By Marley Seaman and Rachel Kalina
"We have far less black teachers than we had before, and we have more [black] students," said Rener Reed, whose three children all went to school in Malverne. "It doesn't look like we are moving in the right direction."
The controversy began after Dr. Mary Ellen Freeley, superintendent of schools, announced the hiring of eight new teachers and administrators. Three were black - one administrator, one dean and one teacher/department chairperson - and some in the audience said the district was not hiring enough black teachers to replace those who are retiring. They said that the makeup of the district's staff should more closely reflect the student population, and that Malverne is hiring fewer black teachers than it has in decades.
"I see what's going on here, and it's not a good thing," said resident Andrea Cheatham. She added that the district has a history of turning down qualified candidates of color, which has created a stigma that prevents others from applying. "The school board needs to not insult the intelligence of the public," Cheatham said.
Freeley conceded that building diversity is "an uphill road," but said she was happy with the district's new hires.
According to a July 2005 report to New York state, 16 percent of classroom teachers in the school district are minorities. Freeley said that 13 percent of the teachers are black, compared with 60 percent of the student body.
The staff percentage, however, is higher than the Nassau County average. County-wide, 9 percent of public school teachers are minorities.
Reed, a past president of the Lakeview chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that it is important for the students of Malverne to have black role models. "In order for a student to feel good about themselves sometimes and to strive and become better, I think [they need] to be able to mirror themselves after someone that looks like them," Reed told the Herald. "It's a motivating factor."
Freeley said that Malverne tries to recruit black teachers by advertising in The New York Times and at colleges like St. John's, Molloy and Hofstra. She illustrated the difficulty of finding applicants by saying that at a Hofstra job fair, only five of the 108 people in attendance were members of minority groups. Freeley also said that the schools reached out to the Lakeview NAACP, although NAACP members replied that they received word too late to help.
Bea Bayley, vice president and education chair of the Lakeview chapter of the NAACP, said that Malverne teachers have told her they are unhappy with the district's hiring process. She said that the superintendent's office restricts the number of candidates that administrators and school principals are allowed to interview. "All the faculty feels the same way, that there's a problem," Bayley said. "It's not one-sided."
Although critics said that other local districts do a better job of hiring black teachers, Malverne schools have a higher percentage of minority teachers than Lynbrook (4 percent), Elmont (8 percent) and Franklin Square (3 percent). In Hempstead, however, 77 percent of teachers are minorities.
Freeley said that the district made job offers to a number of other minority applicants, but not all of them accepted. That led to charges that Malverne's salaries are not competitive with other Nassau County schools, which Freeley denied. She said that new teachers in Malverne typically start at salaries of $50,000 to $55,000.
According to forms submitted to the state, the average salary for a classroom teacher in Malverne in 2005 was $65,785. The Nassau average was almost $6,500 more than that.
Reed and others complained that students are graduating from the Malverne school district and teaching in other districts because Malverne is not hiring them. Cheatham wondered if her daughter, an English and education major, would be able to fulfill her personal dream of returning to Malverne to teach.
Bayley said the district could expand its recruiting base to hire a greater number of black teachers. However, she said, the NAACP's suggestions have gone unheeded. "We had a full discussion with the education committee," Bayley said, "and we were told that an effort would be made. But they haven't changed their venues for recruiting or anything."
Comments about this story? MSeaman@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 205.
