MISSION VIEJO : Trustees Set Goal for Minority Hiring

Trustees of Saddleback Community College District have tentatively agreed to fill 30% of all openings for teachers and administrators with minority applicants.

The board also tentatively voted to hire a full-time administrator to oversee an affirmative action program after they heard that only 14% of the district’s recently hired teachers belong to an ethnic minority.

Also, the board decided to assign someone at both Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College to coordinate minority hiring and promotion programs and to pay the travel expenses of prospective teachers coming to the district for job interviews.

In addition, a reception will be held in January or February for leaders of the local minority community.

The proposals, submitted by a committee of district employees, are scheduled to be given final approval Jan. 22. The committee and district administrators were given until that meeting to determine the proposals’ costs and specifics.

“One benefit of having a diverse faculty is that it tends to open up throughout the district all jobs and shows that Saddleback Community College District really does hire people of all backgrounds,” Trustee Harriett Walther said.

Jo Ann Alford, the district’s staff diversity coordinator and the committee’s chairwoman, said Saddleback’s affirmative action program must be strengthened because “other local districts are doing a far, far better job of hiring minorities than we are.”

“All we are doing is asking that Saddleback match the state’s goal, which goes into effect in 1992,” Alford said.

Currently, Asians and Latinos each make up 3% of the district’s 298 full-time teachers, while blacks and American Indians each make up 2%.

The ethnic breakdown of the district’s 30,000 students is 81% white, 8% Asian, 6% Latino, 1% black and 1% American Indian, with 3% listing some other ethnicity.