Arkadelphia board asks superintendent to increase number of minority teachers

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

Arkadelphia Public Schools Superintendent Nikki Thomas has to mix it up. 

Racially, that is. The Board of Education is tasking her with adding more minority teachers in order to mirror the school district’s student population.

Following a 45-minute executive session during a lengthy school board meeting Tuesday, June 18, 2024, school board president Blake Bell said publicly that the board agreed to give Thomas a “performance target” of increasing the number of minority certified staff to be in proportion with student demographics.

Thomas’s recently renewed contract during the school board’s latest meeting included a 3.6% raise to her previous $140,000 salary; an additional $10,000 increase is on the table under certain conditions. Among those is that she complete her doctorate degree, but the board also wants more diversity among faculty.

RELATED: School district plans to balance teacher diversity

For the 2023-24 school year the local district reported 121 certified teachers, a number that, according to the Arkansas Department of Education’s Data Center, was broken down by race to show that 83.4% were white. The district’s student body was reported as 47.5% white.

Conversely, black teachers made up 14% of the faculty, while the student body’s black population was 35.4%.

One other race, Hispanic, made up 3% of the faculty, while the student body’s Hispanic population was 8%.

The Arkadelphia school board — itself made up of two African-Americans and five Caucasians — is asking the district’s leader to tackle a decades-old, nationwide issue. The U.S. Census Bureau in 2022 reported an uptick in teacher diversity, but that it still lagged compared to the racial makeup of students.

In Arkansas, black teachers accounted for 8% of public K-12 teachers for the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

But there are also other minorities in Arkadelphia Public Schools that Thomas, under terms of her contract, must represent in future hiring. The district’s student body of 1,812 also consisted of 141 of mixed race (7.7%), 17 Asians and 4 Native Americans (less than 1% each). Aside from white, black and Hispanic, the ADE report does not reflect any teachers of other races at APSD.

In order to meet the school board’s expectations, the faculty would ideally be reduced from 101 white teachers to 57 while increasing the number of black teachers from 17 to 42, and seven Hispanic teachers would need to be recruited for a total of 10. Additionally, the future faculty would include 9 teachers of mixed race and 2 each of Asian and Native American descent.

Bell provided no timeline for the board’s expectations of Thomas to come to fruition.