High school district looking to diversify staff

The landscape of the student population in the Valley Stream Central High School District has been changing in recent years. Now Board of Education members and administrators say they think it’s time to have a staff that better reflects those changes. At the board’s work session on Jan. 3, trustees approved an initiative that aims to diversify the district’s staff.

“For the first time in the history of Valley Stream, the largest subcomponent of our students here will not be white in the high school district,” Superintendent Dr. Bill Heidenreich said. “It will be black students.”

Tracey Nekulak, assistant superintendent for personnel and administration, put a plan before the board that, with the help of Nassau BOCES, would ensure a more racially diverse pool of applicants when there is an opening in the district. BOCES offers Diversity Recruitment services to districts that are looking for qualified minority candidates when a job opening occurs. The high school district would be responsible for $2,800 of the program’s $5,600 cost if Nekulak’s plan is approved. BOCES offers school districts shared services, which means that a certain percentage of program costs are returned to the district.

The $2,800 would be a one-time fee for the year, and the program would go into effect in the spring. “I think it’s a fair amount of money to see what they have to offer,” Nekulak said.

BOCES holds a multicultural job fair in March, and screens all applicants who submit resumes, according to Nekulak. Last year, BOCES had more than 900 responses, and a large number of applicants were minorities. “This is a way of us becoming a little more aggressive in our approach to recruit diverse candidates,” Nekulak said.

Currently, when the district needs to fill a position, it runs an advertisement in The New York Times, screens the applicants and invites the top candidates to come in to start the interview process. But according to Heidenreich, there is no way to know the race of the applicants beforehand.

If Nekulak’s plan is approved, the district would ask members of the BOCES Diversity Recruitment staff to send their top candidates in for interviews. “We would run our ad like we always do,” Nekulak said, “but now we would be guaranteed a certain percentage of that pool would be candidates with diverse backgrounds.”

She added that BOCES does not collect any data to see if districts have been able to fill positions based on its program. Several districts in Nassau County use the BOCES program, including District 30 in Valley Stream.

Trustee Elise Antonelli, who also sits on the District 30 elementary board, said District 30 has not hired anyone from the program yet, but it has had a number of candidates who came through the diversity fair. “It’s widening our pool,” Antonelli said.

She went on to say that through a similar program, the Long Island Association of Black Educators, District 30 filled a vacant principal’s position. She suggested using this resource as well.