White Springs residents speak out on teacher racial imbalance at SHE

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Bernard Williams addresses the school board about teacher racial imbalance at SHE. -Photo: Joyce Marie Taylor

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February 14, 2013

White Springs residents speak out on teacher racial imbalance at SHE

Joyce Marie Taylor Suwannee Democrat The Suwannee Democrat Thu Feb 14, 2013, 09:18 AM EST

Jasper — At the Feb. 11 meeting of the Hamilton County School Board, two White Springs residents addressed an issue concerning the lack of black teachers and black faculty members at South Hamilton Elementary School (SHE).

Letitia Bristol and Bernard Williams from White Springs both asked the board to rectify the situation, which has been brought up several times at previous board meetings.

“It’s still an issue,” said Bristol. “It’s a conversation that we have in our community that we’re concerned with.”

Bristol said she sent out a flyer to everyone in the community to let them know what was going on.

“It’s not that they didn’t know,” she said. “But I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that they have the opportunity to speak out.”

Bristol said from her perspective the situation looks bad because all of the teaching staff at SHE are white.

“The only black people that we have are in the cafeteria or they’re sweeping the floor,” she said. “As for me, in 2013, that looks very bad.”

Bristol said it leaves the black children feeling unmotivated.

She said, “In order to achieve it, they’ve got to see it. Our kids need a visual aid. We need positive role models.”

She said she’d like the kids to be able to look up to a black teacher and say, “I want to be like that.”

“It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s not fair to our kids at all.”

Bristol asked the board to address the problem and find a resolution.

Williams mirrored what Bristol said and added, “We started talking about this prior to the beginning of school this past year and it’s been mentioned to a lot of other people, but I don’t know if anything has been done by the board to try to rectify this problem.”

Williams said he knows of several federal lawsuits that have been filed over the last few years in other areas due to complaints about a lack of black teachers, administrators and staff members at schools.

“I’ve lived here and worked here all my life and we have not had that problem yet,” he said of Hamilton County.

SHE, he said, is the only school in the county that has no black teachers or faculty members.

“We want the board to take an active part, not next year, not the next two years, but immediately look at this problem here. It does have a very negative effect on our black kids.”

Williams said he doesn’t want to see the issue plastered across TV screens and he hopes to hear some sort of plan from the board within the next couple of weeks.

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