Lawrence school district teachers participate in a professional development seminar at Langston Hughes elementary school in this file photo from Oct. 17, 2012.

The Lawrence school district has made progress over the last three school years in recruiting, hiring and retaining more staff of color, Anna Stubblefield, assistant superintendent of education support, told the school board during its Monday meeting.

From the 2014-2015 school year to the 2016-2017 school year, the district experienced a 25 percent increase in the number of people of color working in Lawrence public schools.

However, a report presented to the school board that evening by Stubblefield and Danica Moore, a teacher on special assignment for equity, revealed that teachers of color are still few and far between in classrooms, where their white counterparts outnumber them 965 to 70 districtwide.

“Some it is just luck — people apply in Lawrence — and a lot of it is very strategic,” Stubblefield said of the staff gains over the last three school years.

Part of the district’s strategy moving forward, she said, is providing support to the district’s classified staff of color in the hopes that some may pursue their teaching licenses, ultimately joining the ranks of an increasingly diverse teaching corps (i.e., “certified” staff) in Lawrence.

“Classified” refers to anyone working in the schools without a teaching license, and could range from custodians and food-service workers to paraeducators and IT professionals. The majority of the people of color employed by the district fall under this umbrella; districtwide, there are more than twice as many classified employees of color as there are teachers of color.

Although Stubblefield and Moore would like to see more teachers of color in classrooms — it’s important, they note, for all students to see themselves represented in their educators — there’s also work to be done in making sure all staff feel included and empowered.

Many on the classified side “don’t have the same opportunities as certified staff to participate in equity work at the building level,” Moore said, adding that scheduling differences, for example, often mean classified staffers aren’t able to attend the same meetings as their certified peers.

“Because of that, they don’t have the space to process and diffuse some of those things they experience in the workplace and give their input,” she said.

Most equity teams across the district’s schools tend to have “one or two staff of color on them,” and they’re typically not classified employees. Many more count no staff of color at all in their membership, Moore said.

A districtwide support group for staff of color, which launched about three years ago, has been a “powerful” tool in creating a safe space for staff to share experiences, swap advice and lead discussions that might not otherwise take place at the building level, she and Stubblefield said.

But there’s still more to be done. Among their goals moving forward: continuing recruiting efforts at universities with racially diverse schools of education, and also here in Lawrence with the establishment of a “Grow Your Own” program. The project, which has been implemented in several school districts across the country, aims to recruit and retain a more racially diverse teaching corps.

As far as sustaining the staff of color already working in Lawrence schools, Stubblefield and Moore are also looking to increase the number of staff of color rising to top leadership positions.

“From teacher to administrator — those are some of the glass ceilings that our staff of color are hitting currently in our district,” she said.

There are many “dedicated, devoted” staffers who have worked for years at the classroom level, Moore said. Now, it’s just a matter of putting in place a series of supports to help them reach their full potential.

In other business, the school board:

• Unanimously approved its goals for the 2016-2017 school year. Included in the list were an expansion of the district’s Beyond Diversity training for all certified and classified staff as well as non-employees such as site councils and school resource officers, the creation of a plan to eliminate deficit spending and balance the district budget, and implementation of the district’s 1:1 device program. Lawrence high schools are piloting laptops and iPads this fall, and all middle schoolers have been issued iPads as part of the program.

• Voted to send school board vice president Shannon Kimball as the delegate to December’s Kansas Association of School Boards’ annual convention in Wichita. Vanessa Sanburn was chosen as the alternate.