The Philadelphia School District is dealing once again with a shortage of black teachers - even after hiring the highest number of new instructors in recent years and soliciting an outside firm to recruit minority teachers.

In July, the School Reform Commission approved a $250,000 request to hire the Florida-based firm of Gans, Gans & Associates, to recruit up to 50 African-American teachers.

So far, the district has hired four teachers the company has recommended, with another four waiting for certification, said Simone Gans, chief executive officer of the company.

Those numbers barely make a difference in the gap that exists between black and white teachers in the district.

Of the more than 1,600 new hires this year, 77 percent are white, and 13 percent are black, compared with 15 percent of black teachers hired around this time last year, according to district data.

Overall, the district has seen a nearly 4 percent drop in black teachers in a year. The percentage of Asian and Latino instructors has remained roughly the same.

But in a district in which 68 percent of its students are black, the shortage represents the pervasive lack of racial and cultural diversity that some observers say will continue to hurt children in the classroom.

"Having a teacher that resembles who they are, and who understands, sometimes by first-hand accounts or experiences, connects black youth with that black teacher," said Chad Dion Lassiter, president of Black Men at Penn, an anti-racism group that also mentors young black people.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said that diversity was key but that the district's priority should include recruiting and retaining quality teachers, regardless of their race.

"There are great African- American teachers, there are great white teachers, Latino and Asian teachers," he said. "What's important is having a great teacher."

Estelle Matthews, the district's human-resources chief, attributed part of this year's overall decline to a spike in retiring black educators.

Education experts say the numbers are declining for various reasons - especially higher pay in other districts and in other professions.

But what can no longer take the blame for the disparity is the district's racial-balancing policy - which capped the percentage of African-American teachers in a given high school - that ended this summer. The idea behind the policy was to distribute evenly the low numbers of black teachers across the district.

Now, Matthews, and a new director of multicultural affairs, will develop a system to monitor the racial demographics of teachers in each school, she said. That way, she said, administrators will know who is most needed in their schools.

"I think we should push the envelope to say [to administrators] your next hire should be white men, white women or people of color," she said.

"I think we have an obligation to the school, we have an obligation to the community to monitor the race of the teachers in each school to make sure we're leveling the playing field."