A page one story in Saturday’s newspaper points out that Wallingford’s student population is nearly 17 percent minority while the number of minority school professionals is less than 2 percent. This has to be hurting the school system’s efforts to educate the town’s growing Latino population. A new superintendent will be starting July 1. The town’s Coalition for Unity met with him last week on the issue, but Salvatore Menzo said it was too early for him to discuss specifics. That is understandable. The fact that he met with the group so soon is probably a good sign.
Left on his own, Menzo may or may not make more progress than his predecessors. The town can’t really afford to leave something so important to chance. The school board should sit down with Menzo and give him some realistic goals and the encouragement to try some new approaches. Clearly, the current ones are not working. Those goals should be reviewed quarterly and at the end of the year a progress report should be made public.
Let me know what you think.
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2 comments:
I've been on several hiring committees for teachers and we worked extremely hard to attract minority teachers. Good minority teachers can pick and choose where they would like to work. I believe it is important to have diversity regardless of the population of minorities. It might even be more important with a less diverse student population. It is an ongoing problem which begs for a good solution.
Thanks for the insight. I agree it is not an easy task. That makes it even more important for the new superintendent to get direction and support from the school board along with realistic goals. How about reaching 4percent by the end of his contract (three years)?
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