ATLANTA - The DeKalb County school board agreed to invest close to $1.7 million in new programs to train new teachers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The hope from district leaders is these programs can help fill persistent vacancies for the state’s third-largest school system.

Over the next two years, the district will aim to produce 150 teacher candidates via two programs allowing people to complete the necessary education while working in DeKalb schools. The programs are slated to start in January.

“We can’t just sit back and wait for teachers to show up. We also have to stop poaching them from other districts,” said Superintendent Devon Horton. “We want to build teachers for us, by us.”

In total, the district will spend more than $3 million to get the training programs up and running, including stipends for the initial group of participants and school-based mentors.

Two months into the school year, DeKalb is still hiring for about 180 teaching positions — down from the 400 openings for teachers it started the school year with. About 25% of DeKalb’s roughly 6,600 teachers will be eligible for retirement within the next two years, Horton said in August.

The board approved four contracts related to the training programs on Monday night. Board member Joyce Morley was the only one to dissent to each of them. She argued that it was happening too quickly.

“Most certainly it’s admirable, but my concern is that it’s a rush job,” Morley said. “It’s millions and millions and millions just being spent” since Horton began working as the district’s superintendent in July.

Other board members did not weigh in on Morley’s concerns, but voted in favor of the initial measures.

“I’m so excited to see what this is going to bring for our scholars and our teachers,” said board Chair Diijon DaCosta after the meeting. “This is an investment (in) our scholars. As a board of education, we will support our superintendent in these new initiatives that help reduce the amount of vacancies for our teachers.”

The IGNITE DeKalb teacher residency will train 100 teachers by June 2025, according to documents about the project posted with the meeting agenda. The one-year program is for those who already have bachelor’s degrees, but need to get certified to be a teacher. They’ll also obtain a master’s degree in that year. At the same time as they complete necessary coursework through a partnership with Middle Georgia State University, they will be working in a “full-time, student-facing position” alongside a teacher mentor.

The university will cover $414,900 — about half of the cost of the teachers’ education. There will be no cost to the program’s participants. Upon completion, the goal will be to hire the teachers for jobs at the district’s schools with the highest needs.

Those who complete the program would be expected to commit to teaching in one of the district’s highest-need schools for five years.

“Where else can you get a salary for a year, get trained by the best, guaranteed employment and also pay for your master’s and get it in a year?” Horton said. “It’s one of the best deals in metro Atlanta.”

A separate program will pay for paraprofessionals to get bachelor’s degrees. The district will pay up to $788,000 to BloomBoard Inc. for the program, in which participants will continue working as paraprofessionals while completing coursework. The goal would be for 50 people to go through the two-year program.

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