A member of the Red Bank Board of Education is challenging a perceived lack of diversity in the teaching staff at district schools.
Board member Michael Ballard’s comments came on the heels when the board welcomed the arrival of three new teachers for the coming school year at the July 14 board of education meeting.
“I still have concerns that we are unable to find qualified minority teachers to teach in this minority district,” Ballard said.
“Other districts like Asbury, Long Branch and Neptune have no problem. They have a lot of minority teachers,” he said. “But we can’t seem to find any.
“It’s troubling because maybe it’s out in the ether that Red Bank doesn’t hire minorities, so why even apply,” he said.
“We have a policy that says we are equal opportunity, but we’re not seeing that played out. It concerns me very much that we can’t get over that hump.”
Superintendent Jared Rumage responded that Ballard made valid points, adding that it is often challenging to find applicants who meet the qualifications that the district is looking for.
“We doing our best to make sure we hire the best teachers for our kids regardless of that issue but it would be great if we could reflect our community and our students in our teaching staff,” he said.
Rumage said in an email that 79 percent of students in the district are Hispanic, while 11 percent are African American and 9 percent are Caucasian.
He said the district is not required to maintain records on the diversity of the faculty. According to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data, the borough has 12,213 residents: 50.4 percent are white; 34.4 percent are Hispanic or Latino; 12.4 percent are African American; 1.9 are Asian American; and 1 percent are American Indian.
Of the total Red Bank population, 1,125 are children ages 5 through 14.
Rumage also said that it has been difficult to find qualified teachers for the positions the district has been hiring for.
“We’re also looking for applicants who are dual-certified. If they are a second-grade teacher, we want someone who is ESL-certified or bilingual-certified as well. The pool is not as large as some other districts might have,” Rumage said.
“It’s been a long-time policy of the district to reflect the community the best that we can demographically. [Currently] we don’t,” said board President Ben Forest.
He also said the board would work to have a teaching staff that reflects the demographics of the borough.
“We’re going to continue to work to try to improve that. There are a lot of things taken into account when [the district hires staff].
“We would all like to see more Hispanics and African Americans hired by the district. We want to reflect the community more. It’s an ongoing challenge.”
In a July 16 interview, Rumage said the lack of diversity among faculty is not just an issue in Red Bank, but for the educational system as a whole.
During the July 14 meeting, the school board members also heard a presentation on a new kindergarten curriculum focused on helping students who need to improve their vocabulary, monolingual students and English Language Learning students.
The program, developed by Alyssa May and Lucy Oubina, district kindergarten teachers, seeks to take into account the diversity of their students when it comes to instructing them as a whole.
“We have a linguistically diverse community. We have socio-economic needs and monolingual children who need enrichment.
“So by not applying a stock program, we have a curriculum in place that will meet the needs of our learners,” said May.
A stock program works as a script for teachers to follow when teaching. The problem, according to May, is that the program is no longer meeting the needs of the community.
“It was no longer meeting our needs. As the population changed we needed to change as well,” said Oubina.
The program takes advantage of materials that the primary school already owns. Existing books and other material from the stock program “Tools of the Mind” has been repurposed to fit this new program.
During the pilot for new curriculum, the teachers found that students were more interested in learning and had a greater appreciation for reading. Also, students had a higher level of engagement compared to the previous program.