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District intern presents educator-diversity inventory; committee hears pipeline and partnership progress
Summary
Veronica Salas, an EDLD practicum intern, presented a district inventory of teacher-diversity initiatives, highlighting grants, partnerships with higher education and early-college growth while committee members urged stronger pipeline supports and data tracking.
Veronica Salas, a practicum intern from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s EDLD program, presented the results of a yearlong inventory of Salem Public Schools’ educator-diversity initiatives at the July 28 meeting.
Salas said Salem has been a three-time recipient of DESE’s teacher-diversity grant and was one of seven districts selected for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Registered Teacher Apprenticeship program, which will allow some employees to earn credit for special-education field experience. She also described partnerships with Middlesex Community College and La Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, and cited community supports from Leap for Education, Latinos for Education and the Smith Family Foundation.
On district figures, Salas said the percentage of staff of color had risen from about 10 percent to over 20 percent in the past five years, and that paraprofessional and teacher-of-color percentages grew over that period even though teacher percentages dipped from 17 to 15 in the most recent year. Salas emphasized that the state’s broader pattern shows similar plateauing.
Salas described several pipeline strategies: an early-college education pathway at Salem High that will reach three grades and approximately 70 students next year, a CTE early-childhood program that enrolled 49 students last year, and paraprofessional-to-teacher programs tied to community-college partners. She also presented school-level teacher-distribution charts and asked whether the district should target gains at a few key schools rather than across the entire district.
Committee members praised the inventory and suggested steps forward. Member Cruz recommended expanding para-to-teacher supports and creating summer or early-career paid experiences to keep students engaged in educator pathways. Member Kimball urged robust longitudinal data collection so the district can measure long-term returns on student-to-educator pipelines.
Salas closed by listing open questions for the district, including the efficacy of individual initiatives in producing diverse hires, retention and transfer rates for educators of color, and the need for improved data infrastructure to track program outcomes and candidate pipelines.
