Latest news with #UrbanTeacherResidencyProgram
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘Least restrictive environment:' San Francisco schools strengthening special education services
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco Unified School District officials said they are taking steps to strengthen its systems and structures for serving students who receive Special Education services. Special Education services are bound by state and federal mandates to ensure students eligible for special education have 'meaningful access to general education in the least restrictive environment to meet their unique needs,' district officials wrote. While SFUSD has experienced trends of declining enrollment in the past five years, Special Education enrollment has increased. In 2023-24, nearly 14% of SFUSD's 49,000 students in TK-12th grades were identified as requiring Special Education services. SFUSD is both a school district and a county office of education. SFUSD employs nearly 500 teachers and over 1,300 paraeducators who work directly with students receiving Special Education services. The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) conducted a review of the public school district's special education services in fall 2024 by interviewing key SFUSD staff and evaluating SFUSD's SpEd procedures, data and processes. Based off FCMAT's review of special education services within the district, SFUSD is implementing several action items, including: Increasing Accountability and Oversight 'SFUSD will be working to further define the distinction between district and county programming, with a specific emphasis on strengthening strategies and programming for students who have more extensive support needs, such as those in Special Day Classes (SDC) or county-level services. SFUSD's goal is to better address these students' needs within our schools and transition students back from Non-Public Schools (NPS) whenever possible,' district officials wrote. Hiring and Retaining Special Education Staff 'For the first time in recent memory, SFUSD is preparing to post positions for occupational and physical therapists, aiming to hire directly for roles that have primarily been filled through contracted services. Additionally, SFUSD is organizing hiring fairs, recruitment events and pursuing a supplemental grant for the Urban Teacher Residency Program, with a specific focus on Special Education teacher credentials,' SFUSD officials wrote. Bay Area elementary schools make 2025 California Distinguished list Strengthening the Continuum of Special Education Services District officials wrote, 'Through cross-departmental efforts, SFUSD is working to address the significant disproportionality of African American students referred for Special Education services. SFUSD highlighted the need to strengthen site- level tiers of support, Student Success Team structures, and interventions that are already in place across schools within general education.' Improving Data Systems 'SFUSD is focused on improving data systems to better inform decision-making and planning. As a result of this process, the team is beginning to organize more accurate, robust, usable data sets related to programming, staffing, caseloads, class sizes, and other data sets that were previously challenging to access,' district officials wrote. FCMAT and SFUSD will discuss the report at the April 8 Board of Education meeting. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
University at Buffalo teacher residency program in jeopardy after federal funding cuts
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — A University at Buffalo program that trains future teachers is in jeopardy if it loses key federal funding. The potential cuts have sparked concern over the impact it can have on local classrooms. UB's Urban Teacher Residency Program is a yearlong, hands-on experience that prepares aspiring teachers to work in Buffalo Public Schools. Amanda Winkelsas, the programs director, said their model has shown impressive outcomes. 'This is really devastating news both to the program and our people,' Winkelsas said. 'Students in the classrooms of our graduates have better average course grades, they have better attendance, they have fewer disciplinary referrals.' A few weeks ago, Winkelsas was informed by the Department of Education that the program will no longer be receiving over $7 million in funding it relies on. President Donald Trump's administration revoked two major grants: a Teacher Quality Partnership grant and a Supporting Effective Educator Development grant. One of the grants allows the university to give a stipend to residents so they do not have to maintain a full-time job while studying and co-teaching. It also allows them not to worry about paying rent, funding transportation, childcare and more. 'There was a real concern that these stipends would immediately cut off,' Winkelsas said. 'Therefore, they wouldn't be able to continue in residency in a full-time capacity.' With funding now in limbo, current graduate students might not be able to finish their master's degrees and receive certification to become a teacher. There are also seven employees who could lose their positions as the university would no longer be able to pay their salaries. This puts the enrollment of future members of the program at a standstill. 'We had people interview already and we're ready to make offers that we've held back because we don't know about future funding,' Winkelsas said. New York Attorney General Letitia James and seven other attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education for unlawfully cancelling these grants that were authorized by Congress. A judge has set a temporary restraining order on the cuts to take effect. 'We have 14 days to continue our work,' Winkelsas said. 'But what happens after those 14 days is once again up in the air.' Winkelsas is encouraging everyone to call their local representatives as Congress has a say where grants and funds are distributed. Donations to support the residency program can be made here. Trina Catterson joined the News 4 team in 2024. She previously worked at WETM-TV in Elmira, a sister station of WIVB. See more of her work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
California sues Trump administration for cutting teacher training over ‘illegal DEI'
California joined seven Democrat-led states that sued the Trump administration Thursday, seeking to halt hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to teacher training programs designed to increase instructors in direly needed STEM fields as well as educate students who have disabilities or are learning English. The suit, filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, zeroes in on two Obama-era grants Congress created to address teacher shortages in rural and urban areas and encourage college students studying STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math — to take on teaching jobs in K-12 education. The Department of Education cuts amounted to roughly $148 million in California and $102 million for the other states that have sued: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. Nationally, the funding losses totaled $600 million. No Republican-led states have filed suit. Three teacher groups filed a separate complaint this week in a Maryland federal court. In Southern California, nearly 600 college students are in the current cohorts studying to be teachers under the grants and were to be assigned to high-need school districts. The cut 'isn't just a policy change. It's a betrayal of students, teachers and our communities,' said Williams, a Cal State L.A. educator professor who works with trainees as the head of the Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program. Reached via email, a spokesperson for the Department of Education declined to comment because the litigation is pending. In announcing the grant cuts Feb. 17, the Department of Education said the programs use taxpayer funds to 'train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies' that were 'inappropriate and unnecessary.' It cited 'critical race theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); social justice activism; 'anti-racism'; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.' President Trump has pledged to rid schools and universities of 'wokeness' and use federal funding as leverage. He also intends to dismantle the Department of Education, calling the agency 'a big con job' infiltrated by 'radicals, zealots, and Marxists' that misused taxpayer dollars. The Thursday suit alleges the teacher training grant cancellations have led to 'immediate and irreparable harm' that will 'disrupt teacher workforce pipelines, increase reliance on underqualified educators, and destabilize local school systems.' The University of California and California State University, pipelines to the teaching force, will lose the majority of their $56 million in multiyear grants if a federal judge does not block the cuts. The other $92 million in funds allocated to California go to private universities and other nonprofit educational groups that administer the grants, which are also at risk. 'Universities would have to look to layoffs, reduced hours for university staff, reduced funding for aspiring teachers,' California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in announcing the state's lawsuit. 'Without these programs, impacted rural and urban schools will have to resort to hiring long-term substitutes, teachers with emergency credentials, and unlicensed teachers on waivers. This will harm the quality of instruction and can lead to increased numbers of students falling short of national standards,' the suit states. The states also allege the Trump administration has violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rule-making, and circumvented Congress, which authorized the funds and controls the federal budget. 'The department's actions appear to encompass 'policy objectives' of ending disfavored but lawful efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion — objectives that Congress expressly directed grantees to carry out in creating these programs,' the suit says. It adds that the programs are mandated by law to ensure 'general education teachers receive training in providing instruction to diverse populations, including children with disabilities, limited English proficient students, and children from low-income families.' The lawsuit points out that many of the grants — some of which supported increasing racial diversity in teaching — were approved under the first Trump administration. Bonta disputed the department's anti-DEI characterization during a news conference Thursday. He accused the administration of 'waging the culture wars with these buzzwords' to 'feed their political base and create political cover for a blatantly unlawful action.' The cuts took place last month amid sweeping undoing of federal spending in the Department of Education and other government agencies and programs since Trump's inauguration. Trump has tasked his chief cost-cutter, Elon Musk, with running the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, which is not a federal agency. DOGE has recommended vast cuts to federal programs, many of which involve LGBTQ+ or diversity issues, and been met with a bevy of lawsuits. Among the canceled programs is a $7.5-million grant at Cal State L.A. to train and certify 276 teachers over five years to work in high-need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified school districts. Under the program, teachers would focus on working with disabled students as well as on STEM subjects and bilingual education. Other cancellations include an $8-million program at UCLA to train at least 314 middle school principals and math, English, science and social science teachers to serve roughly 15,000 students in Los Angeles County school districts, among them LAUSD, Glendale Unified, Lancaster Unified and Norwalk-La Mirada Unified. 'Terminating these education grants will clog the pipeline of passionate, qualified good teachers [and keep them] from entering our classrooms,' Bonta said. 'It'll squash aspiring teachers, individuals who feel called to do this work.... It will yank teachers out of school and away from kids who deserve every investment in their education, in their future.' Nationally, there is a shortage of about 400,000 teachers, according to the Learning Policy Institute, including tens of thousands of positions in California. With inadequate pay and long hours, the profession has struggled to attract new workers or retain ones who enter, as burnout is a major issue. Schools and districts in less-wealthy and rural areas have also faced hurdles in recruiting or keeping workers. Shireen Pavri, CSU's assistant vice chancellor for Educator and Leadership Programs, said she was 'devastated' by the cuts. The decision 'pulls out the academic and financial support from students who are currently enrolled.... It negatively impacts the infrastructure we have carefully built,' said Pavri, who joined Bonta with a colleague and a student at the event Thursday. At Cal State L.A., Williams has worked closely with grant-funded trainees as a principal investigator for the Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program. The program, which lasts more than a year, works with 'teacher residents' who focus on STEM and are placed in schools alongside mentors to gain on-the-job training. When the student teachers get permanent jobs in their own classrooms, 'they hit the ground running,' he said, citing grant-funded training and mentorship. 'They know what they are doing. They are confident and they are supported, and that's why they succeed.' Jonathan Sze, a Cal State L.A. educator in training who teaches chemistry at Woodrow Wilson High School, said the Trump administration's decision would 'likely prevent people who are like me from becoming teachers.' Sze, who was studying to become a pharmacist, switched in recent years to focus on teaching science. The grant to Cal State L.A. has helped pay for his education and salary in the classroom, where he teachers 10th- and 11th-graders. By August, he expects to have credentials to teach on his own. Because he received his grant funding before last month's cancellations, Sze said he does not expect the changes to affect his training. 'But this program and programs like this should continue — they have to continue — to support the next generation of teachers.'
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
2 WMU education programs impacted by nationwide funding cuts
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) — Two Western Michigan University education programs have been affected by funding cuts by the U.S. Department of Education, a university spokesperson said. WMU said it was part of the department's recent slashing of nearly $900 million in contracts nationwide from the . On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education said more than $350 million in ' was canceled. Some of the cuts were to contracts the department claims were found to be 'wasteful' and 'ideologically driven.' 'Instead of improving outcomes for students, here's where taxpayer dollars were going: – $4.6M contract to coordinate zoom and in-person meetings – $3.0M contract to write a report that showed that prior reports were not utilized by schools – $1.4M contract to physically observe mailing and clerical operations,' from the department on X, formerly known as Twitter, said. However, the cuts are affecting a WMU program focused on improving education. One program is the Urban Teacher Residency Program. A grant of $5 million has backed the program's efforts to curb a shortage of teachers in several Southwest Michigan districts like Benton Harbor and Kalamazoo. In the program, paraprofessionals and long-term substitutes would be able to obtain graduate-level certification. WMU said approximately 20 graduate students are wrapping up their training. A source in the program said around a million dollars were left in the grant before the announcement. 'One of UTRP's many elements required that a portion of these future teachers come from racially diverse backgrounds. This program at Western is close to concluding,' a university spokesperson said in an email to News 8. Some of those goals in the include increasing the number of certified teachers in high-need areas by at least 90 over the five-year program and improving three-year retention in those areas. So far, 20 cohorts have graduated from the program. A spokesperson for the National Center for Teacher Residencies said these programs are affordable pathways for prospective teachers to enter the field. 'In turn, the teacher residency programs support school districts in need of teachers to fill hard-to-staff subject areas, including STEM, special education, and multilingual programs, and underserved communities, including rural and urban areas,' the NCTR said in an email. Federal funds are critical to program completion, and without the grants, the NCTR said local teacher shortages will worsen. Another WMU program affected is the High-Impact Leadership for School Projects. Under the $15 million grant, the project helped districts in the state find ways to improve literacy in elementary and middle schools. The program had two years left on the grant. University officials said the grants were with the IES and were focused on evidence-based solutions. A WMU spokesperson said the school will appeal to maintain the programs. If that fails, the university is also looking into how federal decisions will impact students, faculty and staff involved in the initiatives. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
