Jeff Bergosh Blog: Interesting Look at School District Demographics

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I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Interesting Look at School District Demographics

At the School Board Workshop this Thursday morning, the board will discuss the demographics of the school district as a whole.

Once per year the district must submit an Equity Report which gives detailed analysis of the makeup of our student population by race and gender, our workforce by race and gender, and our administrators and professional employees by race and gender.

This annual report is mandated by the Florida Educational Equity Act and is the reporting tool which enables our district to demonstrate compliance to the appropriate state agencies and to the general public.

Some interesting facts from the report--Males are very much under-represented in the teacher job classifications, Hispanics (who now comprise 5% of our county population), appear to be severely under-represented in the administrative job classification--as we appear to not have one (1) hispanic in an administrative job in the district.

I always thought it would be great to hire the BEST candidate for any given position, regardless of the race of the applicant, and I'm told that is what we do in this district

But to not have one Hispanic person in an administrative position in our workforce stands out to me as an area of concern which may necessitate additional recruitment efforts by our district hiring teams.

The full report can be viewed here