The Siloam Springs School District is doing a good job of maintaining an equal ratio of Native American students to teachers and administrators, but have some work to do to achieve a similar ratio of Hispanic students to staff members.
Charlotte Earwood, director of student services and school improvement, presented the district's minority teacher and administrator recruitment plan during Thursday's school board meeting. All schools that have more than 5 percent minority students are required by law to have the plan in place.
Based on unofficial enrollment numbers from Oct. 2, six percent of the student body is Native American and eight percent of licensed school staff are Native America, Earwood said.
"We are doing well in representing that particular minority in our staff," she said.
However, Earwood said that 30 percent of students are Hispanic while only three percent of licensed staff members are Hispanic.
"So we have a ways to go there," she said.
According to the five-page recruitment plan, a total of 12 percent of teachers and administrators employed by the district are members of a minority population. In comparison, 41 percent of the student body is a member of a minority population.
According to the Brookings Institute, a public policy organization, there is a significant amount of literature that shows that a match between the race/ethnicity of teachers and students leads to better student outcomes, especially in high-poverty environments with significant at-risk student populations.
The short-term goal listed in the plan is to increase the number of minority licensed educators by 2 percent by the 2018-2019 school year. The long-term goal is to continue efforts to recruit highly-qualified minority candidates that best reflect student demographics.
Strategies to implement the plan include increasing recruitment efforts in areas that are more likely to serve minority populations, identifying existing minority teacher leaders and supporting them in pursuing further education toward administrator licensure, and encouraging students in Siloam Springs Schools to consider a career in education.
In the district's strategic plan, Earwood is in charge of recruiting and retaining staff. She said that background has been very helpful to her in developing the minority recruitment plan.
Earwood said she was able to gather a lot of data on how much the district spends on attending career fairs, advertising and for online recruitment programs, and then see how effective those strategies are at attracting minority teachers.
The recruitment team is eliminating one of the colleges they visited in the past because they weren't getting their money's worth, and are planning to visit another university that serves a higher percentage of minority students, she said.
In other business, school board members approved a contract with Crossland Construction for construction management services for the new Northside Elementary School library. The 23-page contract is very similar to construction management contracts the district has signed in the past, said assistant superintendent Jody Wiggins. The management fee will be 6.5 percent, he said.
Crossland Construction will put the project out to bid to subcontractors in December and January so that construction can begin in February as soon as a guaranteed maximum price is approved.
School board officers were also elected for the 2017-2018 school year during the meeting. Brian Lamb was named board president, Brent Butler was named vice-president, Roger Holroyd was named secretary and Audra Ferrell was named legislative liaison.
The school board took the following additional actions:
• Approved the resignation of Kelsey Renihan, Southside Elementary School speech language pathologist.
• Approved hiring Lois Thompson, special education teacher for Southside Elementary School, the intermediate school and the middle school; Jennifer Smith, special education teacher for the intermediate school; and Constance Powell, third-grade teacher for Southside Elementary School.
• Approved an emergency sick leave request.
• Approved seven student transfers from the Gentry School District to the Siloam Springs School District.
• Approved three student transfers from the Fayetteville School District to the Siloam Springs School District.
General News on 10/18/2017