School officials in the Kingston City School District (KCSD) have said their efforts to hire and retain a staff reflective of the diversity of its student population is an ongoing process that will take time to get right, and a presentation during a recent meeting of the board of education showed how they plan to make it work.
Angela Armstrong, the district’s director of recruitment/retention and equity, discussed her annual goals during the presentation, which in addition to increasing the number of educators of color (EOC) in the KCSD, also includes retaining an EOC network, building collaborative relationships, influencing and enhancing the hiring and recruitment systems in the district, and collaboration with Kathy Sellitti, director of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Among the ways Armstrong achieves these goals is recruiting, interviewing and screening candidates for various positions in the district; giving annual professional performance reviews; attending college and recruitment fairs; facilitating and communication with the EOC network with the goal of offering support and a “safe space,” assisting with professional development; and sitting on the YWCA’s Advisory Committee of Stand Against Racism, a community organization dedicated to racial justice.
Armstrong also discussed the district’s values, goals and commitments, both in the current school year, as they develop policies to advance equity by diversifying the hiring community and making the process transparent, but also in the future: By June of 2024, the KCSD faculty and staff will proportionately reflect the diversity of the student body.
“On all these things is where I live and what we as a group and as a community and district are supposed to have dedicated, saying, ‘This is what we’re going to work on,’” said Armstrong.
But school officials acknowledge that the district has its work cut out for it.
Armstrong shared that the district’s enrollment as of June 30 showed that of its 6,143 students, 50 percent are white, 27 percent Hispanic or Latino, 10 percent black or African-American, 10 percent multiracial, and three percent Asian, native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander. The district is also 68 percent economically disadvantaged, 21 percent students with disabilities, nine percent English language learners, and three percent homeless.
The staff presently doesn’t reflect its student population, Armstrong said, but they’re working on it.
As of October 1, 51 of the district’s 606 teachers were EOC, just 8.4 percent. Elsewhere at the school level, seven of 19 school administrators, or 36.8 percent, are EOC; all four bi-lingual family workers, three of 17 guidance counselors (17.6 percent), two of 16 school psychologists (12.5 percent), four of 34 secretaries (11.7 percent), two of 17 speech pathologists (11.7 percent), 13 of 221 teaching assistants (5.8 percent), no physical therapists or IT workers, and one of five occupational therapists (20 percent).
In addition to Armstrong, at the district level, the district’s EOC include its assistant superintendent of business operations, its director of transportation, the coordinator of safety and prevention, and the treasurer.
Armstrong also showed that the district is making progress in its hiring. In the 2021-22 school year, nine of 54 overall open positions (16.6 percent) were filled by EOC, in 2022-23 six of 43 (13.9 percent) were filled by EOC, and in the 2023-24 school year, 11 of 33 (33.3 percent) were filled by EOC.
But hiring is just one piece of the puzzle. Armstrong also said that while the district has hired a total of 34 EOC between 2021-23, they’ve seen 16 depart.
“Five were through retirements so we’re happy for those people,” Armstrong said. The other eleven were resignations. “One I know was for a better job, two were because they were driving a distance and they wanted to be closer to home. And the other eight were for various reasons.”
Part of solving the retention riddle, Armstrong said, was discovering the challenges faced by EOC. Through a thought exchange, the top five challenges were revealed, including staff feeling like they were the spokesperson for black people because they were the only one in their role or building; expectations that they should do more than others; implicit bias, or assumptions based on race or gender; micro aggressions and not being afforded the same grace as others; and working with people who have not been exposed to black people, particularly in the workplace.
“An example is in the past couple of years we have hired several educators of color from (New York City),” Armstrong said. “People from the city, me being one, tend to be very direct. They’re direct because they are taught to be for the purposes of survival, but here in a smaller more rural environment, directness is interpreted asaggressive, non-collaborative and eveninsubordinate. And the reason is because direct is not comfortable, so it becomes seen as a negative, which causes a whole plethora ofsituations.”
Retention can also be impacted by other obstacles, Armstrong said, including the limitations of civil service positions, which offer limited availability in salary negotiation, have bias in testing, and are often stringent in other areas.
“Today…we are going to lose a secretary of color at the administrative level,” Armstrong said. “She’s been working for eight months learning a huge job that she’s taken on very earnestly and she’s worked very hard at. She took the civil service test, she passed the civil service test, but she wasn’t one of the top four and now she’s being terminated.”
In addition to EOC, Armstrong identified other areas of diversity focus, including increasing the number of male teachers at the elementary level.
“They may not be men of color but they definitely bring diversity,” Armstrong said. “Anybody who’s been in an elementary school can see that we are void of male teachers. Most excitingly we have a male in the preschool this year.”
A new male secretary has also been hired in the district.
Elsewhere, diversity can be found in LGBTQIA+ hiring. 13 percent of students in the KCSD identify as LGBTQIA+, while just 3.7 percent of the staff have self-identified as LGBTQIA+.
Superintendent Paul Padalino said the district had come up with good strategies, and will continue working to ensure their efforts bear fruit.
“Obviously we need to improve, but also I think this is kind of a snowball going down a hill,” he said. “As we start to do better, it’s going to grow and grow and grow. And that’s what we’re hoping.”
Two of the district’s new EOC teachers spoke before Armstrong’s presentation about what it meant to them to come to the KCSD, including Michelle Rodriguez, a Spanish teacher at Kingston High School who moved to the area from the Bronx for the job. Rodriguez talked about how she was recruited by Armstrong.
“She tracked me down when I was in Puerto Rico, and I was telling her that I was on vacation, and she was like, ‘Oh you’ll come back, I’ll call you,’” Rodriguez said. “So she tracked me down and she got me here.”
Rodriguez said the district’s EOC network played a critical role in attracting and retaining staff, and that will have a positive impact on Kingston’s students.
“The more representation we have, the more the students are eager,” she said.
Rodriguez had previously taught in seven different school districts across the state, and she said she’s felt most comfortable in Kingston.
“I have taught in a lot of school districts and this by far has been the best experience I’ve had,” she said.
Diana Mendes is an English as a new language teacher at J. Watson Bailey Middle School.
“I was an English language learner myself,” she said. “My first language is Spanish, my parents are Colombian, and I got looks when I told the kids who thought that it is really nice to see representation and the kids recognize that.”
Mendes said she was recruited by Armstrong, who left a message on her voicemail in both English and Spanish.
“I said, huh that’s interesting, and I called back,” Mendes said.
District officials are hoping Armstrong’s efforts will see more prospective teachers call back in the future.
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