The DeKalb County School District's new human resources chief is prioritizing teacher certification, something her predecessor did not see as an imperative.
Officials have been meeting with the district’s uncertified teachers to get an understanding for the support they need in attaining their credentials, Chief Human Capital Management Officer Bernice Gregory said.
“We are giving them a timeline to get into a program,” she said, adding the process could take up to a year. “We’re not taking the waivers away, but we’re trying to ... give (teachers) the support they need.”
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School district officials said in January 2017 they would begin working to provide a pathway toward certification for waived teachers. The move was prompted after former Chief Human Capital Management Officer Leo Brown told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December 2016 there were no plans to make certification a must, infuriating several of the district's school board members.
“Certification is, of course, valued,” he said then. “But we understand there are individuals with content knowledge who can come in immediately and teach. We see the value in content knowledge available to help our students.”
In January 2017, Everett Patrick, running human capital management in Brown’s absence, told school board members that the department was working with Lisa Martin, the chief academic and accountability officer, to develop a program for its uncertified teachers.
None came. Martin resigned from the district in January.
Gregory, a Georgia native, has worked in her previous school districts to fill classrooms with certified teachers as well as diversifying staffs to mirror their respective communities.
Georgia districts began using certification waivers in 2016 after many were designated Strategic Waiver School Systems, which allows for some flexibility with state regulations. Some districts said they intended to use waivers to fill vacancies amid a national teacher shortage.
Most metro Atlanta school districts employ a few dozen waived teachers at a time. Clayton County does not use certification waivers at all. At one point in the last two years, DeKalb Schools employed about 200 teachers on certification waivers, but also had more vacancies than it did without utilizing the waivers.
Research indicates uncertified teachers lack stability needed in the learning environment, leaving teaching jobs two to three times the rate of certified teachers. It’s that research, Gregory said, that motivates her to help uncertified teachers.
“I definitely came in, looked at the waiver numbers and said we need to get something in place,” she said. “We’re looking at all the data from the teachers, and we want them to be successful.”
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