Mat-Su schools take on teacher shortage; 'Let’s grow our own,' superintendent says

A nationwide shortage of teachers is now a serious problem as children head back to schools.

It’s huge headache in Alaska, too, where some rural schools see annual turnover of teachers reaching 50 percent.

The Matanuska Susitna School District has 48 school staffed by about 1,200 teachers, and turnover is less in Mat-Su than in rural schools, in the 10 percent range.

Still, recruiting and hiring up to 120 teachers and professional staff a year is a big financial burden. It costs up to $25,000 in direct expense for a school district to recruit and hire new teacher in Alaska, according to University of Alaska researchers.

Mat-Su school superintendent Randy Trani may have found a solution. His idea is pretty simple: Let’s grow our own teachers in Mat-Su.

It’s being put into effect this year for the first time. Trani has worked out an agreement with Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, a small liberal arts college in western Nebraska with a long history as a teaching college.

Graduates of Mat-Su high schools who want to teach can enroll in Chadron’s four-year online “Academy” degree program. Currently, seven students are enrolled starting this fall. They will do the course work remotely, from home, and can work part-time as a teaching aide in Mat-Su schools, gaining practical class experience.

“They will have the opportunity to do ‘work study’ in schools. They can support teachers in the classroom and, if in good standing, do their practicum and student teaching in our schools,” said Jillian Morrissey, chief communications officer for the Mat-Su schools.

The district also has a parallel program for “paraprofessionals” underway this year, also with Chadron State. Teachers’ aides, advisors and tutors, and other professionals who want to get a teaching degree and certificate, are enrolling in that program. Seventeen are enrolled this year in this program.

Chadron is also working with three other Alaska school districts, Anchorage, Kenai and Fairbanks, as well as Mat-Su on the para-professional program, said Don King, Professor of Education at Chadron.

Anchorage School District and Chadron have worked together for several years in helping teachers get graduate degrees so they can work in school administration, as principals for example.

The high school academy program, however, is brand new this year, and only Mat-Su is doing it so far. It was Trani’s idea, King said. Mat-Su may also be the only one like it in the nation, he said.

Trani said, “Students can stay here to do their course work. They can get a full BA (Bachelor of Arts) in four years,” or less if they have accumulated college credits while in high school, which many students have done.”

Three of the six high school graduates enrolled accumulated college credits while in Mat-Su’s “Middle College” program with the University of Alaska and will be able to get their teaching degrees in less than four years. Chadron will accept the transfer credits from UA, King said.

“In a ‘worst case’ scenario the tuition cost might be $36,000 over four years, but students will have no dorm costs because they’ll be staying at home,” Trani said. In addition, they will be able to take advantage of Chadron State’s financial aid packages, which will reduce immediate student costs.

Under Mat-Su’s program the school district refunds college tuition costs if a student completes the program, gets an education degree, gains employment in the school district and works for five years, and then continues.

The first year the students are employed by the Mat-Su the reimbursement kicks in at 10 percent of a student’s total tuition cost; an additional 15 percent is paid in the second year, and so on each year until the entire tuition debt is paid as long as the new teacher continues with the district. “After five years they would have full college expense reimbursement,” Morrissey said.

Mat-Su’s experience is that new teachers who stay with the district for five years tend to stay even longer and many make their career in teaching. Also, teachers recruited locally have roots in the Mat-Su are used to a northern climate. They are less likely to leave.

The phased reimbursement is the carrot that encourages new teachers to stay on the job. It is modeled on the popular 1970s and 1980s-era program of reimbursement of state loans for college if students stay in Alaska to work, or return from an out-of-state college, with complete reimbursement if students remain in the state for five years.

The idea of education expense reimbursement is not new. It has been done for years, including in Alaska, in fields like health care where it has proven to be very successful as a recruiting and retention.

For several years the state has used state and federal funds to recruit physicians and medical professionals in certain fields where there are shortages, and who are carrying heavy medical school debt, to work in rural Alaska communities. Repayment of education loans and even cash bonuses are used as incentives.

In recent years large health care employers in urban Alaska communities have joined the program, adding private sector funds to these payments.

Morrissey said that if Mat-Su’s program works and if the number of students increase every year – the goal is to build from five to 20 students a year – the district’s entire need for new teachers might be met locally after a few years.

The program will likely pay for itself, Trani said, because the reimbursement cost will be more than offset by lower costs for the district in recruiting teachers from out of state.

Chadron has a long history as a teaching college. It was founded in 1911 as one of four state colleges established to train teachers for communities in rural Nebraska.

While founded as a teacher’s college Chadron has grown and diversified over the years, said Don King, Professor of Education at Chadron.

The school now enrolls about 2,000 students, mostly residential, and is part of the Nebraska State College System, which is different from the University of Nebraska system.

Chadron was also an early leader into distance delivery in its education programs, King said. Long before technological advances enabled the expansion of virtual learning Chadron operated a two-wave, live interactive television system between its main campus and four satellite locations in the region, he said. Two-way video streaming and other advanced communications technologies has now made the delivery of education much simpler.

Chadron State College developed its paraprofessionals-to-teacher program six years ago to meet an urgent need for special education teachers in Nebraska. Th program has since expanded beyond special education and now includes teacher training in elementary and middle school education and including specialized areas like math, business, family consumer science, and science.