The "Staffing The High Schools Of The Future" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Talking with the office girls at Manheim Township High School (MTHS) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania about something I had read in the morning paper about the city School District of Lancaster struggling to add minority teachers and staff.  I taught at MTHS, a northern neighbor to the Lancaster district, for 33 years after moving there from a school in nearby York County.  I was also a student at MTHS in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  During my four years of high school I can't remember a single minority student in the high school.  One of the office girls, a former student of mine as well as her husband, who both happen to me my next-door neighbors, told me that she can remember one minority student in her graduating class in 1979.  I now do the yearbooks for the middle and intermediate schools for the district and find that minorities have become a large part of the student population in Manheim Township.  But certainly not anywhere near the minority population in the city high school.  This year in the School District of Lancaster the student body contained: 60% Latino, 17% Black, 13% White, 5% Asian, 5% Multiracial and less than 0.1% American Indian, Alaskan, Hawaiian or other Pacific Island Native.  The problem is that they employ teachers in the ratio of: 89% White, 5% Latino, 4% Black and 2% Other.  They struggle when it comes to finding qualified minority teachers.  So they have just begun a new program that will start in the fall with their Freshman class.  The program will help "keep and develop" students' interest in teaching.  Hispanic students are the focus, but no student will be turned away.  The district is attempting to hire teachers who look like their students.  Last year when new applications were reviewed, only 10% were minority applicants.  Nearby Millersville University, a traditional teachers college, is struggling to produce new minority teachers since last year they graduated only 69 minority teachers.  Lancaster School District is trying something new with a program called the Color of Teaching Initiative.  Those minority teachers graduating from Millersville with a bachelor's in education and are part of the new program will be guaranteed a teaching job.  The program will also provide the students in the program with leadership opportunities, professional experiences, a support group network and faculty mentor.  By creating this new program and helping with role models for the students, they are hoping to benefit with more minority teachers.  As for MTHS, this year they had 4 minority teachers in a school that had 1811 students with a population that was: 68% White, 14% Hispanic, 9% Asians, 5% Multi-Racial and 4% African American.  As you see, they too need to hire more minority teachers if they expect to reach all students.  Times have changed dramatically since I went to, and taught, high school.  A bigger challenge indeed, but I believe it will provide a much bigger learning experience for today's students.  Now they just have to supply role models for the diverse population they already have.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.