FACULTY INTEGRATION

The American Federation of Teachers has historically supported the principle that school faculties should be integrated. The best education is provided by a staff that is diversified in terms of experience level, race, sex, age and cultural background. Unfortunately jobs in the schools have not been available to all groups who deserve access to them. Nor have there always been large numbers of qualified candidates from all of these groups to take even those jobs that were available. The reasons for this problem are many and its solutions complex.

Just as schools were segregated prior to the Brown decision in 1954, so too was teacher education. While the administration of teacher education was not legally prescribed by the "separate but equal" doctrine, the preparation of black teachers traditionally fell to black colleges. The idea that whites should teach whites and blacks should teach blacks was rigidly practiced in the South. The AFT opposed this practice and ousted its southern locals which maintained segregated mem­berships.

In the North where the barriers to integrated staffing of schools were less tightly structured other factors worked against the principle that staffs should be mixed. For reasons of social hardship, economic inability and discrimination, members of many minority groups were unable to obtain the college education required for teaching. The pool of minority teachers available to take school jobs remained small. In large city systems the number of minority pupils grew rapidly while the proportion of minority teachers stayed the same.

The American Federation of Teachers supported the abolition of legal barriers to school and staff integration and led the way in implementing a number of staff development programs that followed the court rulings. Open enrollment, free tuition plans, career ladder programs that would enable paraprofessionals to become teachers, and recruitment drives in the South and in Puerto Rico were strategies where AFT locals led the way. In many cases they were made part of negotiated agreements. The AFT believes that they remain the best mechanisms for encouraging the integration of school staffs.

The AFT supports negotiated appointment policies and transfer policies to supplement the efforts of locals to encourage integration through job, education, and recruitment programs. Transfers and appointments de­pend upon the creation of job slots for their effectiveness as integration tools. Beyond the need for expanded numbers of job openings, the AFT supports the following guidelines for staff integration:

• School staffs should be integrated by experience level as well as race.

• The experience level mix of a school staff-the proportion of teachers with a number of years of teaching experience compared to numbers of newer teachers can be an appropriate and objective index of staff integration.

• Transfer policies and appointment policies combined can encourage an appropriate mix of experienced and inexperienced teachers in each school.

• Transfer policies must consider seniority in creating options for staff to move from one school to another, and no teacher shall be transferred by means of a lottery.

Without new jobs for those groups who justifiably are demanding a place in the work force of schools, staff integration faces a grim future. The most imaginative of appointment policies or transfer procedures are only stopgap measures when school budgets are being cut and job opportunities are being closed off. Education staffs must be expanded so that the schools can begin to meet needs in areas where they are now falling short. Those who have never had the opportunity to train for these jobs must receive the necessary education. Through the creation of more jobs and the training of more minorities to fill them, integration could rapidly become a reality.