Miami – The executive director of a national nonprofit designed to rebuild the Black teacher pipeline, is calling for segregation in schools to give Black students a better opportunity to make the grades.

Sharif El-Mekki, founder of the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED) which is based in Philadelphia, recently received $20 million from billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to boost his campaign for Black students to be taught by Black teachers nationwide, according to a press release.

El-Mekki, who served as the U.S. Department of Education Principal Ambassador Fellow under the President

Obama administration and principal of Mastery Charter Shoemaker, said his organization focuses on getting more Black teachers in the classrooms by providing scholarships and training required to land jobs in the school systems.

El-Mekki modeled his organization after the education systems in Iran and Washington D.C.

His parents were members of the Black Panthers. The family moved to Iran when he was in middle school after his mother Aisha El-Mekki converted to Islam because she wanted her children to witness a country united in its efforts to make a change.

El-Mekki said he learned a valuable lesson during his experience working in the nation’s capitol and living in Iran.

"When Black students have Black teachers, they do better in school," ElMekki said.

El-Mekki said he has continued to show admiration for the Iranian education system saying, “Iran produces more engineers and doctors, scientists, than many other countries.”

He said he is currently lobbying for all Black students to be taught by highquality, same-race teachers" and where "all teachers demonstrate high levels of expertise in anti-racist mindsets.’ He said Black students can benefit more in the classroom by being taught by Black teachers who have the same background and challenges while growing up.

According to CBED, about 40 percent of public schools nationwide are lacking Black teachers including areas where families are living at or below the poverty threshold.

The disparity could impact Black students’ academics since they grow up in a home with Black parents, assuming that white teachers might not understand their challenges and culture. "Students need to mirror images of themselves in the classrooms, and for Black students, they don’t see teachers who reflect their identities and experiences and fully believe in their genius and full potential," said El-Mekki.

Most Black students will go through 13 years of public schooling without ever being taught by a Black teacher, and as a result, they don’t reach their full academic potential, El-Mekki said.

He said Black students who have just one Black teacher between kindergarten and the third grade are 13 percent more likely to graduate from high school and 19 percent will enroll in college.

If they have two Black teachers, 32 percent are more likely to go to college.

White teachers are 40 percent less likely to expect their Black high school students to graduate.

"While there’s great need, there are also great opportunities to change the historic, systematic removal of Black men and women from the national teacher pipeline," El-Mekki said.

The CBED aims to close the disparity by launching several programs to get more Black teachers in public schools to educate Black students.

Through its fellowship program, aspiring Black teachers receive academic support, professional coaching, college scholarships and retention bonuses, all supported by the Center’s Future Black Teachers of Excellence Fund.

When the center debuted several years ago, it started out with one Freedom Schools Literacy Academy summer program in Philadelphia for 183 participants.

Today, it has grown to an estimated 10,590 participants nationwide. "Our goal is to build a strong foundation for pursuing long-term careers in education by fostering a love for learning and sharing knowledge in an intellectually rigorous, collaborative environment," the CBED website states.

Less Black teachers in the school systems nationwide could be traced back to the 1954 landmark case of Brown vs. the Board of Education in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws establishing segregation in public schools were unconstitutional.

After the ruling, the CBED said Black teachers were dismissed, phased out and left out of recruitment efforts while white leadership took advantage of desegregation to systematically undermine the national Black teaching corps.

When school systems decided to recruit more Black teachers in the 1960s, 1970s and in the early 1980s, they faced tougher working conditions at highpoverty, harder-to-staff schools and earning less than their counterparts, among other challenges.

That led to Black teachers abandoning the profession at higher rates than white teachers during those time periods.

According to the Pew Research Center, white teachers nationwide have decreased by 8 percent since the late 1980s and early 1990s when 87 percent of teachers were White.

Both the number of Hispanic, Black and Asian teachers grew during that time span, but Black teachers saw a decline in the late 1990s.

In Florida, in the past 30 years, Hispanic teachers have overtaken Black educators as the second-largest racial or ethnic group among U.S. public school teachers, almost three times as many Black school teachers.

The number of Hispanic teachers rose as the Hispanic student population also increased.

Though the number of Black teachers has increased over the past 20 years, Hispanic teachers continued to outpace Black educators by 25 percent.

For the local public schools in the tricounty area, most teachers are Hispanic, and the student populations are also dominated by Latinos for the 2024-2025 school year.

According to Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which is the fourth largest school district in the nation with over 334,400 students and 392 schools, about 70 percent of teachers are Hispanic, 23 percent Black and five percent white for the 2024-2025 school year.

For the student population, more than 72 percent are Hispanics and the rest of the student body is Black, white and Asian.

In Broward County, which is the sixth largest school district in the nation, with over 256,037 students, 332 schools, most of the 13,003 teachers are Hispanic.

About 187,943 pupils are enrolled in Palm Beach County Public Schools; 36 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 27 Black and 3.1 percent Asian.

Most of the teaching population is Hispanic.

Despite about 49 percent of students enrolled in all three school districts living below or at the poverty threshold, they have experienced decent graduation rates over the past five years with Palm Beach County touting 82 percent.

The South Florida Times reached out to several local Black education leaders for comments on the Center for Black Educator Development’s campaign but none responded to a request to be interviewed.