Thelma Ramsey
MAPLEWOOD/SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — The South Orange-Maplewood School District has hired an equity consultant to address the underrepresentation of black students in college and career preparatory courses, an action taken in compliance with the district’s resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s New York Office of Civil Rights, which it entered into after the Office of Civil Rights filed a complaint against the district in October.
The Board of Education unanimously approved a three-year, $78,500 contract with Sage Educational Consultants — whose principal, Thelma Ramsey, is a Maplewood resident and East Orange Campus High School assistant principal — at its meeting Monday, Feb. 2. The contract took effect Sunday, Feb. 1, and will run through Dec. 30, 2017, though the district’s in-house counsel Phil Stern told the News-Record it could conclude earlier, depending on whether the Office of Civil Rights is satisfied with the changes made in response to Sage’s recommendations. The contract can also be extended if need be, Stern said.
Overall, Stern said the district views this process of change, which commences with Sage’s retainment, as a chance to benefit its diverse student body.
“It recognizes that there is always work that needs to be done around issues of equal access for all students, irrespective of race, disability and any of the protected categories,” said Stern in a phone interview Thursday, Feb. 5. “South Orange and Maplewood is not a unique district in its recognition that there is work to be done. However, South Orange and Maplewood is in a unique position, given our extraordinary diversity, that we should, at the end of this process, be showing practices that should be a model for the rest of the country in that regard.
“Our aspirations are very high that this process is going to be used to not only satisfy the requirements of the resolution agreement, but also make sure, in terms of overall teaching pedagogy, what we provide for all students in the district is as good as it gets,” Stern said.
Now that the district has brought Sage aboard, the agreement states it next will conduct a self-assessment, examining enrollment data regarding high-level programs and the possible barriers preventing increased participation in those classes, among other topics.
Sage will then review that assessment with the district and present its own report, outlining recommendations on how the district can ensure that all students are receiving equal access to college and career preparatory courses, per the agreement. These measures may include revising eligibility guidelines, increasing outreach to children and parents, improving academic counseling and changing the way educators are trained.
In order to formulate this report, Sage plans to meet with stakeholders, such as administrators and community members, as well as analyze school data, according to the report issued by the committee that evaluated the Request for Proposals to find an educational consultant. In fact, Sage’s approach, in addition to the fact that it offered the lowest program price, was a main reason it was chosen over Pollins and Associates or Ritu Pancholy.
After the report is presented, the agreement said the district will create and implement an action plan based on the consultant’s suggestions, with the goal of making academic opportunities more equitable for students of all backgrounds. Documentation that these changes were made, as well as copies of the district’s self-assessment and the consultant’s report, will be provided to the Office of Civil Rights throughout the process. Data pertaining to the number of students by race enrolled — in both the district as a whole and the preparatory courses in question — is also required to be maintained annually, starting with the 2014-15 school year.
The process began with the Office of Civil Rights’ complaint that there was a discrepancy between the number of black and white students in high-level classes. After conducting a compliance review of the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years, according to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in programs requiring federal financing, the Office of Civil Rights specifically found that there were fewer black students than whites in high school college and career readiness programs and in the elementary and middle school courses that would have prepared them for those classes. For instance, the review stated that while black students represented 51.5 percent of the total high school enrollment, only 18.7 percent of students in Advanced Placement courses were black. In contrast, 69.8 percent of AP students were white although white students accounted for only 38.4 percent of the total high school population.
Resolving this issue will not be easy, but the district is hoping that hiring an equity consultant is the first step toward making things better, said Stern, who added the schools will benefit because of it.
“This is a great opportunity for us,” Stern said. “It is going to be difficult work and it is going to be work that I can guarantee you will involve respectful debate about how to get from point a to point b at various times. But there isn’t anybody who is not 100 percent committed to viewing this as an opportunity to make us the best we can be.”
Stern is not the only one who feels that way. Board of Education President Wayne Eastman told the News-Record the board is united in its commitment to the process. Eastman said this was evident at the board meeting when no one elected to sever — or separate a resolution from the rest of the agenda for further discussion — the vote to hire Sage, instead approving it as part of a package with other action items.
“On behalf of the board, we all look forward to the collaboration involving the consultant, the OCR and the district,” said Eastman in a phone interview on Thursday, Feb. 5.