Despite this, officials with Sampson County Schools say they work hard to find ways to create a balance in their hiring practices. Currently, they are on par with the state averages of minority hiring, and they said they have gone out of their way to encourage recruitment within, even offering a program for students to come back to the system.
“We feel like we have done almost as well as the state in trying to hire and maintain minority teachers,” said Dr. Wendy Cabral, assistant superintendent for personnel services for Sampson County Schools. “It is difficult to recruit teachers, period. Unless you were born and raised here, and you have a special place in your heart for Sampson County, it is difficult to get teachers here.”
Cabral explains that larger systems have the advantage because they are able to offer more attractive incentives, as well as larger supplements, to students coming out of college.
“The bigger cities attract younger teachers,” she said. “The recruitment situation is not about minority verses majority, it is about our location ... We just wish they were out there. We always highlight that we are an hour from Raleigh and an hour from the beach; we tell them that we have great support here, but sometimes it just isn’t enough.”
Currently in Sampson County Schools, the student population is 40 percent Caucasian, 30 percent Hispanic; 30 percent African American and a much smaller percentage of Asian and American Indian.
In the system’s administration, which includes central office staff, principals and assistant principals, there are 12 Caucasians; six African Americans; no American Indian, Hispanic or Asians. There are 12 Caucasian principals in the system; seven African Americans; no American Indian, Hispanic or Asians. In the classroom, there are 465.9 Caucasian teachers; 60 African-American educators; 2 American Indians; 11.9 Hispanics and one other teaching in the school system.
Cabral notes that getting more minorities in the classrooms is something the system has been trying to do for years now, but the task is not an easy one for all the reasons she already noted.
“What we are finding now, you don’t see a huge number of minority students at the career fairs — most of them have already been hired,” she said. “If they are there, they are interested in the pay and the incentives to work in a bigger city. My biggest hope is that the pool will increase.”
Money, superintendent Dr. Ethan Lenker attested, will always be a stumbling block for rural school systems like Sampson.
“Sampson County is never going to pay the money that Clinton City pays, Cumberland County pays and other systems,” said Lenker. “Their signing bonuses are a lot larger. We are never going to be able to pay that kind of money, so we have to make people want to work for us. We start with a halfway decent superintendent; great administrators at the principal level who support their teachers and that makes a difference. That is why we feel we are able to get the quality people that we have because it is a great place to work.”
“Research shows that the teachers are the most important factors in the classroom,” said Cabral. “Teacher effectiveness is the number one factor in student achievement and we feel like if we get an effective teacher in there, no matter who they are or what color they are, students are going to achieve, and that is what every parent wants — for their children to achieve and graduate.”
The research is right.
For the first time in a long time, 17 of 18 county schools moved forward in AYP results, with two — Union Middle and Union Elementary — coming out of years of deep sanctions. At both schools, the majority of their students are Hispanic and African American, but the majority of their teachers are white.
“It is about teachers who can build relationships,” Lenker said. “We know that race does help relationships between teachers and kids, and that is one of the things we focus on, but we also talk about the teachers being able to build that relationship with that student. Sometimes the race does increase the relationships and we do keep that in mind when we try to recruit. But if it the teachers are not there, we go for quality teachers. A good quality teacher can work with all kids. Their race doesn’t matter to their achievement levels.”
But officials are sensitive to the needs of minority students and work to recruit as many as possible.
“We do understand that if you have a school that has a high minority population that is black or Hispanic, you need teachers that are black and Hispanic,” Lenker said. “And we work hard to meet those needs ... Not being any four-year colleges in Sampson County, it is difficult. Cumberland County has a bigger signing bonus, a bigger supplement, they have malls, a Starbucks ... if I was a 23-year-old out of college, you would rather live in Cary, Raleigh or Chapel Hill. Now that I am older, I love living here.”
The biggest rise in students, population-wise in the county, has been Hispanic.
“It has grown drastically in the past 10 years,” Lenker said. “That has been a challenge for us. I know our ESL (English as a Second Language) coordinator has worked and found some incredible Hispanic people to work with our teachers and work with the families as they enroll their kids ... It is just about equal with the African-American population in the system now.”
Getting teachers to work with parents is key.
“In that case, race really makes a difference, because being able to speak Spanish is crucial to communication,” said Lenker. “Being able to meet with the families in the homes, that has made a difference.”
“If you look at the elementary numbers, the Hispanic population numbers are much higher than in the high schools,” adds Lenker. “The expectation is that those kids will move through the school system and graduate. But unless there is some change in the economy, we expect that trend to stay constant.”
One program that the system has implemented this year is a new Teacher Cadet Program at Lakewood High School. The program takes prospective students, who want to be teachers, and gets them started with teacher training, by working in classes around the county.
“We want to start training in the schools,” said Lenker, “and hopefully, after college, they will come back and work with us.”
“A lot of the graduates have their only experience in the classroom when they do their student teaching,” said Cabral. “Most of them are comfortable there and if they do a good job, they get snatched up.”
Which is why the Cadet program was started. If successful, officials want to put it in every high school in the system.
“The idea is you get quality people who live here and who want to be in Sampson County and that increases the quality of everybody,” attested Lenker.
To reach Doug Clark call 910-592-8137 ext. 123 or send e-mail to sisports@heartlandpublications.com.
This is so true some of the teachers we been getting from outside our county use our schools as a stepping stone and leave in a year or two never to return.
Why can't Sampson County Schools offer the same bonues as Clinton City? If Sampson County was all one school system we could now couldn't we? Imagine how much could be saved in fat salaries. I wonder what percentage of our budget goes toward central office staff to support two separate systems. Maybe the NAACP should be picketing for Clinton City to be forced to combine with Sampson County so they can learn how to recruit minority teachers. That would be a good start, don't you think?
Then, how about we use that extra money saved by combining our two majorly huge systems(of 5 whole high schools and an early college) to implement programs that offer our teachers conversational Spanish and our Caucasion and African-American English speaking students Spanish as well. We send our Hispanic students out into the workforce bilingual yet we continue to hold on to that backwoods mentality of if "they" are going to live here "they" need to learn English.
In the classroom, there are 465.9 Caucasian teachers; 60 African-American educators; 2 American Indians; 11.9 Hispanics and one other teaching in the school system.
So who are the two .9 teachers lol?
When does the actual leadership start? I hope I live long enough to see our fearless leaders have the spine necessary to make this union happen. If nothing else, maybe our economic crisis and our recent grade of an F will force it to happen.