Race and Overreaction: On the Streets and in Schools

[NitaX]

Y'all know BlueBayou ain't been back since she got her ass roasted.

[redwino]

I've talked to coworkers about the idea of school district employees being required to live in the district. Most of them live outside of our urban district do they thought it was an absurd idea. I don't think it's very realistic right now, but I don't think it's crazy.

I honestly believe it would help our schools to have the people who work there invested in the community. The people I work with too frequently see the black and brown parents and kids as a "them" and the faculty and staff as an "us". Too many people I work with truly don't see our students as kids just like their own. Maybe this mentality would change if they saw more people like their students in their everyday interactions outside of work.

[NitaX]

Feb 3, 2015 10:49:22 GMT -5 redwino said:

I've talked to coworkers about the idea of school district employees being required to live in the district. Most of them live outside of our urban district do they thought it was an absurd idea. I don't think it's very realistic right now, but I don't think it's crazy.

I honestly believe it would help our schools to have the people who work there invested in the community. The people I work with too frequently see the black and brown parents and kids as a "them" and the faculty and staff as an "us". Too many people I work with truly don't see our students as kids just like their own. Maybe this mentality would change if they saw more people like their students in their everyday interactions outside of work.

Such a proposal is a double edged sword. You run the risk of alienating qualified individuals when you create residency requirements. Memphis had a big issue with this when they discovered that they couldn't find candidates within the city proper. The requirement was expanded to the county and that helped a little more.

I'll say that I think a lot of this comes down to proper training. You can't force folks to live next door to people who don't look like them. We discussed last week that flight out of a neighborhood happens when the minority population hits 7-8%. So, living next door to someone doesn't help. You have to get people to address the fear component head on. We need to pay for REAL diversity seminars and training. Not that BS stuff they put on online tutorials to meet a training component. 

[redwino]

@soudesafinado I hadn't thought about the COL aspect. I'm in a VLCOL so that didn't come up in our discussion. Living outside of our district is actually more expensive but that's because there's little going on in the city for there to be a housing demand. I can see how things would be different in a HCOL area.

NitaX that double edged sword is why having a residency requirement isn't realistic for my district right now. Over half of our faculty and admins would either have to move or quit. Plus we have a teacher shortage so we'd be even further up the creek than we already are now. I agree with you that real training would go a long way. We don't even have diversity training. We just throw fresh grads into the hood and tell them good luck.