Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, right, watches as Jennie Meadows teaches in a reading skills center during a tour of Dearing Elementary School Thursday, April 4, 2024.
Friday, April 5, 2024 | 2 a.m.
About 400 education support professionals and long-term substitutes have elevated their careers to become fully certified teachers since a partnership between UNLV and the Clark County School District launched less than three years ago.
It’s a big point of pride that CCSD was happy to show to the nation’s top education and labor officials Thursday with the optimism that “grow-your-own” teacher apprenticeship-type programs can expand, and that the CCSD/UNLV Paraprofessional Pathways Program can be a model in other states.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su toured Dearing Elementary School in east Las Vegas to see one site where the program is paying dividends.
Working support staffers — like teachers’ assistants — with at least 60 college credits qualify for the Paraprofessional Pathways Program, which fast-tracks learners through the completion of a bachelor’s degree and draws on their practical experience by allowing them to apply their daily in-classroom work toward their certifications.
It’s an accelerated alternative to the traditional path to becoming a teacher — majoring in education at a four-year college and student teaching in the final year to get hands-on experience in a classroom.
Program tuition is free. It is funded by federal pandemic relief dollars.
Jeanette Sanjurjo was a longterm substitute for years. Completing a bachelor’s degree was hard when she needed to juggle it with a paying job, she said. On Thursday, she was teaching author intent during a reading unit in her own fourth-grade class at Dearing. Cardona — himself once a fourth-grade teacher — looked on.
Sanjurjo completed her bachelor’s degree and earned her full certification through the pathways program. She said it was the best decision she’s made in her life.
“UNLV is like a concierge service if you go with the program,” she said. “All you need to do is have that work ethic. If you have a good work ethic, it’s easy. They tell you, ‘These are the classes that you need to take, this is where you’re going if you can do all this. You’re there.’”
Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert said the program, seeded with $6 million passed through the state, has a 95% graduation rate and brought in teachers who better reflected the racial and ethnic diversity of their students in the majority-minority CCSD. Jeff Shih, an associate dean at UNLV’s College of Education, added that program alumni were staying in their communities.
The program started in summer 2021 with about 40 people.
“This program is a huge success, allowing us to eliminate cost barriers, provide students support and, most importantly, see the number of educators grow to provide our students with a general, great education,” said CCSD Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell.
Su said apprenticeships allowed people to learn while they earned and connected the skills to the job that they planned to do – and a job that is waiting for them, not just a job search, when they’re fully trained.
“So to the UNLV and to the Clark County School District, congratulations on demonstrating just why registered apprenticeships are the gold standard for how we connect people to good jobs,” she said.
Cardona said that the education field was burdened by a respect issue, as shown in teacher pay, and that generally, student teaching is unpaid. He said the country’s top education officials are fighting this disrespect by pushing for states to raise teacher pay (Nevada lawmakers did this by setting aside $250 million last year just for educator pay) and supporting apprenticeships like those offered by the program.
As temporary pandemic funds phase out, Cardona said his budget proposal that he will defend before Congress included $40 million in new funding for this type of “grow your own” program.
“Our budget is a reflection of our values. We value these programs. You’re going to see it in our annual budget as well,” he said. “We’re also working with governors, we’re working with state legislators, we’re working with mayors, districts, state chiefs, to make sure that they understand – how, yes, we hear across the country that there’s a shortage in educators. (But) it’s on us to think outside the box and be creative and invest in getting more teachers.”
Part of the creative strategy is also visiting places like CCSD, Cardona said.
“Nevada is doing it well,” he said. “Let’s lift up the model that they’re doing there.”
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