- September 7, 2024
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The School District runs the numbers every year, calculating the ratio of boys to girls in sports programs, the ratio of white, black and Hispanic teachers relative to the student population, and student enrollment in advanced coursework by race.
Statistics from last year continue to show a gap between the percentages of white, black and Hispanic students enrolled in advanced courses such as Advanced Placement classes, International Baccalaureate classes and dual enrollment classes, although enrollment increased for each group over five years before.
“We want to make sure that those numbers are constantly increasing over those five-year periods,” School District Growth and Measurement Director Shawn Schmidli said in a presentation before the School Board at an Aug. 16 workshop. “You can see that all those areas are going up. They’re going in the right direction.”
In the 2015-2016 school year, 16% of white high school students, 9% of black high school students and 17% of Hispanic high school students were enrolled in AP or IB classes. Five years earlier, in the 2011-2012 school year, 10% of white high school students, 5% of black high school students and 10% of Hispanic high school students were enrolled in those classes.
There were similar disparities in dual enrollment In the 2015-2016 school year, 8% of white high school students, 4% of black high school students and 5% of Hispanic high school students took dual enrollment classes. But those numbers had not changed much from five years before: In the 2011-2012 school year, 8% of white high school students, 3% of black high school students and 4% of Hispanic high school students were enrolled in those classes.
School Board member Andy Dance said he was surprised the percentages of students taking dual enrollment classes had not risen more.
“What do you think’s holding those back?” he asked. “Is it transportation?”
“That was something that I kind of saw pop off the page,” Schmidli said. “We’ll probably dig deeper into that and see.”
School Board member Colleen Conklin saw another possible cause of the stagnant dual -enrollment rates.
“There is a cadre of kids right now that is exceptionally frustrated, because they ended the school year thinking they qualified for dual enrollment, because they had the GPA at the 3.0, and (end of course exams) came in after the fact, in middle of the summer, and negatively impacted their GPAs … and they could not participate in dual enrollment,” she said. “And so you’ve got a lot of kids that are getting caught in that piece of it.”
She asked the two student School Board members — Flagler Palm Coast High School student Brittany Franklin and Matanzas High School student Kobi Kane — what they thought. The students mentioned transportation issues.
When it comes to sports participation by gender, the state doesn’t make things easy, demanding that the male-female ratio in varsity sports exactly match the male-female ratio of the student population.
“The Department of Education’s guidelines look at this as, you’re out of compliance if you don’t have exactly equal participation that you have per enrollment,” Schmidli said. “So we find that we’re out of compliance every year, because we never get a perfectly aligned result. … You can see that they’re pretty close … to the overall representation, male and female athletes.”
In terms of district hiring and staffing, the teaching and administration staff is whiter than the student body. About 63% of Flagler Schools students are white. But 89% of teachers are white, as are 82% of the district’s principals (a small field, as there are only 11 total), 75% of district-level administrators, 78% of assistant principals and 93% of guidance counselors.
Black students make up about 15% of the student body. About 18% of district’s principals are black, as are 22% of assistant principals and 19% of district-level administrators. But only 6% of the 666-person strong teaching staff is black, and 3.5% — one member — of the guidance staff is black.
Hispanic teachers and school officials are underrepresented relative to the student population: About 14% of Flagler Schools students are Hispanic, but only 4% of teachers are. There are no Hispanic principals or assistant principals, 6% of district administrators are Hispanic, and 3.5% of guidance counselors are Hispanic.
There were notable gender disparities in the teaching staff — where 75% of teachers are women, and 25% are men, in line with national trends — and in the guidance staff, where 93% are women and 7% (two members) are men.
Student Participation | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AP and IB classes, Grades 9-12 | |||||||||
5 Year Trend: | |||||||||
11-12 | 15-16 | ||||||||
White | 10% | 16% | |||||||
Black | 5% | 9% | |||||||
Hispanic | 10% | 17% | |||||||
Dual Enrollment Grades 9-12 | |||||||||
5 Year Trend: | |||||||||
11-12 | 15-16 | ||||||||
White | 8% | 8% | |||||||
Black | 3% | 4% | |||||||
Hispanic | 4% | 5% | |||||||
Student Participation | |||||||||
All level 3 courses including AP, IB, DE and honors, Grades 9-12 | |||||||||
3 Year Trend: | |||||||||
13-14 | 15-16 | ||||||||
White | 54% | 49% | |||||||
Black | 34% | 35% | |||||||
Hispanic | 49% | 45% | |||||||
Employment Equity | |||||||||
Percent | Black | Hisp | White | Other | Female | Male | |||
Student | 15% | 14% | 63% | 9% | 49% | 51% | |||
Dist. Adm. | 19% | 6% | 75% | 0% | 31% | 69% | |||
Principal | 18% | 0% | 82% | 0% | 9% | 91% | |||
Asst. Prin. | 22% | 0% | 78% | 0% | 61% | 39% | |||
Teacher | 6% | 4% | 89% | 1% | 75% | 25% | |||
Guidance | 3.5% | 3.5% | 93% | 0% | 93% | 7% | |||
Gender Equity in Athletics | |||||||||
Flagler Palm Coast High School | |||||||||
Percent | Males | Females | Total | ||||||
Varsity | 51% | 49% | 100% | ||||||
Junior Varsity | 52% | 48% | 100% | ||||||
Student Enrollment | 50% | 50% | 100% | ||||||
Matanzas High School | |||||||||
Percent | Males | Females | Total | ||||||
Varsity | 49% | 51% | 100% | ||||||
Junior Varsity | 59% | 41% | 100% | ||||||
Student Enrollment | 52% | 48% | 100% |