Minority Hiring in Schools

I would like to add an anecdote to Adrienne Mack’s insightful article on LAUSD’s awful hiring practices (“When Experience Doesn’t Pay,” July 21).

During spring of 1995, my school, Cleveland Humanities Magnet, tried to hire one of Mack’s esteemed Birmingham compatriots. She was a quality teacher, experienced in teaching mathematics, well credentialed and also an Academic Decathlon coach. In addition, she was Irani. We at Cleveland have a growing Irani student population, and we had absolutely no Irani teachers. She was the perfect addition to our faculty. Yet we could not hire her. Why? Because, ludicrous as it may seem, LAUSD designates Iranians as part of the white majority. My point? Not only are LAUSD schools not allowed to get the best teacher available, sometimes they can’t even get the best minority available.

LAUSD rolls over and plays dead whenever a loud minority starts whining. It never contested the incredibly unfair demands of the Rodriguez Consent Decree (hence the word “consent”), simply because it was afraid of being un-PC. It ignores the idiotic designations of certain minority ethnic groups as “white majority,” simply because they aren’t members of the “in” minorities. Until some sanity returns to the leadership of this school district, it is doomed to mediocrity and, ultimately, breakup.

MICHAEL HELWIG

Canoga Park

Helwig is a teacher at Cleveland Humanities Magnet