Decatur Superintendent David Dude announced last month he was creating a work group to study the gap between white and black students in, among others, discipline, classroom achievement, attendance and participation in extra-curricular activities.
Dude has made disproportionality a discussion topic at every board meeting since October. What made Tuesday’s meeting different is that eight members representing the city’s NAACP (now formally called the Beacon Hill branch) showed up. Branch President Mawuli Davis, also an Atlanta civil rights and defense attorney, said this would be the norm from here on.
He added that he hopes to have a similar number attend every board meeting, with at least one member speaking every month during the public comment portion.
“I think [Tuesday’s] discussion was great but it’s just a start,” Davis said. “We need to hire a professional who can accurately compile and evaluate the numbers. Our objective is to have a [disproportionality] plan in place going into the next school year.”
The Beacon Hill NAACP was founded in May and now has over 100 members. Davis said the primary focus is on disproportionality in education, affordable housing, public safety and the decline in the city and schools’ black population. (At last count 23.2 percent of students enrolled in K-12 are black.)
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