Local Black Educators Fear Ranks Might Grow Thinner

As one of Orange County’s relatively small group of black educators, Johnny Williams feels uneasy about retiring from the Santa Ana Unified school district within the next few years.

Although the 29-year veteran knows Orange County has never been a haven for African Americans, he and other black educators fear that their ranks soon might thin to the point where most county schools have no black faculty.

“(The district is) much more interested in recruiting Hispanics, because that’s where the population is growing,” said Williams, an assistant principal at Valley High School. “But they need to understand that it’s a diverse country and they need a good mix of people from all groups.”

This issue is also of grave concern to members of the Black Educators Assn. of Orange County, a Santa Ana-based group that has been urging district officials to seek black candidates when teaching and administrative positions become available.

“We’re very concerned that there might be a lack of presence of black teachers in the future, because the majority of black educators, at least in Santa Ana, have 10 years experience or more,” said May Ussery, an association member and a 10-year teacher at Valley High. “. . . And unfortunately, we’ve noticed that as black teachers retire, many of them are not being replaced.”

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Although African Americans constitute only 2% of Orange County’s general and student populations, they make up less than 1% of the county’s public school teachers and administrators, a proportion some educators say is already dangerously low.

“I think it’s critical for districts to have a strong presence of black teachers and administrators because we need role models for black children,” said John Carlyle, superintendent of the Centralia Elementary School District and Orange County’s only black school superintendent.

“It’s equally important for children and adults of other races to see black educators because they need to know that we’re capable of doing all kinds of professional things.”

Whites still constitute about 90% of all teachers and administrators in Orange County. Even as the size of Asian and Latino student populations soared between 1983 and 1993, and districts hired hundreds of new minority educators, their proportion of the county’s professional work force has increased only slightly. The African American presence among teachers and administrators, already small, has declined a bit.

The total number of teachers and administrators in Orange County rose from 14,975 in 1983 to 17,416 in 1993, according to the latest figures available. During that decade, the number of white educators increased from 13,659 to 15,656, but the number of black educators edged up from 153 to just 168.

At the same time, the number of Latino educators jumped from 636 to 952 and the number of Asians increased from 353 to 534.

School officials say they’ve been trying to hire more black teachers and administrators but haven’t been successful.

“We seek, we try, but we don’t get black applicants,” said James Owen, personnel director at the Cypress Elementary School District, which has a 5% black student population but no black faculty members. “Either they don’t want to come to the Cypress Elementary School District or they aren’t credentialed. We would accept with open arms African Americans who are capable and qualified to come to our district.”

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Donald Champlin, the Santa Ana school district’s personnel director, said the school system’s main priority in recent years has been to hire Spanish-speaking teachers. The district is now 88% Latino, 6% Asian, 4% white and 2% black.

But in response to growing concerns among black educators, district officials plan to recruit this year at predominantly black Grambling State University in Louisiana.

“Most of our recruiting has been very local,” Champlin said. “But every two or three years, we try to go to other parts of the country because it’s always a priority to hire qualified black teachers.”

Champlin said Orange County school districts tend to have difficulty recruiting black teachers because there are so few blacks living here. Districts tend to hire teachers who already live in the area or attend local schools.

Local colleges and universities do not appear to provide school districts with a large pool of black teaching candidates.

At Cal State Fullerton, for instance, only 12 of the 990 students seeking teaching or administrative credentials are black. The situation is equally bleak at UC Irvine, where only one of 150 education students is black.

“Our push is to get underrepresented groups in education, but we have not done particularly well in terms of African Americans,” said Michael Parker, acting dean of Cal State Fullerton’s School of Human Development and Community Service. “Part of the reason is that a lot of African Americans are choosing careers in other areas.”

Derick Evans, an assistant principal at La Quinta High School in Westminster, said many black educators don’t come to Orange County because they believe they won’t be accepted by their peers and the community.

“They are afraid of branching out of predominantly minority communities because they don’t believe they will succeed,” said Evans, who is one of only a few black administrators in the Garden Grove Unified School District. “But I’ve found just the opposite to be true.”

Before coming to Orange County, Evans was a dean at Bellflower High School in Los Angeles County, where, he said, he spent most of his time disciplining students. Now, discipline is only one part of his job.

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Carlyle, the Centralia superintendent, said young black teachers shouldn’t be turned off by negative perceptions of Orange County.

“If you go just by the reputation of the county, people tend to think it’s almost impossible for a black to make it here,” he said. “But I would like minority youngsters to know that with determination, you can accomplish anything.”

But even Carlyle acknowledges that the presence of black teachers and administrators in Orange County is threatened. Although he holds the top job in Centralia, Carlyle is the district’s only black faculty member. At age 57, he knows he doesn’t have a long career ahead of him.

“I’ve been totally happy in this district because I could not be more supported by the school board, staff and community. But I know this is not the case for blacks in every district.”

African Americans first began teaching at Orange County schools in the early 1960s--mostly at schools in Santa Ana, where there was a small black population, said Lawrence de Graaf, a history professor at Cal State Fullerton.

During the 60s and 70s--in the aftermath of the country’s civil rights movement--dozens of new black teachers were hired by county schools. Most began in Santa Ana, where the majority of county blacks lived at the time. But as the black community spread from Santa Ana to other areas, so did teachers.

“One thing that surprised me was the widespread feeling among blacks in Orange County that the tremendous dispersal of their population has had severe negative consequences,” de Graaf said. “Black teachers no longer could be assured that they would be in contact with many black students. So as a result, those young African American teachers whose mission is to serve their own community would not come to Orange County.”

Williams, the Valley High assistant principal, agrees that the lack of an established black community has led to a lack of black educators. “Blacks do not come to Orange County because there is no social life for them,” he said.

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Since his arrival in 1966, Williams said he’s seen the Santa Ana school district change from a predominantly white district to a largely Latino one. Although there now are several black principals and assistant principals in the district, Williams said he believes blacks might never wield much power because they don’t have a large black community backing them.

“There are no top black administrators at the district level,” he said. “I think there’s a glass ceiling when you reach a certain level.”

Champlin, however, said Santa Ana continues to promote and hire blacks at the administrative level. The district now has 11 black administrators, 7% of the total, he said. While every black teacher who retires or leaves might not be replaced by another African American, Champlin said new black teachers are hired regularly.

“We try to be open to all candidates because we know it’s important for kids to have exposure to all cultures,” he said. “But we don’t get that many black candidates, because every district is heavily recruiting them and some teachers probably think twice about coming to an area with so few blacks.”

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The More Things Change...

The ethnic makeup of teachers and administrators in Orange County elementary and high schools has remained virtually unchanged in the past decade. But the student population, about two-thirds white in 1983, is now less than half white:

Faculty / administration

1983-84 White: 91% Other: 1% Black: 1% Asian: 3% Latino: 4%

1993-94 White: 90% Other: 1% Black: 1% Asian: 3% Latino: 5%

Students

1983-84 White: 67% Other less than 1% Black: 2% Asian: 10% Latino: 21%

1993-94 White: 48% Other: 1% Black: 2% Asian: 14% Latino: 35%

Latinos, Asians Advancing

Although most faculty members and administrators are white, the biggest gains have been made by Latinos and Asians. Both groups increased their presence by half:

1983-84 1993-94 % Change White 13,659 15,656 +15 Latino 636 952 +50 Asian 353 534 +51 Black 153 168 +10 Other 174 106 -40 Total 14,975 17,416 +16

Source: Orange County Department of Education; Researched by DIANE SEO / Los Angeles Times