NORFOLK, Va. — On Thursday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin unveiled a plan to try to get more teachers in classrooms.
It’s a big problem school divisions are facing across the country and here in Hampton Roads. Portsmouth, for example, has about 100 instructional vacancies. Norfolk has about 200.
Youngkin hopes his plan will help.
"We’ve gotta work extra hard to close the gap of teachers," he told a crowd at a Northern Virginia high school.
The first part of the directive is to create an easier pathway to teacher certifications, allowing retired teachers, educators from other states, career switchers and even veterans to get in the classroom faster.
The second is to create a teacher apprenticeship program with help from the Department of Labor. The goal here is to get students working towards their education degrees with hands-on experience in the classroom.
He said they also want to expand childcare opportunities for teachers.
"They have lives too," he said. "This directive is a comprehensive approach with multiple solutions to ensuring every student has a great teacher in the classroom.”
Youngkin also said he is targeting recruitment efforts towards communities that need it most, with incentives like sign-on bonuses and "coordinating teacher recruitment and retention dollars to maximize teacher benefits."
He also calls for more frequent and comprehensive data on exactly why teachers are leaving the profession completely.
Education Association of Norfolk President Helen Pryor said while she thinks some of these initiatives will help, more could’ve been done earlier.
"It’s coming a little late," she said. "The thing is that we’ve lost that older generation of teachers -- the ones that just could not go through this any longer."
She said too little pay and a lack of respect led to a lot of teachers leaving. COVID-19 exacerbated the problem.
Virginia Beach Education Association President Kathleen Slinde agrees this strategy may help get some people in the door initially, but she feels teachers could’ve offered a better solution for the long term.
"It’s a highly qualified profession. You work very hard to do it and we should be paid and we should be respected enough to have a seat at the table and a voice in the decision-making," she said.
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Slinde said there is no quick and easy fix to this problem.
"Unless we have young people that want to enter this profession, we'll continue to struggle with this is the future."
Pryor said she hopes this push for new teachers and keeping seasoned ones doesn’t stop here.
"Even with these new incentives, he hasn’t really addressed the underlying problems."
To read the entire executive directive, click here.