onto local news...
September 2, 2009Today's paper had articles on two issues that interested me, so here's some feedback.
"Our work is just beginning to get businesses in District 2," Roberts-Burns said. "I think we will get them if we work hard at it."Tax money generated by development from one year to the next within a TIF zone goes into a fund and is reinvested in future development projects in the area."
Someone in the comments in this story (and the previous one) made use of their constitutional and human right to express their opinion. (The Eastside is crime-ridden, blah, blah) However negative, outdated, incorrect and so on an so forth, it is their opinion.
My opinion is that this move is years overdue. Simple and plain.
While the population in East Wichita Falls has decreased in comparison to other areas of town, residential developments such as Washington Village Apartments, Lions Court and the various Habitat for Humanity homes built in the area show that there is an interest to live in East Wichita Falls. Be it the affordable nature of the land there or how relatively close it is to SAFB or perhaps the newly-paved MLK Jr. Blvd. (which makes for a pretty smooth and fast drive to work) all this part of town needs now is a resurgence of service-oriented businesses.
I remember having to drive up to the United Supermarket to get gasoline, food during the day and at night Wal-Mart on Central Freeway was the only place to meet your needs, unless you needed alcohol, . (and there's plenty of places to purchase that on MLK Jr. But that's another convo for another day) Having a place (or places) where folks only have to drive down the road (or walk) to get their needs and services taken care off is beneficial for all, so big UP! to our City leaders, hopefully this doesn't hit the bottom of the pile of their things to do.
Now onto needed social change. Lindsey Walker is grabbing the collective chins of the WFISD school board in an attempt to turn their heads and senses onto something he (and I agree) sees as social injustice, the lack of a representative number of minority teachers and leaders in the district.
From today's article:
"Walker said 5 percent to 6 percent of the district's professional staff is black and that six schools have no black teachers. Six schools have one, he said.
"Principals fail to seek diversity as a priority," Walker said."
Folks, the reality is that according to the latest available WFISD enrollment numbers, most of the over 14 thousand students in the district are not Caucasians. And hold on to your chairs, your school district is now a minority-majority district. Non-whites may outnumber whites by a few percentage points, but apparently that's where the minority-majority stops since the composition of the school district staff does not mirror their enrollment.
What does this mean? A few things actually.
From today's article:
In the most recent Academic Excellence Indicator System report dated 2007-08, data provided by WFISD to the state shows that of the district's 2,000 employees, 350 are minorities, or 17.5 percent. Statewide, minority staff totals 43.1 percent.
Of the district's 1,073 teachers, 48 are African American, 53 are Hispanic, 958 are white, 7 are Native American and 6 are Asian.
Percentage-wise, WFISD's minority work force lags behind the state's: African-American teachers here are 4.5 percent of the district's educators, compared with 9.6 percent statewide; Hispanic teachers here represent 5 percent, compared to 21.4 percent statewide; the white teachers here represent 89 percent of the teaching force, compared to 67 percent statewide.
Contrary to the beliefs of some of our strong-minded commenters, there are laws in place to encourage diversity in our schools, workplaces, etc. If you don't see the point in this, then I can only assume that you either skipped history in high school or have never picked up a work of non-fiction. Thus, if the WFISD is falling short on this due to something they or their employees are doing, this is a huge problem.
Thumbs up to Mr. Walker for exposing this in a public forum and staying with the cause. But there is an unfortunate and glaring absence in this movement in my opinion, so I'll ask, where are the Latinos at?
Having Mr. Walker (a black man) as the main name associated along with acronyms such as the NAACP, makes this to the uninformed masses a "black issue" instead of a social justice issue. I'm quite sure that Mr. Walker has the support (explicit or not) of more than just african-americans, but given that the largest non-white ethnic group of our city and our school district is Latino, why aren't we visible in this? Where's LULAC? Zavala? The Club Capri? All of our Latino-based organizations who have a commitment to our youth and our community seem to be terribly absent from this important discourse.
Nevertheless, my hat is off to our new superintendent. Conducting a study is the best way to approach this issue.
But I hope that their goal is not to simply match or come close to the numbers of teachers throughout the State of Texas. Their goal should be to encourage and foment an environment where there are little to no questions raised at who was hired and why. Schools and education should be the most progressive segment of our society, where our next generation is trained and set straight.
After all, real, tangible change comes about in generations not in years.
Posted by Maurel Merette at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
