Carroll is striving to hire more minorities to its schools after a school board member quit over the furor caused by his uttering a racial slur.
Minorities comprise only 3.4 percent of Carroll teachers ? about half the percentage of minorities in the county.
“What we would like is to have a work force that?s reflective of the demographics in the community,” said Jimmie Saylor, the school system?s human resources director.
“We?re trying to show that our community is open to minorities and our school system is open to minority applicants.”
The school system partnered with the county chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last year to help attract more minorities.
Carroll NAACP President Jean Lewis has traveled to several job fairs and said the county does “our students a disservice” if it doesn?t expose them to more people of other races.
“It?s a better thing for the students of Carroll County if they realize the diversity they will face in the world,” Lewis said.
Complaints about Carroll?s lack of diversity resurfaced after Jeffrey Morse resigned from the school board in March because he had used a racial slur to describe a black rock at a construction site for a new school.
Days after Morse resigned, Lewis traveled to a teaching job fair in Pittsburgh.
She said she tries to sell Carroll as a county where students of all races perform above average, but it?s difficult to recruit first-year teachers at a middle-of-the-pack starting salary of $40,400. Montgomery County leads the state and offers $46,410.
Money also blocks the county from offering signing bonuses or helping to pay for moving expenses, Saylor said. Seven of the 53 people the county has already hired to fill 150 spots for next school year are minorities, she added.
