BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Civil rights organizations say moving teachers around in the East Baton Rouge School System will give each child in the parish a fair shot at going to college.
“If the answer to all of that is these folks don’t want to go teach at those schools or these folks are going to leave the district in mass exits because they don’t want to teach poor kids, something is not right,” said Eugene Collins, president of National Association for the Advancement of Color People in Baton Rouge.
Last week, the superintendent of East Baton Rouge Schools, Dr. Sito Narcisse, announced that some teachers will have to leave their current job and teach at other schools in the district. The goal is to help students in failing schools.
“We now have over 20,000 students attending D and F schools and the number of D and F schools has increased to 44. We have to do something today. Students have to be the priority,” said Dadrius Lanus, the executive director of 100 Black Men of Metro Baton Rouge.
They say currently most African American schools have the least effective teachers. They believe rotating teachers will help.
“Equity means we have to make sure that across the board all of our kids, all of our schools, all of our community are given the exact same privileges,” explained Sateria Tate’Alexander with Agile Planning Solutions.
Pastor Raymond Jetson with MetroMorphosis said this is something that should be happening annually.
“It is important to know that the reallocation and the redistribution of teachers is an annual tradition, is an annual practice within the school system and it is impossible to change the status quo while allowing things to remain the same,” said Jetson.
While some are upset about the changes, many believe this will help the community.
“And the reality is, unless and until we educate all of our children we will continue to see the circumstances that we see today,” explained Jetson.