LOCAL : Antelope District Minority Plan

The Antelope Valley Union High School District, faced with a 30% minority student enrollment that continues to grow, has approved an affirmative action plan aimed at increasing the district’s relatively small number of minority teachers.

Officials in the nearly 10,000-student district said the goal of the plan is to hire 19 additional minority teachers in each of the coming three years. The district said the hiring plan should increase the percentage of minority teachers in the district from 8.9% to 16.4% by 1992.

District officials acknowledged that the plan will not bring about parity in the ethnic makeup of students and teachers any time soon, in part because minority student enrollments are expected to continue increasing and because minority teaching candidates are in demand by urban school districts.

The affirmative action plan was approved unanimously Wednesday night by the district’s Board of Trustees.

Latinos, who make up 17.8% of the students, are the fastest-growing minority group in the district, increasing nearly 32% since last year. Black students now represent 8.4% of the enrollment, a 17% increase from last year. Asians account for 2.4% of the students, up 26.6% over last year. The percentage of white students declined to 69.6% this year.