District can't find minority teachers

Very few minorities are looking for teaching positions, school officials say.
SWISSVALE, Pa. (AP) -- A suburban Pittsburgh school district formed by a landmark desegregation lawsuit is having difficulty attracting minority teachers.
While about 60 percent of the Woodland Hills School District is black, blacks account for less than 10 percent of the district's professional staff and no blacks are among the 37 new teachers hired for the current school year.
"We are constantly striving to maintain a balance in our staff," spokeswoman Pat Dawson told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for Saturday's editions. "The problem is, we have had very few minorities apply for teaching positions. We offered jobs to a few. They accepted, then rescinded. One teacher did not have the proper certifications."
About the school
The school was formed in 1981 by the merger of five districts in Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs to resolve a federal racial discrimination lawsuit filed 10 years earlier by black parents in the former General Braddock schools. The lawsuit said black pupils were segregated from white pupils.
In May, Roslynne Wilson became the district's first black superintendent. Assistant Superintendent Fabian Nolan Brooks also is black.
But Woodland Hills has had difficulty placing more blacks in teaching positions.
Just 42 of the 462 people on the district's professional staff are black, while 3,284 of its 5,765 pupils are black.
Five percent of teachers statewide and 8 percent nationwide are black. Black enrollment is 22.3 percent statewide, compared with 17.5 percent nationwide, according to state and U.S. Education Department statistics.
School board President Cindy Lowery said the district has trouble getting black applicants.
"We bring people in as student-teachers, we have long-term substitutes that we hire and we try to promote from there," she said. "But we don't always have the number of African-American candidates that we like to. If there are other ways to do more, we'd be open to it."
"I think over the years, it's always been talked about," said school board member Marilyn Messina, a teacher in the Penn Hills School District. "I think we've done well in that area. Some people might say the district's not hiring [minority teachers] but the efforts are being made."
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