Statewide in school year 2017-2018, about 5% of teachers were not white, while about 30% of students were not white, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
D.R.E.A.M. has a $70,000, three-year grant from the Ohio Department of Education for the project.
Devon Berry, the human resources director at West Carrollton schools, said it would be easier to recruit candidates if several districts could pool resources and advertise several jobs in the Dayton area at once.
“That can create a cohort of people to come up here and even if they’re not in my district, they’re in the Dayton region,” Berry said. “They’re growing our intellectual capital.”
Berry said there are some districts that are just getting their first Black teacher in the district. That’s not an easy position to be in, and if there’s not a person of color in the district, connecting the new teacher to a teacher of color in another district can help with retention and growth, he said.
Due to the lack of diversity, schools around the state have been trying to recruit more diverse people to the teaching profession for years, and many schools have programs to accomplish that goal.
For example, Dayton Public, Trotwood schools and Mad River Local are working together on a program that would recruit future teachers from those schools as sophomores and send them to a participating local university. The students would then come back to teach at that school.
DPS also has a $70,000 grant from the Montgomery County Educational Services Center to pay some of the student loans of diverse candidates who work for them.
The problem is those programs can give school districts a limited ability to recruit and retain teachers. D.R.E.A.M. would allow schools to pool resources and mentor teachers outside of the district.
The number of teachers available in the state has become a concern for area districts. Ohio issued a fluctuating number of teaching licenses since 2000, with between 45,000 and about 67,000 licenses issued each year, according to ODE data. The number of licenses issued fell steadily between 2010 and 2017 but began to go back up again in 2018. But with many teachers ready to retire, districts are concerned about the future of the profession.
All students benefit from teachers of color, said Maya Dorsey, director of equity and collaborative impact at Learn to Earn Dayton, which is participating in the project.
Research cited by the Ohio Department of Education has shown that students of color have better academic outcomes when they are taught by someone who looks like them, and that white students also benefit in social and emotional ways when they are taught by nonwhite staff. Teaching is a predominately white, female profession, she noted.
“It needs to be changed,” Dorsey said. “So we’re trying to do what we can locally to create opportunities for all students to have exposure in this opportunity.”
Allyson Couch, the director of education services for Oakwood schools, said the idea is still new. It started in conversations between school HR directors. D.R.E.A.M. plans to recruit more schools next, she said.
“Our goal is to create a sustainable model, something that will continue long past us,” Couch said.
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