November 30, 2006

NAACP PRESS RELEASE

    The Dothan Wiregrass Branch #5025 of the NAACP is greatly concerned about a series of articles by Debbie Ingram, which appeared in recent resent issues of the Dothan Eagle on the Dothan Public School System.  The articles where full of half-truths and representations.  One of the most glaring misrepresentations where comments by Mr. Lucky Martin who was supposedly speaking on behalf of the NAACP.  Mr. Martin does not have the authority to speak for the NAACP.  The only spokes person for the local NAACP organization is Mr. Wade Morrison, President of the NAACP Dothan Wiregrass Branch #5025.
       Failure to hire and retain minority teachers is a continuing Consent Decree issue that could have been resolved many, many years ago, if the Dothan City School system was sincere in complying with the Consent Decree.  Until it does what is required by law, the Federal Court should maintain oversight.
    The NAACP spearheaded the legal battle to have public school segregation throughout the United States declared illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 50 years ago.  Dothan was one of the last systems to desegregate.  The Consent Decree was necessary to compel legal compliance.  The Consent Decree remains necessary for Dothan to reach and maintain legal compliance.
    The NAACP has worked cooperatively with the Dothan City School System in an effort to reach common ground to ensure that all children regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, or disability receive equal equitable educational opportunities.  The Law requires this.
    NAACP members worked diligently with the Dothan City School System Unitary Status and Education Committee and made recommendations on how to recruit minority teachers.  We also recommended marketing the educational successes of the public school system to dispel the myth that private schools are better than public schools.  Other recommendations made by the committee included: reducing class size, establishing effective programs to address the educational needs of all students, improve school safety, increase educational funding, enhance parental involvement, improve facilities inside the circle, and recruit and retain qualified and culturally diverse teachers who reflect the diversity of the student body.  The NAACP worked jointly with the Dothan City School Board in the establishment of the Carver and Montana Street Magnet Schools.
    White flight is not the result of the Consent Decree. 
    It is past time for the Dothan City School officials to stop blaming the Consent Decree and go about the business of improving the academic potential of all students.  It is time to stop the mass confusion that causes divisiveness in the schools as well as the community. 
    As of late, some white parents threatened to remove their children from the Dothan City School System when the proposed merger of Northview and Dothan High School surfaced.  Such mass confusion had nothing to do with the Consent Decree.
    Parents who left the Dothan City School System to avoid integration, religious or cultural reasons are not likely to return.  The Consent Decree did not cause such flight, and lifting the Consent Decree will not bring those students back.
    What does the Dothan City School System want to do that it cannot do with the Consent Decree in place?  Past programs have been approved by the Federal Court as long as they were constitutional. 
    The NAACP strongly opposes policies, practices and procedures that return to segregated schools or deny constitutional rights.  The educational goal is for all children to receive an excellent education; history and law tell us that segregation is a certain path to inequality for all students.
    In the book We Can't Teach What We Don't Know, author Gary Howard declares, "Diversity is not a choice, but our responses to it certainly are." The nation's K-12 students are seeing an ever-increasing mix of races among their peers, yet they are still taught mostly by all-white teachers.
The Dothan City School System must prepare our students, both minority and majority, to live and work in an increasingly diverse society.  How can they do that if teachers aren't representative of their own students?
     The growth of ethnic and minority student enrollment is creating a critical need for hiring and retaining minority teachers to provide positive role models for the students, inspiring a diverse student body to achieve, encouraging parental involvement, and retaining qualified minority teachers.
      The contention that the Dothan City School System cannot find qualified minority teachers is without merit.  6457 Blacks in the State of Alabama received Education Degrees in 2003-2004.  Other school systems can find them.  Why not Dothan?  I continue to receive calls from teacher applicants/former applicants some of whom graduated from the Dothan City School System.  They couldn’t get hired here, but had to go elsewhere and were hired.
    Dothan should have complied with the Consent Decree many, many years ago.  Until it does what is required by law, the Federal Court should maintain oversight.
    The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a non- profit civil rights organization, is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

Questions: Contact Wade Morrison, President, Dothan Wiregrass Branch NAACP, P.O. Box 683, Dothan, AL 36302.