The state's newly enacted education funding bill includes a "historic investment" in efforts to boost the number of teachers of color in Minnesota, but there were missed opportunities, too, a chief advocate for the cause said Friday.
"We're in a deep hole, and it's going to take decades to get out of this hole," said Paul Spies, legislative action team lead for the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota.
A Star Tribune analysis has found that although about one-third of the state's kindergarten through 12th-grade students are nonwhite, teachers of color make up about 5% of full- and part-time teachers.
Coalition members and others have in recent years cited research showing teachers of color help narrow the achievement gap between students of color and their white peers and inspire kids to stay in school, too. That's helped prompt legislators and Gov. Tim Walz to sign off on a bill last week that triples the existing K-12 spending on teacher-of-color recruitment and retention to about $13 million annually, according to a coalition analysis.
The bulk of the new spending involves increases in existing programs, but new to the mix are bonuses to attract teachers from other states plus $750,000 in one-time funding for the group Black Men Teach, which has the relatively narrow goal of adding Black male teachers at eight metro area elementary schools.
Hopkins Public Schools Superintendent Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, the board chairwoman for Black Men Teach, told a state Senate committee this year that 80% of the teachers at six elementary schools in her district were white women — and just two were Black males in a school system in which nearly half of the students are nonwhite.
"We do need teachers of color across the state of Minnesota, but the data and the research clearly demonstrate that Black male educators are almost absent from the profession," she said. "Cultivating Black males to be elementary educators, and working diligently and directly within the schools, is our secret sauce at Black Men Teach."
The Come Teach in Minnesota hiring bonuses were pushed by the teachers-of-color coalition and will total $200,000 annually. The program allows a district or school to offer a bonus of $2,500 to $5,000 to an eligible American Indian or person of color from another state or country, and $4,000 to $8,000 if the teacher meets a licensure shortage in the economic development region in which the school is located.
