New Hartford Central School District lacks diversity within their faculty and staff. According to the most recent statistics, 399/400 employees were not African-American/Black or POC. There are 0 African-Americans employed in any position in the district. This issue prevents students from gaining a fully robust and complete education.

As a solution, the District should adhere to the following requests: 

• To actively seek out African-American/Black faculty and staff.
• To change the current mission statement to clearly support diversity and inclusion. Other schools and universities have taken this step successfully.
• To implement mandatory periodic diversity training for all current faculty and staff.
• To add curriculum directly catered to racial relations, socio-economic awareness and privilege. This can be achieved by seeking out guest speakers and organizing assemblies focused on racial inequity within Oneida County. 

For acknowledgement and compliance with these requests, we are suggesting that an official statement be released in response. The statement should include compliance with the above requests and relative plans of action by or before the 2021 calendar year.

In Oneida County, the New Hartford Central School District and the Utica City School district are socially and economically segregated. They are the 12th most segregated school district pairing in the country. Also, African-American/Black people only make up 1 percent of New Hartford’s population. That statistic is enough to want to educate our community on diversity, specifically between black and white communities. There is a constant classist and racist stigma between the Utica and New Hartford border that does not need to be perpetuated through complicity. Funding and resources should be allocated immediately to fight this de facto segregation.

According to the NYSED Educator Diversity Report:

NYSED’s Educator Diversity Survey revealed that many P-12 districts are  engaged in dedicated and active efforts to improve the cultural responsiveness of their teachers, as well as their hiring practices and school climates. Some districts commented that they have hired school equity or diversity leaders or reached out to other human resource consultants to support their efforts in improving their school climates and policies (100).