LYNN — Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Tutwiler announced at a School Committee meeting Thursday night that the district’s efforts to increase racial diversity in the staffing of teachers, principals, paraprofessionals and other school staff by at least 1 percent have exceeded their goals for the 2020-21 school year.
Diversity in teaching staff increased by 3 percent from the past school year, as the total amount of white teaching staff decreased from 91 to 89 percent, and Hispanic teaching staff increased from 5 to 8 percent.
Principal diversity increased by 10 percent, as the number of white principals decreased from 88 to 78 percent, Hispanic principals increased from 2 to 10 percent and Black principals increased from 8 to 12 percent.
Diversity in other leadership roles, such as building and office leadership, increased by 7 percent, with Hispanic staff members rising from 7 to 17 percent and Black staff members rising from 2 to 3 percent.
Paraprofessionals, however, had more mixed results. The total percentage of Black paraprofessional staff increased from 8 to 9 percent but Hispanic staffing decreased from 27 to 24 percent.
Tutwiler explained that the reason for this decrease in paraprofessionals was due to a majority of them becoming teachers in the 2020-21 school year. He said despite this decline, paraprofessionals are still the most diverse staff group of the four.
“You will note that this is the one group that trended in the opposite direction,” Tutwiler said to the committee. “This is due in part (to the fact) that many paraprofessionals were hired as teachers this year. Nonetheless, that professional group remains, by far, the most diverse among all the other professional groups.”
Committee member Michael Satterwhite asked Tutwiler where social workers fit in these categories and how demographic numbers were collected. The superintendent said social workers and other educational staff fell into the teacher category, and that a more detailed report is to be released with a breakdown of the professional category.
“I want to be clear that I intend to provide a more polished set of information and artifacts that go along with the evaluation,” Tutwiler said.
In response to Satterwhite’s second question regarding how numbers were collected, the superintendent said that the collection of data was done by regulation, where the district is required to record the demographics of its staff by race instead of position.
Satterwhite followed up by praising the diversity increase, but acknowledged that there is still work to be done to reach future goals.
“We have room to grow still,” said Satterwhite. “These numbers, though, are incredibly good.”
The School Committee’s mission to increase racial and linguistic diversity in Lynn Public Schools began two years ago. The theory of action that the superintendent and the committee established for this goal is to uphold the core values of the school district and its diverse group of students.
As such, the goal set by the committee since 2019 is to call for at least a 1 percent increase in staffing diversity each school year. The superintendent reached out and collaborated with local colleges such as Salem State University and nonprofit organizations like Teach for America to help recruit candidates for these positions.
The 2019-20 school year had little to no change due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing a staffing shortage, and students being unable to attend school out of fear of getting sick. For the 2020-21 year, however, there are signs that the goals of this project are coming to fruition. Tutwiler said the work will continue but the committee should be proud to exceed its goals for this year.
“The work continues and we are by no means spiking the proverbial football at the goal line,” Tutwiler said. “Nonetheless, I do think it’s important to celebrate the effort district-wide. We’ve taken a substantive step toward becoming a more racially-diverse professional community.”
