On Thursday, Sept. 12, during their monthly meeting, the Clarke County School District Board of Education discussed the proposal for BloomBoard to help special education teachers through a residency-based teacher apprenticeship program.
The proposal was for $248,750 to be given for the program annually. The program, which has a maximum of 25 residencies a year, is aimed to help overcome the national and state teacher shortage, which has negatively affected the ability to recruit classroom special education teachers.
BloomBoard has worked with institutions of higher education to convert an in the classroom bachelors degree into an on the job residency based degree. That way, someone does not have to balance school and work, but can get credit and assignments that function within their role.
“Our other big part to this is around truly preparing someone to be a professional educator opposed to finding someone and putting them into the classroom and getting them training while they’re leading,” Daniel Swartz, executive director of talent management said.
Lake Erie College is one such school that has worked with BloomBoard to create a program for students. Now they have a program for special education that gets individuals a bachelor’s degree and Georgia certification in three years.
Swartz said that, although it is a big expenditure, he believes that adopting the program will ultimately raise retention rates of special education teachers in the district, which is their lowest retention rate, and subsequently reduce costs.
However Mark Evans, board vice president, remained skeptical, because he and his colleagues have never heard of the program before and couldn’t find data on its success.
“I know that we have a need, and I know it’s bad,” Evans said. “I work in teacher ed and we are not having people come into the ranks. I get it, we gotta think outside the box. I just don’t know about this box.”
Evans said he had a lot more questions he didn’t quite get from the presentation.
Linda Davis, CCSD District 3 board member, was concerned about the impact on the children learning from someone who is teaching and studying at the same time.
Swartz said that nothing will change for the students, as the special education teacher under the apprenticeship would be paired in the classroom with one of their already working teachers. The individual in the program would get credit for working with the students alongside the teacher.
“We’re not exchanging a teacher for a resident in a classroom, we’ll still have a teacher and we’ll still have a resident who is there,” Swartz said.
While special education is their greatest need, Swartz said the goal of the program is to eventually expand out, transitioning from pre-resident work and paraprofessional work to a full teacher certification.
With final discussion, the board made the motion to have the proposal moved off the consent agenda, recommending that the district come back and present more information about the program and data related to its success.
Recognitions and Awards
The board awarded the September employee of the month award to Pierce Woodson, an advanced manufacturing and welding instructor at Athens Community Career Academy. Woodson was presented with a gift bag from the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce.
The board also recognized the winners of the Foundation for Excellence in Public Education 2024 teaching and staff award. This included Tracy Ansley, Vara Loggins, William Lance, Kelly Hocking, Joshua Truitt, Beth Mendenhall, Melissa Authement, Tara Stuart, Amanda Price, Ryan Landaverde, John Anderson, Laura Hyer, Barbara Gaertig, Tymisha Creightney and Kylie Noble.
Finally, the board congratulated the achievements of the CCSD human resources division which recently won two awards at the Georgia Association of School Personnel Administrators conference.
Pictures and applause concluded the recognition and awards.
The full meeting can be found on the CCSD Youtube channel.