The Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) is updating its hiring process to increase faculty diversity. LBUSD board acknowledged the need for diversity among teachers after reviewing the most recent Workforce Diversity Initiative update at its meeting Monday, Oct. 3.
The board hopes to improve the recruitment and retention of a diverse staff in order to more closely follow the Excellence and Equity policy passed last December through strategies such as the Workforce Diversity Initiative.
The Excellence and Equity policy was created by staff, parents and community members as a call to action to ensure the inclusion of Black and disabled students within the district.
According to assistant superintendent of human resources David Zaid, one of the most important actions the district can take to achieve this goal is hiring diverse and well-qualified teachers.
Of the district’s 4,052 TK-12 certificated staff—not including substitutes—49% are white, 27% are Hispanic and 9% are African-American. Zaid said that when compared to data from the past two years, there was a 2% increase in Hispanic staff and a 4% decrease in white staff.
“We’ve heard directly from our students that diversity in our teachers matters, and it matters to them because students want to be exposed to different perspectives, different experiences, different thoughts,” Zaid said. “Students want to look at their teachers and see themselves.”
Zaid clarified that although the data presented focuses mostly on race and ethnicity, the district is also looking to recruit educators of varied socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and physical ability.
“When you take a look at our student demographic data, and then you look at our teacher workforce data…you’ll start to see under and over-representation,” Zaid said.
African-Americans and Hispanics are the most underrepresented demographics in terms of teachers, yet the student population is 12% African-American and 59% Hispanic.
LBUSD elementary school sites Alvarado, Luther Burbank, Burcham, George Washington Carver, MacArthur and Los Cerritos have no African-American teachers; Mark Twain, Addams and McKinley elementary schools have only one.
As per data presented to the board, 11% of the approximately 300 new hires during the 2022-2023 school year were African-American and 37% were Hispanic.
Tackling lack of diversity via the hiring process
The data also reflected that 75% of new hires had previously worked for the district as either a college aid, student teacher, substitute teacher or classified worker.
In response, the district will aim to diversify its hiring pool through partnerships with local colleges in an attempt to combat the lack of diversity.
“If our pool isn’t diverse, it doesn’t matter what we try to do in terms of our hiring,” board member Juan Benitez said.
Previously, the district had been working exclusively with CSULB’s teaching credential program. According to Zaid, the lack of diversity within CSULB’s program led the district to expand these partnerships to other universities such as California State University, Los Angeles and Dominguez Hills as well as the University of Southern California.
Zaid said that he wanted to “dispel the myth” around the potential negative effects that expanding to other campuses could have on CSULB.
“We were able to not only offer all the opportunities that Cal State Long Beach needed, but then still have room for Cal State Dominguez and Cal State LA, which specifically has students who graduated from Long Beach schools,” Zaid said.
The district also recently partnered with Long Beach City College for the Grow Your Own Future Teacher diversity program that allows students to take dual enrollment education classes while still in high school and offers a contract within LBUSD once they graduate with their credentials.
Zaid said the district is currently working to continue implementing these strategies as well as creating new ones, including focusing on retention and how to support teachers who may be the first and only of a specific ethnicity, race or gender on their campuses.
“Research tells us that the classroom teacher has the greatest impact on student achievement and development,” Zaid said.
