State lawmakers and education leaders are looking for ways to reduce its teacher shortage and put more certified teachers in Louisiana classrooms.
One of those ways is clearing a backlog of certification applications.
"One of the problems that the (Louisiana Department of Education) talked about was they didn't have the manpower to process these applications," Sen. Cleo Fields (D-Baton Rouge), the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, told WWL's Tommy Tucker.
According to Sen. Fields, the backlog is one that has accumulated over several years. He adds that Department of Education leaders failed to warn lawmakers about those problems.
"This didn't start yesterday," Sen. Fields said. "This problem existed for a minute. It's not like we woke up one morning and we had 7,000 or 30,000 applications that we hadn't pushed through the process.
"Everyone knew that this problem was real at the Department of Education, and I'm just a little disappointed that we weren't put on notice there was a lack of manpower. The superintendent has committed that he can move some people around, and I think the process is going to speed up, and I think we can get teachers into the classroom quicker and sooner rather than later."
Sen. Fields says that commitment from Superintendent Cade Brumley came after he made that suggestion to Brumley.
"I gave the superintendent some advice to move some people around in the Department of Education because there is now greater need in this state as it relates to education than the certification of teachers," Sen. Fields said.
Sen. Fields says state police will assist in streamlining background checks.
"Come January, according to state police, we'll be able to streamline how we do background checks where we can do them electronically, do finger prints electronically, versus the manual (process) for fingerprints we have today," Sen. Fields said.
According to Sen. Fields, lawmakers are willing to give the Department of Education the resources it needs to get more teachers into classrooms.
"We got to do everything we can to deal with this, in my view, a major problem that's creeping up on us all across the country," Sen. Fields said.
