The DeKalb County School District is starting the academic year with openings for almost 400 full-time teachers. But Superintendent Devon Horton, who is preparing for his first school year with DeKalb, is already looking ahead to the future.
“How shocked would you be if I said to you over the next two years, 25% of our current teaching staff will be eligible for retirement?” he said at a press conference Tuesday. That would be more than 1,500 teachers in the state’s third-largest district. “This problem doesn’t go away.”
The summertime is a hiring frenzy for metro Atlanta schools, with thousands of teachers in the area starting new jobs each year. An influx of federal dollars and rising student needs during the pandemic mean districts have been hiring more than normal, and veteran and new teachers alike have been dealing with burnout and an ever-increasing list of responsibilities.
This year, DeKalb will manage the shortfall by putting long-term substitute teachers and administrators who are certified to teach in classrooms for the first 45 days. But Horton hopes two new programs will soon begin the work of replenishing the pipeline of eligible teachers.
“Our industry has been poached by other industries to take our phenomenal teachers and go off into the sunset to do other things,” he said. “Well, it’s time we return and do some poaching back.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
A teacher residency program called Ignite DeKalb would train about 100-150 teacher residents every two years, he said at the press conference Tuesday. And the district is exploring ways to get existing employees with associate degrees the schooling necessary to become teachers.
Ignite DeKalb would put potential teachers to work for a full year in district schools, Horton said. The program would be aimed toward people who have bachelor’s degrees but don’t have a background in education. The district would give them a $30,000-$35,000 stipend, and pay for them to obtain master’s degrees and their teaching certifications. They would work in a classroom for most of the week with a veteran teacher and complete coursework on Fridays.
After finishing the program, they would be placed at the district’s horizon schools, or the ones that serve students with the highest needs. They would be required to sign a five-year contract to work at a horizon school or other identified school, said Tekshia Ward-Smith, the district’s human resources administrator.
“When teachers are prepared directly for the schools and the students that they know that they’re going to serve, they’re a lot more effective,” Horton said.
This will be the fourth similar program he’s overseen, Horton said. In his previous district just outside of Chicago, it was called CREATE 65. The inaugural class in the much-smaller district had fewer than two dozen participants. There is growing interest in these types of programs nationally, according to an annual report from the National Center for Teacher Residencies. Between 2019 and 2022, about 5,700 teachers graduated from residencies in the organization’s network.
Ignite DeKalb is expected to launch in winter 2024.
Additionally, the district is developing plans to help paraprofessionals join the teaching ranks. The program, which Horton called “the new Teach for DeKalb,” would help paraprofessionals who already have associate’s degrees obtain bachelor’s degrees within a two-year period. Horton did not know how many potential teachers this program could turn out.
“They have the talent and the skill, they just need the opportunity and the access,” he said.
These programs align with DeKalb’s theme for the year, Horton said: “Disrupting for excellence.”
“We’re not being destructive, but we’re being disruptive to the norms of what schools have kind of been through, especially over the last three or four years,” he said.
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