UCLA’s Dr. Kai Mathews on Using New Funds to Prioritize Educator Diversity in California – Part 2
Kai Mathews:
The number one allocation that I am excited to see, and I think that every school district should try to pull from, is the Classified Employee Teacher Pathway. And essentially it is a grant that LEAs can apply for where they’re offering individual stipends to their classified staff to get credentialed as a teacher. The reason why this is so important, number one, ’cause as I mentioned before and as most people in K-12 education know, we are in a teacher shortage. We are in a teacher shortage, and pulling from your classified staff, you’re pulling from a pool of candidates that are number one, already local, are already dedicated to work at the school site because they’re already employed, they already have an embedded relationship with not only the school community, but oftentimes the local community, which improves their ability and likelihood of retention, of staying after they receive their credential.
And it’s a way of giving back. You’re putting a financial investment in employees who have already shown that they’re dedicated to work at the school site. And so, I think this is one of those cases where it’s a win-win-win, right? Like, it’s a win for the individual credentialed employee who gets to now be a teacher at the school site, an increase in pay, a more stabilized career. It’s a win for the school district who now has a better retention on staff. Also the classified staff at a school site is most likely going to be, the most diverse pool of candidates that you can come across anywhere in the K-12 sector is within your classified staff. So the school site is now pulling in more diverse candidates who are more localized, who probably have more attachment to the community and to the school site.
And then it’s also a win from the state, because we’re not having to pay the extra funds to find teachers, replace teachers that we can’t retain, because we do have a higher, what we do know is that these staff will have a higher retention rate. And one of the biggest barriers is that financial cost to obtaining your credential. And so, if we can alleviate that for these classified employees, that’s a game changer. So the LEA applies for the state funding, and then they get a certain amount. And an individual, they’ll do their regular recruitment and marketing and advertising that they have these funds, and then they’ll have an individual application or a LEA-based application that individual classified employees can apply for. And those applications for the individual could look very different in terms of what their requirements are and what is necessary. But I do know that across the board in order to get money for this grant, you do have to have either an associate’s degree or two years of college education for the individual to apply.