NAACP partners with Chillicothe City Schools to hire Black educators

CHILLICOTHE— Adrienne D'Souza, Ross County NAACP President, noticed there weren't many Black teachers in the Chillicothe City School District (CCSD). Now, the Ross County NAACP is working with the CCSD to bring more Black educators to the county.

"We do understand that our Black children in our school system need to see someone that looks like them," D'Souza said. "We have lost a lot of Black educators over the years and we're trying to find out why."

According to the National Center for Teacher Residencies, Black students who have just one Black teacher in elementary school are more likely to graduate from high school and consider going to college, yet only 7% of public school teachers are Black.

Tabitha Grossman, Chief External Relations Officer for the Black Educators Initiative (BEI), said Black teachers are important because they improve educational outcomes for students of all races, but especially for students of color. The initiative is a national effort to recruit, develop and retain black educators through teacher residencies.

"The vast majority of children of color are not taught by teachers of color, because the number of teachers of color in the profession is pretty low," Grossman said. "High percentages of kids of color in schools don't have access to teachers of color and representation is really important for kids."

Black teachers may benefit Black male students the most. Black male students tend to be suspended and expelled at a higher rate than any other student group, but having a Black teacher could "make a pretty substantial difference." Grossman said Black male students who have a Black teacher have improved reading comprehension and are less likely to be disciplined.

The Ross County NAACP and the CCSD are trying several tactics to recruit and retain Black teachers in Chillicothe. The team is interviewing Black educators who have left the school system to gain an understanding of what the school system could do better to support future teachers.

Members of the NAACP joined the school system's recruiting team to help engage with Black teachers during college visits. Alissa Putnam, Executive Director at CCSD, said in-person recruiting is coming back slowly since the pandemic and the CCSD is planning on going to more events in the future.

However, recruiting Black teachers is just the beginning. Liz Corzine, President of the Chillicothe School District Board of Education, said the root of the problem is a lack of Black students studying education.

"The numbers [of Black educators] out there available are slim," Corzine said. "There aren't a lot to go around the whole state."

According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2020, 73% of students graduating with a Bachelor's degree in education were white, while only 7% were Black. Conversely, Putnam said about 25% of the student population at CCSD is minority students, while over 90% of the teachers are white.

Grossman said the racial disparity in the CCSD is significant, but not uncommon. There are many barriers of entry for Black students wanting to enter into the profession, including low salary, lacking access to generational wealth, cultural biases within required tests to get a teaching license and poor working conditions.

Ohio University developed programs and initiatives to encourage Black students to study education. Mateo Remsburg, director of undergraduate admissions, said it's important to help students of color develop relationships within the community and to connect them with resources on campus to keep students on track for graduation.

Programs like Brother's RISE and the OHIO Men of Excellence Network provide networking opportunities, as well as mentorship and academic coaching for Black students.

"Those types of programs are instrumental in helping to alleviate some of the concerns that students and families may have about going to college or going to a college that's a predominately white institution," Remsburg said.

OU also provides financial assistance for students in need, a factor that Grossman said tends to be the most important for students of color.

Remsburg said that retention starts with recruitment. Connecting students early on with services and support only increases the chances of students continuing down their educational path. The same could be said about recruiting teachers to work at the CCSD.

Grossman said it's important to pay attention to racial dynamics in schools, as well as culturally and linguistically sustaining practices.

"It's pretty tragic that you would remove barriers to the profession, prepare someone and then lose them because the working conditions are difficult or in some instances impossible," Grossman said. "More money doesn't make working conditions tolerable."

Through the BEI, grantees take a multi-pronged approach to recruit, prepare and retain Black candidates. Grossman said strategies could be vastly different from city to city, because "what works in Memphis, Tennessee is not what is going to work in Seattle, Washington."

She said that it's important to allow each individual community to dictate strategies to recruit Black teachers because the community understands the context of the problem and how to leverage community resources the most efficiently.

With the Ross County NAACP leading the initiative, CCSD is already involving the community to help bring Black teachers to Chillicothe.

D'Souza said the NAACP hopes to partner teachers with mentors to help acclimate them to life in Chillicothe. Overall, D'Souza said Chillicothe has to "have something to offer them other than just a job."

Putnam said the district aims to develop a "grow your own" program where CCSD would help a student receive a teaching license in exchange for working in the school district.

For now, the NAACP is focusing on Chillicothe City Schools. D'Souza said the ultimate goal is to expand the initiative to other schools in Ross County. D'Souza encourages the community to attend Board of Education meetings and "tell them you need to see more Black educators in this system."

Megan Becker is a reporter for the Chillicothe Gazette. Call her at 740-349-1106, email her at mbecker@gannett.com or follow her on Twitter @BeckerReporting.

This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: NAACP partners with Chillicothe City Schools to hire Black educators