Amid deepening teacher shortage, Tulsa schools to resort to hiring uncertified candidates (2024)

Amid a deepening statewide teacher shortage, Tulsa Public Schools will be allowed to resort to hiring some noncertified candidates without four-year college degrees to fill some of its 130 still-vacant teaching positions.

At a Monday evening meeting, a divided local school board voted 3-2 to adopt for one year a new policy that will allow TPS to hire these so-called “aspiring educators” for $35,000 per year. They must:

When asked by the board, Superintendent Ebony Johnson estimated that fewer than 10 people likely would be prepared to take the positions initially, with classes set to begin Aug. 20.

Board President Stacey Woolley made the successful motion to approve the new policy, but only for the 2024-25 academic year and with the stipulation that it be reviewed to determine whether it should continue no later than May 30, 2025.

Before the vote, Woolley lamented the position in which local school leaders find themselves while some state leaders disparage teachers and have voted to divert funds “to pay for private schools for wealthy families.”

“This is a terrible situation for everyone to be in. I don’t know the answer, but I do know as a mom, I can’t imagine my kid not having someone in the classroom the first day of school who will consistently be there,” she said.

Also voting “yes” were board members E’Lena Ashley and Susan Lamkin.

Ashley said the bottom line for her was not wanting to fail to provide as many students as possible with a viable candidate in the classroom. She added that she thought reviewing the program after one year was commendable.

“They have to have someone in the classroom that wants to teach them and wants to be there,” she said.

Board members John Croisant and Calvin Moniz voted “no.”

“Twenty-eight percent attrition for 2022-23 shows me we are not listening to our teachers. We’re not doing the things that we need to retain them,” Moniz said. “I wonder if the (teacher recruiting) budget spent on advertising could have been better spent on retention.”

Board members Sarah Smith and Jennettie Marshall were absent.

Leaders past and present of the local teachers union were vehemently opposed to the idea.

Current Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association Vice President LeeAnne Power Jimenez said TPS needs to get to the bottom of the root causes of its high rate of annual teacher turnover before resorting to such drastic measures.

She said she had counted 158 teacher resignations listed on public board meeting agendas over the course of the last two months.

“What we have here is not a need for a policy to bring nondegreed, uncertified people to our classroom,” Jimenez said. “I would like you to determine why teachers are leaving TPS and bring them back to TPS.”

A few TPS principals came to speak in favor of the proposal.

Colette Allen, interim principal at Whitman Elementary School, told the board the proposed adjunct policy could be a means of bringing in employees who could provide more stability in unstaffed classrooms than substitute teachers do.

By contrast, substitutes must be at least 18 and have at least a high school diploma or equivalency.

Central High School Principal Jason Gilley said he and his colleagues would use the program judiciously, adding that he would never hire someone with whom he would not be comfortable teaching his own children, who attend Tulsa schools.

State Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, who previously taught at Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School, told the board he voted against Senate Bill 1119 in 2022, which allowed local school boards to adopt these new adjunct teacher policies for noncertified applicants.

“We were assured this meant doctors and lawyers would be able to come in and teach,” Waldron said. “We have no mechanism for tracking adjunct teachers statewide. It’s a recipe for chaos. It is going to diminish standards. We have to find a more long-term solution. Once we cross that line, it’s very difficult to come back.”

Over the last 12 years, Oklahoma has seen its teacher shortage snowball, making public schools across the state increasingly dependent on filling vacancies with underqualified teachers.

Before then, it used to be extremely rare for the Oklahoma State Board of Education to consider waiving teacher certification requirements — only 32 emergency certificates for teaching applicants with a bachelor’s degree but without a traditional or alternative certification were approved in 2011-12.

The following two years, that figure jumped to 100 and then near 200.

Last year, 5,014 emergency certificates were approved — a new, all-time record — and 1,729 are already in place for the 2024-25 academic year beginning this month.

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