"Seventeen of the 409 teachers in Charlottesville schools for the 2006-07 school year are still awaiting official state licensure.

Michael Heard, the director of human resources for city schools, presented the figures to the School Board on Thursday night as part of a discussion of “highly qualified” teachers.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the federal program that acts as a benchmark for school standards, defines highly qualified teachers as those who have obtained full state certification or a state teaching license, hold at least a bachelor’s degree and have displayed proficiency in the subject area they teach.

Heard’s report did not take into consideration the proficiency level of teachers in their subject area. He said a more detailed report including proficiency will be forthcoming in January or February.

“This is my very best guess at where we stand today,” Heard said.

The 17 teachers not deemed highly qualified are new hires whose state license status is still unresolved. Heard plans to include the teachers in the highly qualified listing once their licenses arrive.

Heard also presented a breakdown of diversity among teachers in the division.

Minorities make up 18.1 percent of the division’s teachers, according to the report.

Board member Louis Bograd said he was pleased with the figures because they were close to meeting a board goal for the percentage of minority teachers in the division to mirror the percentage of minority residents in the city.

“What we are really after in the school division is to provide the most diverse corps of teachers that we can possibly provide,” Heard said in response to Bograd. “If we have a school like Greenbrier where its staff is approaching 30 percent minority – if it’s possible to do it in one school, maybe it’s possible to do it in others.”

He said the fact that 29.6 percent of teachers at Greenbrier Elementary School are black was unexpected.

Bograd also noted that many of the division’s minority teachers are older, so the division will have to recruit new minority teachers so the figures do not decline.

“I think that will be our greatest challenge,” Heard said. “We’ve been fortunate as a school division to have a minority staff that has stayed with us for a long time.”

Minority teachers account for 24.5 percent of teachers at Charlottesville High School. Clark Elementary School has the lowest percentage of minority teachers at 9.8 percent." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, September 22, 2006)