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To stop racism, start at the top

That's the thinking behind "cultural competence" training for school leaders Monday.

ST. PETERSBURG - Fred Soto, an Orlando consultant, has a recipe for big organizations wanting to eliminate discrimination: Nip it in the bud and be firm about it.

When someone makes an intolerant remark, for example, the response should be, "Hey, we don't do that here."

Soto asked his audience to repeat it, and they obliged him with gusto.

"Hey! We don't do that here!"

The throaty response came from about 40 of the most influential voices for Pinellas schools, including all seven members of the School Board, dozens of top administrators and two representatives from the teachers union. Also in the crowd were several guests, including the president of the St. Petersburg NAACP.

If those at the top establish a culture that supports diversity, discrimination will cease to be fashionable, said Soto, a nationally known speaker whose company is called Straight Talk Enterprises.

"People will feel stupid doing it," he said. "You fire one or two people on those grounds (and) the word gets around: We don't do that here."

Monday's two-hour session on "cultural competence" was the first of what officials say will be a massive training of the district's 14,300 employees over the next three years.

The program will flow from the top down. After high-ranking administrators are trained, the district hopes to train principals and other employees, who in turn will train other employees.

Every employee, from bus drivers and cafeteria workers to classroom aides and teachers, will receive 21 hours of instruction.

Every organization has a "diversity image," said Soto, and Pinellas' could use some help. School superintendent Clayton Wilcox proposed the training shortly after arriving last year to find troubling currents in the district's performance numbers and in his talks with community members.

"There were those who felt we had some staff members who were perhaps insensitive to some of the issues black children in particular bring to the school system," Wilcox said. "It's undeniable that we have some issues."

Black students perform more than 30 percentage points lower than white students in the reading and math portions of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. In addition, their graduation rate is about 30 percent lower, and they are disciplined more.

Last school year, black students in Pinellas received 39 percent of all discipline referrals but made up only 19 percent of the district's enrollment.

A class-action lawsuit pending in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court alleges the district discriminates against black students. In addition, some members of St. Petersburg's black community have spoken recently about reviving some of the claims in the federal desegregation lawsuit, which remains open after 41 years.

The district's image also suffered this year when several teachers were disciplined for making what Wilcox said were unacceptable remarks. Two of those teachers used the term "black a--" in the heat of conflicts with students.

With thousands of sessions held ever year, training is a routine part of any school district. But "multicultural" training is an increasingly smaller portion of that in Pinellas.

Unlike previous Pinellas trainings that dealt with diversity, the new training will be mandatory for all employees.

Pinellas' numbers offer some indication of the cross-cultural challenges facing the district. The district's staff is 83 percent white, but enrollment is only 66 percent white.

Fewer than 600 of Pinellas' 7,000 teachers are black.

"If we do not take cultural competency seriously, there will be repercussions," said Soto, who, like Wilcox, is Hispanic.

While addressing questions from the audience, Soto said the district could take a variety of steps to improve. One is to open an office of diversity but hire someone from the outside to run it. "Same old thinking, same old results," he said.

One participant asked how the district could overcome students' expectations that educators speak in their vernacular.

Educators should try to communicate with those students but also make clear the students need to learn proper English, he said. "When people can't understand you, they won't hire you."