The Pine Bluff and Smackover-Norphlet school districts on Thursday received state approval to employ people as teachers who do not have state teacher licenses.
The Arkansas Board of Education approved the teacher licensure waivers after representatives from the districts described for the board their difficulties in finding state-licensed instructors to fill existing vacancies in the south Arkansas systems.
The Pine Bluff School District, which has two schools labeled by the state as being in academic distress, has 15 vacancies. Eight of the vacancies are currently filled with long-term substitutes who earn a smaller daily rate of pay than a salaried, licensed teacher.
Smackover-Norphlet district leaders said they had a band director job and a special education position that they had been unable to fill with high-quality licensed applicants, but did have job candidates who had expertise in the fields who would pursue state licensure over time.
In receiving the waivers of state laws and rules as allowed by Act 1420 of 2015 the two districts bring to 53 the number of Arkansas districts that have received waivers, Mary Perry, an Arkansas Department of Education administrator, said Thursday.
The state has 235 school districts this year.
The state law enables school districts to seek and receive waivers of state rules and laws that have previously been granted to open-enrollment charter schools that enroll at least one student in the district. The vast majority of the waivers granted to the districts to date have relaxed time requirements for the teaching of high school courses and allowed the employment of nonlicensed instructors.
The Smackover-Norphlet district cited the waivers granted to the Arkansas Virtual Academy as the basis for its waiver request. The Pine Bluff district based its request on waivers granted to Quest Middle School of Pine Bluff and the Pine Bluff Lighthouse Academy charter school.
Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock said he had greater concerns about granting the request from the Pine Bluff district because of its schools being in academic distress, meaning fewer than 50 percent of students at those schools scored at proficient levels on state exams over a three-year period.
Michael Robinson, the new superintendent of the Pine Bluff district, responded that without the waiver on licensure, the Pine Bluff schools will have substitute teachers in classrooms in front of children.
"I would prefer to have someone in front of students who has content knowledge," Robinson said about instructors who have degrees in the fields they would be teaching, even if they don't have teaching degrees or licenses. "We can teach them pedagogy," he said about the mechanics of teaching a classroom.
Ivy Pfeffer, the assistant commissioner for licensure and educator effectiveness at the Department of Education, confirmed at least in part the difficulty in finding adequate numbers of teachers in south Arkansas. The number of enrollees in the teacher preparation program at University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff dropped from 53 in 2011-12 and 50 in 2013-14 to just nine in 2014-15.
Richard Wilde, manager of the school improvement division at the Education Department, said the division is supportive of the Pine Bluff district's request for waivers on teacher licensure.
Robinson and members of his staff described for the Education Board some of the steps they are taking to increase the pool of licensed teachers who apply to work in Pine Bluff. That includes partnerships with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, extensive recruiting at college campuses and the seeking of a federal grant to provide incentive pay for teacher performance.
In response to questions, Pine Bluff administrators offered assurances that the nonlicensed teachers would be provided with mentors and other support throughout the school year.
Metro on 09/09/2016