Federal

Wis. District Steps Up Response to Growing Minority Enrollment

By Lesli A. Maxwell — November 01, 2007 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Responding to concerns that minority students in Green Bay, Wis., lag academically behind their white peers and lack teachers they can identify with, school officials have pledged to focus on closing the achievement gap and recruiting and hiring nonwhite faculty members.

The school district’s pledge is part of a nonbinding agreement, announced late last month, between Green Bay civic leaders and representatives of the city’s growing minority communities that is meant to improve race relations in city government, the police department, and the public schools.

Prompted by complaints in 2005 from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that the city’s police and fire departments had no black employees, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a “conciliation specialist” to Green Bay to help broker the agreement.

See Also

See other stories on education issues in Wisconsin. See data on Wisconsin’s public school system.

For more stories on this topic read Diversity.

“Our concern was initially with the police department and fire department, but we also kept hearing from some of our students that they felt isolated at school and didn’t have teachers they felt they could turn to or would understand them,” said the Rev. L.C. Green, the pastor of the Divine Temple Church of God in Christ and the president of the Green Bay NAACP. “We needed black counselors and teachers.”

Mr. Green brought in local Hispanic, Hmong, and Native American leaders to work with black leaders to push for more minority representation in Green Bay’s public agencies.

Demographic Shift

Superintendent Daniel A. Nerad, said minority parents voiced “some very heartfelt concerns that their kids had not found their place with us, and that we weren’t making connections with them.”

“We’ve become a more diverse school district in a pretty short period of time,” he said. “It’s a real asset for the school district, but yet there are challenges associated with it as well, like recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff members of color.”

In the 20,000-student school district, 37 percent of students are from racial and ethnic minority groups, an increase of 3 percentage points from the 2006-07 school year, while the vast majority of the district’s teachers and other staff members are white, Mr. Nerad said.

Hispanic students now make up more than 17 percent of the district’s total enrollment. Asian-American students, many of them Hmong, make up roughly 8 percent, followed by African-Americans at roughly 7 percent, and Native Americans at 5 percent.

Mr. Nerad said the first and most important goal the district has agreed to target is closing the achievement gap between the district’s nonwhite and white students. Part of the strategy for doing so involves recruiting and hiring more minority teachers and drawing on the Minority Student Achievement Network, an association of 25 midsize suburban districts that serve large populations of minority students.

The district will also provide cultural-competency training for all staff members, and will devise new discipline and truancy strategies to help prevent a disproportionate number of minority students from being suspended or referred to special education programs.

“Even though it’s a voluntary agreement, the schools seem fully committed to this,” Mr. Green said.

A version of this article appeared in the November 07, 2007 edition of Education Week as Wis. District Steps Up Response to Growing Minority Enrollment

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal Opinion Student Literacy Rates Are Concerning. How Can We Turn This Around?
The ranking Republican senator on the education committee wants to hear from educators and families about making improvements.
6 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Federal Biden Calls for Teacher Pay Raises, Expanded Pre-K in State of the Union
President Joe Biden highlighted a number of his education priorities in a high-stakes speech as he seeks a second term.
5 min read
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
Shawn Thew/Pool via AP
Federal Low-Performing Schools Are Left to Languish by Districts and States, Watchdog Finds
Fewer than half of district plans for improving struggling schools meet bare minimum requirements.
11 min read
A group of silhouettes looks across a grid with a public school on the other side.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
Federal Biden Admin. Says New K-12 Agenda Tackles Absenteeism, Tutoring, Extended Learning
The White House unveiled a set of K-12 priorities at the start of an election year.
4 min read
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participates in a roundtable discussion with students from Dartmouth College on Jan. 10, 2024, on the school's campus, in Hanover, N.H.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participates in a roundtable discussion with students from Dartmouth College on Jan. 10, 2024, on the school's campus, in Hanover, N.H.
Steven Senne/AP