Madison schools seek more diverse workforce to match student population

In the Madison Metropolitan School District, students of color make up about 55 percent of total enrollment. Employees of color comprise only 15 percent of the workforce. This disparity is one of several the district has targeted in its plan to close the achievement gap.

Including teachers, administrators, custodians and others, MMSD employed a total of 4,179 employees as of late October 2011, according to data collected from the district.

Of those employees, Hispanics made up about 5.5 percent of the workforce, black employees comprised less than 5 percent and Asian employees were less than 3 percent. White staff comprised over 85 percent of the district’s total employees.

In comparison, the district’s student population this fall was a total of 26,817 students, according to data from the Wisconsin’s Information Network for Successful Schools. Of these, 45.3 percent were white, 20.1 percent were black, 17.9 percent were Hispanic and 9.4 percent were Asian.

To address the diversity of the district’s workforce, a key part of the achievement gap plan focuses on recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce to match the student population.

According to the plan, matching the racial and cultural diversity of the workforce and student population “will bring important perspectives and insights to organizational decisions and to students’ daily educational experiences.” 

To increase diversity, the report envisions a “Grow Our Own” program to recruit students, staff and teachers of color to become future teachers and principals in the district.

The program includes three key components: “Grow Our Own Students to Teachers” to attract students interested in becoming teachers in the district; “Grow Our Own Staff to Teachers” to encourage staff members to pursue teaching or administrative degrees; and “Grow Our Own Principals” to encourage promising staff to consider becoming principals.

During a community input session on the plan held in March, Superintendent Dan Nerad sat down with a group of citizens discussing the plans for a more diverse workforce. During the discussion, Nerad said the district needs to focus on recruiting people from around the region.

“We are not doing well to recruit teachers,” he said. “Madison is a cool place, but we have a hard time recruiting teachers of color.”

As of late October, MMSD employed 2,686 teachers, according to district data. Just under 2.7 percent of those teachers were black, 4.6 percent were Hispanic and 2.5 percent were Asian.

Implementation and structure of the “Grow Our Own” program will depend on whether the achievement gap plan is accepted by the Board of Education, MMSD Employment Manager June Glennon said.

This means only parts of the program could be adopted into the final plan and other parts could be changed. Revisions to the plan from community input sessions could also change the program.

For example, one vision for the final “Grow Our Own Staff to Teachers” program would target current MMSD educational assistants interested in becoming teachers, and help them pay for schooling to get their teacher’s license, Glennon said.

Another vision for the program would target community members instead of current MMSD employees, she said. Ultimately, specifics for each of the programs will not be fleshed out until after the Board of Education votes to accept the plan.

Prior to the vote, however, Madison residents who attended input sessions, like Sven Midelfort, had a chance to voice concerns regarding the plan. Midelfort, who has had kids and grandkids in the school system, said he was concerned with how the district would find money to support efforts to recruit a more diverse workforce.

He also questioned how the district would attract that diverse workforce, whether with incentives or other methods.

“I want to know how MMSD will identify teachers to come to a mostly white community and teach here,” he said. “Teachers of color are highly sought after. Teachers of color need incentives to come back here.”

To attract those teachers, MMSD recruits nationwide, with most success in Wisconsin and surrounding states like Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, Glennon said.  As a part of those recruiting efforts, the district gathers demographic data of students graduating with teaching degrees in the region.

Using this data, the district targets students specializing in areas where Madison schools have a shortage, such as music, special education and secondary math and science, Glennon said.

These efforts not only seek to build the district’s applicant pool for shortage areas but also help diversity of the workforce.

To ensure the district continues these efforts, the achievement gap plan proposes MMSD set yearly hiring goals for applicants of color and create an annual hiring report to track those goals each year. Glennon said this communicates the district’s progress to the community.

“It adds to transparency and helps the community understand where we are and how we are doing,” she said. “It’s important to the community that we have a diverse workforce.”

The plan to create a more diverse workforce in Madison schools is estimated to cost over $1.7 million over the next five years. The total cost of the achievement gap proposal is over $105.6 million.

For additional information on the achievement gap, visit the MMSD website. Or, to read more about another chapter of the plan, read our coverage of College and Career Readiness and Culturally Relevant Practices.