Legal Issues Cloud Missouri School District’s Race-Based Hiring
1st February 2024
A Missouri school district intends to double its percentage of minority teachers even as the state’s attorney general has warned that private companies that racially discriminate in hiring face legal action.
Webster Groves School District’s teaching and administrative staff should match the racial demographics of its student body, according to the Missouri school system’s strategic plan. The public school district implemented its plan this winter and aims to accomplish listed goals within three years.
One objective of Webster Groves, a school system in the suburbs of St. Louis, is to “attract, support, and retain exceptionally talented staff who at minimum reflect the diversity of our student population.”
In the 2023-2024 school year, 11% of teachers and administrators for Webster Groves are nonwhite, an increase of 4 percentage points from 7% nonwhite in the 2017-2018 school year.
The school district would have to increase the percentage of nonwhite teachers to 22.2% to match the student body, according to documents posted online for the Dec. 13 meeting of the Webster Groves school board.