Certified teachers an issue for EPSB

By: ELIZABETH WEST
Staff Reporter

Evangeline Parish School Board Superintendent Toni Hamlin informed board members during Wednesday’s meeting “that staffing is coming along very well” and added “other than about three or four positions, they have completed staffing.”
Board member Peggy Foreman asked the superintendent, “how do we stand on certified teachers?”
That question prompted Hamlin to dive deeper into the challenges not only facing the parish but the entire state regarding having enough certified teachers. Hamlin explained that there are three categories of teachers; fully certified, PL teachers (practitioner licenses), and teachers that they call TATs (temporary authority to teach).
A PL teacher is consider certified by the state because they have proven to the state that they are solid in the content area by fulfilling the requirements of the praxis test. The teacher that is considered a TAT, short for temporary authority to teach, has only a year to enroll in a program to become certified. A TAT is only good for one year.
“That’s what you saw happen at the last meeting, these teachers were not eligible for employment until they get into a PL program.” Hamlin said. “This past year we had more TATs than I can remember in the last 10 years.”
The shortage of teachers is causing certified teachers to teach outside of their respective fields.
Public schools are also taking a hit when it comes to highly qualified teachers. This problem is becoming worse because certified teachers are being moved to teach in areas that they are not certified in. These teachers are called OFAT (out of field authority to teach).
“For example at Ville Platte High three if not four teachers are fully certified in a certain area but because of a shortage or a need in another area they are on OFAT,” Hamlin said.
These OFAT teachers are fully certified but because these teachers are having to teach outside of their area to fulfill a need, the parish takes a hit on the highly qualified.
The other issue is that when teachers take extended leave the state will only allow a retired certified teacher to teach for a certain amount of days which is now making it hard to fill long term substitute positions with qualified people. Board member Scott Limoges mentioned that less people are coming out of college with education degrees, making positions hard to fill in our schools.
When it comes to hiring retired teachers as long term substitutes to fill positions of teachers on extended leave the state will only allow them to make 25 percent of their retirement salary a month. If the retired teacher were to earn more than 25 percent of their retirement salary from substituting then their retirement check would be cut. Because this limits how long a retired teacher may substitute, it has created a problem when it comes to filling positions of teachers on extended leave with qualified people.
According to Hamlin, “Representative Bernard LeBas sponsored a bill to raise the cap to 50 percent before you were penalized but the bill failed.”
CFO Amy Lafleur added that not only did LeBas’ bill not pass but “the critical shortage areas did pass.” She continued, “It will be even more difficult to declare a critical shortage and get retired teachers, than it was previously.”
Being able to declare a critical shortage allowed schools to higher certified teachers that are retired to fill positions in the area that has been declared to have a critical shortage. Lafleur has not received all the guidelines yet.
“They are just now getting the information for the new requirements,” Lafluer said.
Hamlin said they “have declared a critical shortage in 12 areas.” These areas were not specific. The example Hamlin gave was that they “declared a critical shortage in elementary teachers” and not a specific grade. Hamlin said that declaring a critical shortage in the 12 areas was done to “cover ourselves.”
Lafleur added, “That’s one of the things I can recall from what passed. You have to declare it early on, for the whole year.”
Other issues come in the form of what Limoges calls “new trends” he is seeing happen with the people who are deciding to become educators.
“A lot of people that are older are going to online universities that are out of state so if it’s an out of state university then it’s an out of state licenses. Then these people have to go through the state of Louisiana to get certified and it’s a big process.”
The other trend Limoges is seeing a lot of is, “People who have earned degrees in stuff like criminal justice are going take the praxis to teach.” Limoges calls the second trend “scary” because these people have not been taught the methodology.
Limoges would like to begin getting the word out there about the perks of graduating with and education degree, with the main one being student loan forgiveness if they teach in a poverty area for five years. Limoges hopes that if students preparing to go to college know these things before they are too far into another degree program they will choose to go into education.