PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The City of Philadelphia is taking steps to beef up the ranks of vocational education teachers by helping pay for their certifications.
The city has budgeted $500,000 to pay for state-required certifications for career and technical education (CTE) teachers, City Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson announced Monday at Swenson Arts and Technology High School.
Professionals who shift from the business world to teach cooking or auto repair in Philadelphia schools can apply for an emergency state teaching certification for their first year. But after that, teachers pay out of their own pockets for college courses necessary to acquire permanent teaching credentials.
“I pay just under seven grand for two classes a semester,” said Jessica Lawyer, a culinary arts instructor at Edison High School who was teaching a summer course at Swenson Monday. “Absolutely, I would take advantage of it. It would be incredibly helpful. I think it’ll be a great incentive to retain teachers and also to have teachers want to come from the industry into the field of CTE education.”
Gilmore Richardson said it’s “certainly a start.”
“The $500,000 is what we could justify for the ask in the budget, knowing that the courses at Temple University started at $2,256 per course,” she said. “You have to pay out of pocket for that certification. And we found that that has been an impediment for many CTE teachers who, after three years, may leave our district and go to other districts.”
“We were one of the only districts in the commonwealth that did not offer full tuition reimbursement for the CTE teachers — or full payment for the certification — and we wanted to change that,” Gilmore Richardson said.
There are 160 CTE teachers in Philadelphia, educating 5,000 CTE students in 43 programs.
“We don’t want our young people just graduating from high school to take the Pennsylvania minimum wage,” said Superintendent Tony Watlington. ”We want our young people graduating with high-quality, high-paying jobs.”