 responses. Other reasons provided included commute time, lack of diversity and “dissatisfaction with position,” according to the report.
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Rounding out his presentation to the School Committee, Spiegel noted that there are some two dozen positions the department is actively recruiting for ranging from an interim assistant principal position to cover a leave, a Spanish teacher, and at least a dozen paraprofessionals across the system. The latter item prompted committee member Leonard Kardon to ask if the town had advertised the paraprofessional jobs, which pay $20 an hour. Others asked about how the open positions are advertised in general noting that Arlington’s mentoring programs and benefits should attract top candidates.
Read through the presentation deck here >>>
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This news story by Carol Beggy was published on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
