Marta Loachamin’s curiosity was sparked by her own experience as a mother from Ecuador raising kids to speak Spanish at home. When they entered school, she experienced a system that wasn’t well equipped to teach them English or offer them a bilingual education.
The teaching populations in the county and across Colorado are far more white than student populations. This ethnic and racial mismatch between a general population that is growing more diverse by the day and our leaders extends through just about all our halls of power. Nine of 106 elected officials — or 8% — were people of color in 2019. Meanwhile, about 25% of the county’s population identifies as a person of color.
“When we see people that look like us in positions of authority, who are part of systems, who are part of leadership, there’s a higher possibility that we are going to see ourselves there,” said Loachamin, who was running for Boulder County Commissioner at the time of this writing, in part to address this need.
Being able to culturally identify with the people you’re serving is also important.
After 2017, national cries grew stronger for banning Muslims, for dismantling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, for stepping up raids on families by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for cracking down on families seeking sanctuary.
“Teachers didn’t know how to support kids who were in tears about whether they’d be separated from their families,” Loachamin said.
The language matters too.
Loachamin worked with families at an elementary school in Longmont that was attended predominantly by Latino students, many of whose parents spoke only Spanish. She brought teachers and parents together to talk, through a translator.
Teachers were crying afterwards. Some said it was the first time they’d ever been able to communicate with their students’ parents.
“It was an eye-opening experience,” she said.
Before he retired from working in the Boulder County commissioners’ office in 2018, Pete Salas for many years tracked the racial diversity of elected officials and more than 800 volunteer members of the boards and commissions those officials appoint in the county and in 10 Boulder County cities and towns. It was a painstaking project that relied on his relationships with his counterparts in municipal governments across the county.
Aside from Boulder County, no other local government formally tracks whether its appointed officials are people of color.
“For me it’s about accountability,” Salas said. “Here’s a group of people that pays taxes, that needs to have a voice at the table. There needs to be accountability for how services are delivered to this community.
”While the school districts are required to report to the Colorado Department of Education the percentage of teachers and students who are people of color, those teacher numbers in St. Vrain Valley School District are the human resources department’s best guess, because the district doesn’t require its employees to divulge their race or ethnicity.
At the administrative level, St. Vrain has hired significantly higher numbers of people from diverse populations of late, said Superintendent Don Haddad. “I do think it’s important to have strong representation from diverse populations,” he said, adding that such hiring provides role models for students and demonstrates an inclusive system.
St. Vrain is expanding its recruitment efforts to diversify its workforce, and has created a new Pathways to Teaching program designed in part to grow their own next generation of diverse teachers. In the 2018-2019 school year, the district also created a new position called Equity and Community Engagement Coordinator. That coordinator and the coordinator of the PTeach program are bilingual Latinas.
The superintendents of Boulder County’s two school districts acknowledged that, regardless of what the actual ratios are, they are no doubt too low. They said their systems are working to increase diversity as well as cultural competency for all staff.
“All kids deserve to have teachers in the building that can relate with their culture,” Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Rob Anderson said. “Kids who succeed oftentimes have someone who really helps them, who serves as that guide.”
