According to John Abeigon, president of the Newark Teachers Union, while Superintendent Roger Leon and his administration team seem to recognize that student success is dependent on a diverse teaching corps, the district has failed to create a culture that makes Black and Brown teachers want to stay. “Retaining teachers is the problem that Leon needs to address” for teachers of color, Abeigon told Chalkbeat. “We have white, Black, Hispanic, brown, the rainbow,” he said, regarding the diversity of new recruits. “[But] everybody that comes to this district, a majority of them leave within a couple of weeks or months of working in this district. That’s endemic to the district and the way it treats its staff.”

Some would argue this is a crisis for Newark Public Schools, where almost all students are of color.

As Sharif El-Mekki, founder of the Center for Black Educator Development, and Shareefah Mason of Teach Plus told me, “if a Black child has even one Black teacher K-12 they’re 13% more likely to enroll in college. If a Black student has two Black teachers they’re 32% more likely.” Yet, by all reports, Newark students are shortchanged by district leadership’s inability to retain Black teachers.

Nubia Lumumba, a Black and Muslim educator and former English teacher at a Newark high school, told Chalkbeat she resigned from her position after just six months of working in the district: “Lumumba said she experienced and witnessed racial harassment while teaching, but lack of sensitivity from school administrators in handling concerns of racial harassment led to tensions that ultimately led to her resignation.”

“There was a lack of  “genuine empathy for what I had gone through,” Lumumba said, adding that students were witnesses to what she experienced. “If, as a mature adult, it cut me deeply to have experienced racial and religious harassment and not get any meaningful support from district and school leaders, then, I imagine, it must be even more damaging to the Black students.”

This is not the first time Leon and the school board have faced accusations of failing to address racial animosity experienced by Black students and teachers. One example: at the the district’s High School for Global Studies, parents emailed Leon and the board for months to complain that their children were being called “monkeys,” “terrorists,” and the “n-word.” At a town hall last February organized by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka intended to quell the uproar, 16-year-old David Allen, former president of the School of Global Studies’ Black Student Union, told the audience, “it’s slightly satirical, in a sense, that we’re sitting here talking about Black and brown unity because, truthfully, I’ve never seen or experienced it.”

Newark district leadership is talking the talk about the need to diversify its teaching corps: at a press conference in June, Leon said doing so “is good in that it brings about different viewpoints” and touted the district’s partnership with Montclair University, where students from East Side High and University High School can earn dual credits and then complete a teacher preparation program. Leon says he has promised each participant that if they earn certification there will be a job waiting for them at the district.

Yet, as Newark is discovering, it’s one thing to sign a contract with a teacher and another to keep them there. The latter takes what El-Mekki calls an “unapologetic dialogue” between constituents and the leadership, with the latter “being honest with themselves” about the resources they’ve committed to lowering teacher turnover and improving district culture.

Students like David Allen and teachers like Nubia Lumumba are hoping Leon, the school board, and Mayor Baraka make good on their promises.