Kansas City Public Schools finds itself embroiled in a DEI fight

by Barbara Shelly, Missouri Independent
March 21, 2025

Black children do better in school if during their academic journey they can connect with a teacher who looks like them.

The same goes for Latino students and children from other minority groups.

“The data is clear,” said Cornell Ellis, executive director of Brothers Liberating Our Communities, a Kansas City nonprofit known as BLOC that supports Black male educators. “The barriers for learning are lower when students and teachers have similar language, experiences and culture.”

That knowledge has guided teacher recruiting efforts for many school districts, especially those like Kansas City Public Schools, where 52% of the student enrollment is Black, 29% is Latino and only 10% is white.

Recruiting minority teachers has been touted as a best practice. Now, it is incendiary.

On Jan. 9, as students and teachers were settling back into class from winter break, a complaint against KCPS was filed with the Kansas City area office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

It came from a Virginia-based group, Parents Defending Education, and it alleged that hiring practices at KCPS are discriminatory.

“PDE and its members oppose racial discrimination and political indoctrination in America’s schools,” the letter states. It accuses KCPS of “implementing hiring quotas directly related to an educator’s race, as opposed to their merit.”

As evidence, the complaint cites a district strategic plan adopted in 2023 and revised since. Known as Blueprint 2030, the document sets goals to increase the representation of minority teachers to 40% by this year, and 45% by 2030. Currently, 38% of the district’s teachers are Black or Hispanic.

The complaint was a sign of things to come. Eleven days after it was filed, Donald Trump became president and launched a full-throttle crusade against all things related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Trump’s Department of Education has opened a formal tip line just for DEI allegations. It has threatened to yank federal funding from schools that use race-based practices in hiring, admissions and any other practice.

In Missouri, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an executive order banning state agencies from considering race in hiring decisions. Bills under consideration in the Missouri legislature would outlaw any state funding for DEI initiatives and impose penalties for school districts that teach what one sponsor calls “divisive concepts.”

Lost in the blizzard of orders and threats is a trove of research explaining why school districts, especially those who serve minority students, are seeking qualified minority teachers.

“We’re stuck in an echo chamber of narratives,” Ellis said. “And the data is not part of those narratives.”

Numerous studies have shown that a minority student’s chances of graduating from high school increase dramatically if the child is paired with at least one teacher of the same race or ethnicity, especially in elementary school.

David Blazar, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, has released recent findings suggesting that white students may also benefit from a Black teacher. His data shows improved math and reading test scores and less chronic absenteeism in classrooms with Black teachers, who tend to form strong bonds with students and families and run well-organized classrooms with a positive atmosphere.

The move against DEI will likely dampen efforts to diversify teacher workforces, Blazar said.

“I think we very much can expect to see cases like this being brought about in the near future across the country, arguing that teacher diversity missions are quota-driven and are discriminatory,” he said, referring to the EEOC complaint in Kansas City.

“There is scientific evidence about the importance of Black teachers to Black students and non-Black students,” Blazar said. “There are practical reasons for why we need more teachers in schools. And so I am disheartened that this current push is being called out as discriminatory.”

Parents Defending Education describes itself as a “grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.” It solicits tips from the public and has filed complaints and lawsuits against school districts around the nation.

Most are focused on hiring but others center on the makeup of student clubs and employee groups; policies related to the sexual and gender identity of students; and policies regarding speech.

The Beacon was unable to reach anyone at Parents Defending Education to ask how the complaint against KCPS originated.

Derald Davis, the district’s deputy superintendent, said the premise was erroneous.

“KCPS does not and will not use racial quotas in our hiring,” he said. “Our focus is on creating the best educational environment for our students and we welcome any conversation to further clarify our policies and practices.”

To support its goal of hiring more minority teachers, the district’s strategic plan calls for:

Creating opportunities for school staffers to become certified teachers.Providing scholarships for KCPS students to obtain college teaching degrees.Establishing relationships with colleges and universities that serve Black and Latino students.Supporting teachers once they are hired.

Blueprint 2030 also pledges that the district will “evaluate and adjust the hiring process with a core focus on improving equitable and diverse hiring practices” — a commitment that Parents Defending Education labeled “unorthodox.”

Davis describes it as student-centered.

“There is not a single hiring committee or hiring protocol that focuses on race,” he said. “We’re confident in our hiring practices and remain committed to transparency and compliance with all relevant laws.”

KCPS reaches out to educators of all races, Davis said, in part because, like many school districts around the nation, it faces a chronic teacher shortage.

“We’re looking for teachers of all races, all backgrounds, different lived experiences to reflect all of the diversity of the students and families we serve,” he said.

“Our commitment to diversity is about raising standards, not lowering them. I just want to make it clear that in KCPS we do not see having a more diverse teacher population as being at odds with merit.”

For Edgar Palacios, the complaint filed against KCPS is another unwelcome distraction from the hard work of educating children.

“It is time for us to come together to understand that education is what makes the American Dream accessible,” said Palacios, founder and CEO of Latinx Education Collaborative, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that seeks to benefit Latino youth, in part by getting Latino teachers into classrooms.

“Teachers hold the key to that accessibility,” he said. “And so it’s time for us to figure out how to support and encourage our educators to thrive, versus fighting these ridiculous battles.”

The Latinx Education Collaborative, in partnership with the Urban Education Research Center, published in 2019 the most up-to-date study of teacher representation in the Kansas City area.

It showed that 40% of students in public K-12 schools on the Missouri side of the region were from minority groups, while teachers of color made up 9% of the teaching ranks. Black teachers accounted for 6%. The representation of Latino teachers was less than 2%.

On the Kansas side of the region, the representation of minority students was similar to Missouri, almost 40%. Only 5% of teachers were from minority groups, with Black teachers accounting for almost 3% of that sliver. Fewer than 1% of teachers at the time were Latino.

Palacios said he’s “seen some movement” since then, and the collaborative is three years into a concerted effort to see 50 new Latino educators hired in Kansas City area classrooms by 2027.

The collaborative does not rely on federal or state funding, but Palacios is watching to see what the anti-DEI push will mean for his nonprofit.

“We’re still unclear on what the impact will be from a philanthropic perspective,” he said.

Regardless of that impact, Palacios plans to continue speaking out.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to improve the way that we do our work,” he said. “And I think we are going to double down on the idea that diversity, equity, inclusion matters, that we understand the impact of having a diverse teacher workforce. That might be a dangerous position to take at this moment, but the only way forward is to stand up to some of the craziness that’s happening.”

Ellis, the BLOC executive director, said his group has no plans to veer from its mission of increasing and supporting the ranks of Black teachers. It may talk about its work a bit differently, however.

“We’ll be talking less about DEI,” he said. “We’ll be talking less about some of those buzzwords and trigger words that are being targeted. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to do the work any differently, though.”

Working in Missouri, Ellis already has learned the significance of word choice when he testifies at legislative hearings in Jefferson City.

“If you show up and start talking about Black male teachers, they turn you off,” he said. “So I talk about representative teachers. I talk about teachers that simply look like our students, teachers that represent the families and communities that we are serving. That’s not going to change.”

Davis, the KCPS deputy superintendent, said the district has received no word from the EEOC office regarding the Parents Defending Education complaint and has not drafted a response.

KCPS has no plans to rein in its effort to recruit more teachers overall and more teachers of color specifically, Davis said.

“We’re going about expanding our talent pool, considering a broad range of experiences and qualifications to enhance the overall quality of our teacher workforce,” he said.

The district is doing one thing differently, though. For some time it has operated a Department of Equity, Inclusion and Innovation that helps students with the college application process. The language on its webpage received a mention in the Parents Defending Education complaint.

Going forward, Davis said, that office will become the Department of Post-Secondary Access and Student Success.

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