Letter: Ossining schools need staff diversity

The good news is that the Ossining Union Free School District has been commendably transparent in furnishing demographic data concerning teachers and staff. The bad news is 20 years after the Ossining Board of Education established a policy goal of — "progressing toward a staff reflective of the racial/ethnic distribution of the school district and community" — we're still only halfway there.

If African-Americans are reckoned at around 15 percent of the student population, African-American teachers are, at most, only half that percentage.

District Superintendent Ray Sanchez shared this data at last month's meeting of OPACC, an organization for parents of African-American children in Ossining. The failure to achieve the hiring goal has been identified as one of the factors contributing to the much-discussed student achievement gap.

Parents noted that the crop of new hires this time last year failed to achieve the goal of diversity in hiring, let alone catch up for the deficit inherited from previous years.

The superintendent was questioned about hiring practices. It was the general consensus of the meeting that the district should try harder to recruit qualified African-American teachers and staff.

Additionally, parents hoped that the board would publicly reaffirm the policy goals set in 1994 and promote the diversity of the community as an intangible asset.

I wonder how many other school districts in Westchester have the courage to review their hiring practices, and, if necessary, to reflect on the attitudes and lack of empathy which result in institutional racism.

Robin Kuhl

Ossining

The writer is correspondence secretary for Ossining Parents Advocating Collectively for Our Children.