TO THE EDITOR:

Again, I thank you for your regular publication of The AfricanAmerican Community Forum. In his column in your December 15, 2005, edition of The News-Reporter, Arthur Danner points out the alarming fact that with an African-American student enrollment of 50.7 percent in Wilkes County, only 23 of the 131 teachers in our school system are African-American. Only two of the 23 African-Americans are males. Clearly, someone has dropped the ball. Mr. Danner goes on to point out that in 1970 there were 19 African-American male teachers and 38 African-American female teachers in Wilkes County Public Schools.

Everyone benefits from diversity on the faculty and staff. Both white and African-American students need and deserve to have caring and competent male and female teachers, mentors, and role models to guide, nurture and educate them. With only 17.7 percent AfricanAmericans teachers in Wilkes County Public Schools in 2005, the black students are being deprived. Possibly they are being undereducated, misguided, and not nurtured, as well. Case in point is the fact that of the well deserving eleven high school juniors selected as the top 10 percent of their class and featured in your December 8, 2005, edition, not a single student was African-American. On the other hand, there was an overwhelming majority of African-American male students who had been painstakingly trained, nurtured, and guided to propel the Washington-Wilkes Tigers to the state championship football game. The same young black men who performed so well on the gridiron throughout the superb football season can be inspired to achieve a high level of academic excellence, as well. It would take a caring, nurturing and mentoring faculty and staff which includes more African-Americans to energize them and move them in that direction just as the coaching staff and others have moves them towards athletic excellence.

In his column, Mr. Danner indicates that the 2000 Census reveals that 62.7 percent of African-American children live in a single parent home (usually headed by a mother). Many of these youngsters are male and are already dropping out of school at a disproportionately high rate. If the school system does not hire a fair and proportional number of black (especially black male) teachers, administrators, counselors and librarians, we are not fulfilling our responsibility to prepare all our students to be educated, disciplined, and balanced future parents and tax payers in the county.

Parents must attend school board meetings and contact your Superintendent and your school board representative and insist that more African American teachers, administrators, counselors, librarians and especially African-American male teachers be hired in order to enable all our youngsters to be able to better relate to those in authority over them and to receive the education, nurturing and guidance that is needed for success in the multiracial and global economy in which they must live.

REV. ED ANDERSON, SR.

LTC, US Army (Ret.)