Speech #930235765

On the east coast. similar statistics exist for the Puerto Rican community. Puerto Rican youngsters comprise 22 percent of the New York City school population. while Puerto Rican professionals hold less than 1 Percent of all positions in the schools. Although no one has suggested. nor do I favor. a quota system. nevertheless. it seems painfully obvious that these groups have few teachers with whom they can identify and. in many cases. few with whom they can even communicate. A sampling of title VII projects across the country resulted in an estimate that the total need for trained bilingual teachers in projects today is 35.117. In contrast. there are only 9.448 teachers in title VI projects.