By Margaret Moffett
The News & Record
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Greensboro City Councilwoman Sharon Hightower boycotted a graduation ceremony last week for new firefighters.
The reason? Not enough minority recruits in the class.
Hightower, who represents District 1 in mostly black East Greensboro, said she skipped the graduation ceremony June 23 on purpose.
She said Thursday that she was “very disappointed” to learn that only one of the 18 new firefighters is black. A half-dozen other black recruits quit midway through the training, she said.
Hightower said: “You have to ask yourself, ‘What are we doing to help retain the people in these classes?’ ”
In an email to a constituent on Wednesday, Hightower said the city needs to “know from those who left the class why they don’t stay.”
“We need to hear the real reasons for them leaving. We can’t assume nor can we take the chief’s word.”
Hightower said she previously discussed the problem with Greensboro Fire Chief Bobby Nugent, and that he is working to make new recruiting classes more diverse — like the community the department serves, she said.
The fire department typically has one recruiting class a year, with about 24 members in each class, Nugent said. But because the city has built several new fire departments recently, the department has doubled the number of recruiting classes and boosted members to as many as 36.
New firefighters earn about $37,000 a year.
Nugent said Thursday he wasn’t aware that Hightower boycotted the ceremony last week.
He said the department can expect to lose two or three members in the middle of each 22-week training session, which include agility tests, written exams and other skills tests.
This most recent recruiting class, in which six or seven minority members dropped out, was an anomaly.
The department employs a full-time recruiter, Capt. Kelly Giles, who said he specifically looks for ways to find more minority recruits. Giles said he visits college campuses regularly but often finds that minority candidates chose different career paths.
Giles said he is planning to beef up such efforts through recruitment fairs later this fall, something Hightower said she hopes to help organize.
She also said that the community must encourage minorities to apply for the positions, noting in her email to the constituent that critics of the lack of diversity “can’t change what we see with just words.”
“When you hear of these fairs, I am expecting all of you to bring potential applicants to the fair,” she wrote.
“We can’t talk about corruption in a police department and expect our folks to go apply; neither can we talk about getting burned up and expect our folks to sign on as a fireman.”
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