LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) _ The Lincoln school district is encouraging its minority students to consider diversifying Nebraska’s teaching workforce.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the district’s multicultural
administrator Thomas Christie hosted an annual workshop Friday for about 60 students of different races to learn about becoming educators.
More than 5 percent of educators at Lincoln Public Schools are people of color, while 33 percent of the district’s students are racial or ethnic minorities.
Nebraska’s education commissioner Matt Blomstedt says the state would need to hire seven times more African-American and Native-American educators and 11 times more Hispanic educators to reflect the current student population.
The state’s Education Department has joined nine other states in an initiative aiming to revise state policies to encourage a more diversified workforce by 2020.