An updated Affirmative Action Plan was reviewed and approved by the Burlington School Board on Monday.
The Affirmative Action Plan is more than just a paperwork exercise in federal policies, practices and procedures. It is a creative management tool that asks the Burlington School District, how can the school employee population more equally reflect the population of the city.
Superintendent Pat Coen says that, “Burlington has a 25 percent minority population and the school’s employee population needs to reflect that.” Coen continues on to say that, “the problem that the school district is having is in finding quality minority applicants.” Coen stated that, “the vast majority of districts are facing this challenge.”
However, Coen means to answer the question that the Affirmative Action Plan is asking. One plan of action is the Minority Scholars Branch from Burlington High School and Iowa Wesleyan University. Iowa Wesleyan University now has minority students from Burlington attending on full scholarship.
Coen hopes that this scholarship program will produce quality minority employees in the future.
“We hope to build that program and the students would do their internships in our hospitals and in our businesses and in our schools.” Says Coen, “So we are trying to grow our own minority scholars who would be interested in coming back as a teacher, and then provide them the mentorship and the opportunity that can possibly grow into a minority administrator. So we are addressing it through recruiting and also trying to develop our own population into minority teachers”
here is some concern from the school board that there is no guarantee that the minority scholars in this program will want to come back to Burlington after graduating college.
