Senate Standing Committee on Education

Okay, good morning, everybody. It is my pleasure, as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Education, to welcome our committee Members, as well as Members of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Education to this Joint Hearing on Effectiveness and Accountability.

Let me start by saying that I sincerely appreciate everyone's interest and engagement in this dynamic and often sensitive topic. The state of the California educator workface, workforce, as one consequence of the pandemic, virtually every sector of our economy has experienced some version of a hiring and recruitment crisis.

This is especially true in education at every level. With respect to early education, t-K and K-12 school sites, California is dealing with a people problem. While I'm new to chairing the Senate Education Committee, I'm familiar with the fact that over the past several budget cycles, the state has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in attempting to address these issues.

In today's hearing, I look forward to a robust discussion on how California's current supply of teachers compares to the ongoing demand for additional teachers, the effectiveness of recent state initiatives aimed at recruiting and retaining high quality teachers, and what opportunities for improvement we may have before us.

Today's hearing will consist of three panels. The first panel will feature an overview discussion with state level experts and leaders, including remarks from California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond. In the second panel, we'll hear from higher education practitioners about their educator pipeline and the programs designed to prepare our future teachers at the college and university levels. In the last panel, we'll hear from K-12 practitioners about educator recruitment and retention in that critical sphere.

Thank you all again for being here this morning. We have a very full agenda, so I'm going to do my best. I'm looking at my colleague to try to keep us all on track and on time. Having said that, it is now my privilege to turn it over to my colleague, Senator Laird, for his opening remarks.

I will interpret that glare as a request for brevity, and I just echo his comments and say that in the years I have been chair, this issue has been front and centered. We really look forward to drilling down today with the panelists. And in addition to what the chair said, it's not just where are we short, it's not just in what fields we are short.

It is also with the retirements and the work we have to do to fill behind it, how are we making sure our Teacher corps reflects the diversity of our state? And I look forward to the testimony and the panelists. And thank you, Mr. Chair, for working together to call this hearing.

And I appreciate your participation as well. Our first panelist, in the first of the three panels, which is an overview of the State of California's current educated workplace force, is our State Superintendent Public Instructions, Tony Thurmond. Superintendent Thurmond, welcome.

Thank you, Chair Newman and Chair Laird as Senators and Members of the Joint Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide a few highlights and reflections about the need for workforce recruitment. As has been pointed out by the chairs, recruitment and workforce shortage have been an issue since before the pandemic, but clearly exacerbated during the pandemic, and mathis has had an impact on our students and also on our workforce.

And I want to acknowledge all of our great teachers and classified staff and administrators who continue to do the great work on behalf of our students in light of these conditions. Because of these difficult times, the California Department of Education has entered into teacher recruitment in a way that we've not before.

As you will hear today, recruitment typically happens from the school district level and aided by incredible work by our partner at the California Teacher, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, led by Mary Sandy, who I'm pleased to serve with as a commissioner on that very commission.

And so at CDE, we've launched our first ever statewide recruitment strategy, and we call it a one stop information and referral way to connect candidates to the various programs that exist. There's a lot of information out there about scholarships, about teacher credentialing programs, and about districts who are hiring. But until it's all in one place, we've created a way to help candidates get access to that information so they'll know that California offers a scholarship and the Golden State Teacher Grant $20,000 for anyone who wants to become a teacher or a counselor in our schools. They'll be able to learn more about where there are teacher credentialing programs and what districts are hiring.

To begin our information referral work, we've launched a new partnership with the California Volunteers Commission. This commission has 10,000 service members every single year, 3,000 of whom are working in schools. And so we've rolled out a Career Fair series for these members, many of whom are about to graduate college, to help them learn about how to become teachers and how to connect to the scholarship and the teacher credentialing programs.

We will continue this work to also feature classified staff and staff who work in after school programs to help them get on a path to become a teacher. We believe that this is an important pool of applicants, and we're grateful for the many school districts who partner with us in doing these recruitment fairs through the Department of Education. We've also launched a public service announcement campaign to help people learn about the incredible opportunities to become a teacher.

This includes those who might be career changers, those who are coming from out of state, someone who is a military service person in our state whose partner may be a teacher, and so we can connect the dots and connect all these candidates to our programs and directly to our school districts. This public service announcement features messages from some of our award winning teachers, including one of California's Teachers of the Year who is being considered for the National Teacher of the Year program.

And so we've launched a hotline so that anyone can call to get information and someone will take your call and help to connect you directly to a district that's hiring, directly to a teacher credentialing program, directly to the scholarship. And so this one stop is underway and the easiest way for someone to reach to us for help is to send an email at teachInCA@cde.ca.gov, and so we welcome those calls.

And as has been alluded to in the opening segment, seeing the high number of retirements that we've seen in our educator ranks, we also are sponsoring legislation this year, which is in the Senate, that would create a waiver so that retired teachers could continue teaching in the classroom. Many times school districts have had the good fortune of having retired teachers substitute and to address shortage needs that are immediate.

Right now, retired teachers who've been teaching in the classroom are bumping up against a wage cap that says they cannot teach anymore unless they experience a penalty against their retirement wages. And so we have sponsored SB 765 with Senator Portantino to a Bill that, if passed, would provide a waiver.

And we like to see this Bill acted on urgently, recognizing that school leaders are asking for help right now. This Bill would also increase the amount of the stipend that candidates in a teacher residency program can receive. California is funding a robust residency program for candidates who essentially would be in a teacher training program and getting mentored and coached while they do their student teaching. And they get a stipend so they don't have to hold down another job while they are full time engaged in learning and doing and being coached.

The challenge is that the total cost for some of these programs is great. And in some cases, even though the state provides a $25,000 stipend in some cases, the resident may only receive a few thousand dollars and they struggle. And we hear from many that residents don't stay in the program because they can't make ends meet and care for themselves and their family because they're working a second job and trying to meet the demands of the program.

And so SB 765 would increase the amount of the stipend for residents and would create a waiver so that retired teachers can continue teaching min the classroom. And so all these things we offer to support our teacher recruitment to help us recruit diverse candidates. We're very pleased that California offers an award winning certification, national Ward Certification that in California means you can also get a stipend to pursue this. And we've seen a dramatic increase.

Our office is administering that program in partnership with the National Board of Certification Program, and we've seen the applications go in one year from 415 to more than 1700. Some 63% of those are candidates of color who are applying for this incredible certification. I'll stop there, Chairs and Senators, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have about our efforts at the Department of Education.

I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. So we're going to save questions till after the completion of all four panelists. So if you can stay on. If not, do appreciate your testimony today. Next up we have Ms. Jackie Barocio, Principal Fiscal and Policy Analyst from the legislative analyst office. Welcome.

One and sorry about that.

Oh, hello.

It's much more theatrical that way. I know you're making quite an impression.

Okay, well hi. My name is Jackie Brosa with the Legislative Analyst Office.

We were asked to provide some overview comments on existing teacher workforce issues, and then also provide an overview of recent state investments made to address these issues. In your packets There should be a handout, and we have some outside for the audience. So, just starting on page one, we just summarize a few of the teacher workforce issues that Haney come up recently.

First, an increased in short-term demand for early childhood educators is definitely something that we expect to see in the next few years. This is primarily driven by the state works to expand transitional kindergarten to include all four year olds, but then also state efforts to increase the number of child care slots.

The second set of issues that we've identified include just the long standing experiences of teacher shortages in certain subject areas. In general, every year, a list of shortage areas is released for every state. And as you can see in the table below, the most common shortage areas in the state of California include science, bilingual education, special education, and math. And the table below just shows over a 31 year period, the number of years in which each of these subject areas was identified as a shortage issue, ranging from 21 years in the case of mathematics to 29 years out of the 31 years in the case of science.

In terms of the reasons behind these shortage areas, the reasons vary. It could be a matter of uncompetitive starting salaries, but then also it could be that some of these subject areas, perhaps there are certain job challenges related to just student needs, but again, the underlying difficulties really do vary by the subject area.

Moving on to page two of the handout, we also see that there are long standing teacher shortages when it comes to certain types of schools as well. National data shows that certain schools just require more time to fill vacancies, and those schools include central city schools, low income schools, but then also schools in rural areas.

Additionally, studies show that the proportion of under prepared and inexperienced teachers, meaning teachers that have emergency permits, tend to be higher in low minority, high poverty schools, high minority low poverty schools than low minority low poverty schools.

Lastly, another teacher workforce issue is teacher turnover. So factors that contribute to teacher turnover include teachers leaving the profession either temporarily or permanently switching schools or retiring. So studies show that younger teachers or those with less experience are more likely to switch teaching post or leave the profession, but then also rates of turnover tend to be highest among special education teachers.

There's also variation in teacher turnover rates when it comes to the type of schools. So specifically, research sites or research finds that there are relatively higher turnover rates for schools that have a high proportion of low income students, minority students, but then also schools in urban and suburban areas.

On page three of the handout, we provide a summary table that shows that since 2016-17 the state has provided about $1.6 billion in programs meant to address the various teacher shortage issues that we've identified, specifically attempts to reduce turnover, improve the quality of teaching, increase teacher supply, and then also address long standing shortage issues in certain subject areas and certain types of schools.

The two biggest programs that I'll just highlight include the Teacher Residency Grant Program, in which the state thus far has allocated $651,000,000, and then also the Holden State Teacher Grant Program, in which the state has provided over $500 million. The table also notes the amount of funding that has been awarded for each of these programs, and as you'll see on page four, of the 1.6 billion, only about 600 million has been awarded thus far. And there are many reasons for this. I think the biggest reason is because many of these programs are multi year investments.

For example, the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, that program is intended to go as far as 24-25. So that's a reason why not all dollars have gone out the door. It's just a matter of how the program is designed.

On the last page, we highlight recent statewide efforts to assist individuals interested in the teaching profession. So in addition to the one stop shop that was mentioned by the Superintendent Thurman, I just also wanted to highlight that the state currently runs the California Center on Teaching Careers program, which was in effect in 1997 and 2002. But in 2016-17, we reestablished this center as an attempt to recruit qualified and capable individuals into the teaching field, particularly in low income schools and in those subject area shortages.

Just last year in the budget, we funded eight career counselors at the Commission on Teaching Credentialing to provide technical assistance for prospective educators and one position to develop a new teacher recruitment web portal. So with that, that concludes my remarks. And I'm happy to take any questions at the end of the panel.

Thank you. Ms. Barocio. So you did that exceptionally well standing up. Next time we'll have you do it standing up on a bus to see if you can handle that. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Next up we have Tara Kini, who is chief of staff and Director of State policy for the Learning Policy Institute. Welcome, Ms. Kini.

Thank you so much for having me today. Tara Kini with the Learning Policy Institute. So for the past several years, LPI has been studying teacher supply and demand both in California and nationally. So today I'm going to give you a little snapshot of where we see California's teacher workforce today.

I'd like to start first with why this topic matters, first and foremost, for student learning, particularly given the enormous challenges we're facing and supporting students learning recovery, we know that teacher certification experience and stability matter for student achievement. Research conducted by LPI shows that California districts with more fully credentialed and experienced teachers had better student achievement. This was particularly true for black and Latino students.

Research also indicates that teachers without full preparation leave at far higher rates than fully prepared teachers, which contributes to shortages and really undermines school improvement efforts. Finally, this is a core equity issue, as we just heard from the LAO, because these characteristics of teachers are inequitably distributed.

So next I'd like to describe how teacher shortages have looked in California over the past several years, a picture that's both deeply concerning, but I also think has some hope in it. As a key indicator of shortages is the number of substandard credentials and permits that are issued. These tripled between 2012 and 2018, with the greatest increases in the numbers of emergency style permits and waivers, which are those issued to the least prepared teachers, who may not have demonstrated subject matter competency and may not even be in a teacher preparation program.

But the good news is that we're seeing this trend begin to turn. The number of fully prepared new entrants is increasing, which you can see in the paper that I shared and that I think is in the packet, while the number of emergency style permits is shrinking. There are a few factors that could be at play here. First, the state's considerable investments in the teacher workforce since 2016 may be beginning to pay off.

Second, the pandemic era waivers of teacher testing requirements may have made a difference here. And of course, the most recent investments, the biggest investments made since 2021 aren't even showing up in the data yet, due to data lags and the natural length of implementation of these programs. But despite this somewhat promising news, we still have significant numbers of new teachers coming in on substandard credentials and permits well over one third of new teachers in 2021. And this, of course, has serious implications for student achievement and equitable access to opportunities.

And in addition to these teacher shortages, about 90% of districts surveyed by CSBA last March reported shortages of paraprofessionals and counselors, psychologists and social workers. Of course, shortages don't impact all districts equally, and in general districts serving more students from low income families have higher turnover rates, they hire more new and beginning teachers, and they often hire more teachers on substandard credentials and permits. These, of course, are the students most in need of a strong and stable educator workforce to support their learning recovery.

In the past couple of years, we heard about the significant investments that California has made in its educator workforce, including teacher residencies, the Golden State Scholarship Program, the Classified Staff program, and more. There's evidence that these programs are beginning to make a difference. The study I shared from LPI shows that the number of people completing teacher preparation programs in California is increasing.

Between 2017 and 2021, the number of California completers applying for preliminary credentials is up 37%. Another promising trend is that the pool of completers has become more racially and ethnically diverse. Based on survey data, more than half of respondents applying for their preliminary credential min 2021 were teachers of color with the greatest growth among Latinx teachers, which you may be able to see on the slide deck that I shared. Residency programs now prepare about one in ten California teachers as of 2021 and about 60% of residency completers are teachers of color. Completers of these pathways reported themselves as feeling amongst the most prepared on CTC's Completer survey.

Early data also suggest that residents have high retention rates. Among the first cohort of state grant funded residents in 2019-20, 91% completed their program and were hired, and 88% were still teaching two years after graduating. And these data are consistent with research on residencies nationally.

So based on what I've shared, it appears we're approaching a point where the recent investments are really starting to kick in and they can help us close the gap we have in access to fully prepared teachers. On the recruitment side, we think it will be critical to stay the course and focus on strong implementation of these programs, really giving them a chance to take hold and mature.

The state might also consider a more robust state recruitment and communication strategy to help potential teacher candidates understand the full array of financial supports available to them, as well as the different pathways into teaching. Higher ed capacity building is also critical, especially in special education and P3 programs as we implement universal PreK.

On the retention side, we think it's important to consider compensation, which we know from the research really matters for retention. The Golden State Grant program helps to address affordability for new recruits, but additional steps could be taken for the existing teacher workforce, such as the State Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program.

We heard from the Superintendent about the importance and successful uptake of the National Board Incentive Program for the existing teachers, which is another important retention strategy, especially for our most expert teachers in high poverty schools. And finally, compensation is largely a local matter, so LCFF investments that support wages and working conditions will continue to be foundational.

So thank you for your time and I will answer questions when you're ready.

And thank you for your testimony. Next, the final panelist. On the first panel, Mary Vixie Sandy, who is Executive Director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Welcome.

Thank you and good morning, Members. As we consider how best to recruit and retain our teaching workforce generations, research may shed some light on what motivates different cohorts in our population. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 and are currently aged 27 to 42. Generation Z, also called Gen Z or Zoomers, were born between 1997 and 2012 and are currently aged 13 through 26.

A report from the Annie E. Casey foundation based on statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center tells us that Millennials are more socially engaged than Gen Z who tend to be more individually motivated. Millennials tended used more limited technology as children than Gen Z who used more advanced on the go technology, think desktop computers and flip phones versus iPhones and pads.

Millennials were less globally connected at a younger age. Will Gen Z are more globally connected. Millennials experienced a strong economy while Gen Z experienced the Great Recession while young. Millennials tended to be college-going and debt accumulating while Gen Z are considering college and more debt aware. Millennials are less focused than Gen Z on social justice.

Millennials tend to be optimistic, while Gen Z tends toward the more pragmatic in their orientation. Millennials have been our target group for the last 20 years for teacher recruitment, and Gen Z will be our target group for at least the next decade.

What else do we know about gen Z that might impact how we reach them and invite them into the teaching profession? Diversity is their norm. Gen Z will be the last generation that is predominantly white. 52% of Zoomers are white, 25% are Latinx, 14% are black, and 4% are Asian. For many, their early years included the country's first black President and legalization of gay marriage.

They are more likely to have grown up amid diverse family structures, and as a result, they're less phased than previous generations by differences in race, sexual orientation, or religion. And they're more motivated by social justice.

So what pathways are available for this prospective group of future teachers and what is going to draw them min the state has invested significantly in three different ayes of programs over the last five years to recruit and prepare our teachers.

First, there were the Local Solution grants, which gave local education agencies choice about how they used recruitment funds to bring teachers in. The second area of funding had to do with targeted support and incentive programs. The classified school employee teacher grant program and the golden state teacher grant program are both types of incentives that brought types of populations in.

Building our infrastructure was the third type of funding investment that we've made with grants for undergraduate teacher preparation and teacher residencies. Collectively, these investments have the potential to bring 50,000 teachers in to the teaching profession and help the state to meet its obligation to ensure that we have an adequate teaching workforce to staff our schools.

As Tara Kini just highlighted, UTK presents both a challenge in terms of teacher shortages but also a significant opportunity. The commission is working on many fronts, as we all are, to recruit and prepare a core of teachers to work effectively in transitional kindergarten classrooms as we bring those on board. The commission last year created a new preschool through grade three early Childhood Specialist Credential and preparation programs are beginning to organize to develop pathways to this credential.

Additional grant funding to build undergraduate pathways to this credential is still available to support this work. We have the opportunity here to build a world class core of early childhood educators who are second to none. This will be a game changer for our earliest learners and, we hope, put them on a trajectory that is very different than prior generations have experienced.

Where will these teachers come from? The current early learning workforce is both experienced in and in many cases very well prepared to move into transitional kindergarten. They bring diversity, they bring deep roots in their community, and they bring expertise with our youngest learners.

The center for the Study of Childcare Employment at UC Berkeley in 2021 found that 49% of California's 30,000 plus early childhood workforce hold a baccalaureate degree or higher, and about half of them hold that degree in early childhood education or child development. 75% of early childhood education teachers with a degree also hold a Child Development Permit, a teaching permit. Creating a pathway for them into the pre K Three credential is a very high priority for us.

The current career ladder for the early learning workforce has enabled a broad and diverse population of early childhood educators to earn a child Development Permit and enter the preschool workforce. There are more millennials in that community than there are Gen Z. We have the opportunity to expand this ladder into the transitional kindergarten through grade three space for those who seek to earn the new credential.

A career lattice approach, drawing people from a variety of different ways in which they're working in the early childhood workforce, will also be a really important feature as we look to fill those positions moving forward. The staffing model for transitional kindergarten requires that there be a second adult in the classroom to maintain a twelve to one or a ten to one ratio. The Teacher Residency Program provides a natural opportunity to place a second adult in transitional kindergarten who is in preparation to become a teacher.

This is a way for us to really grow our workforce while staffing our schools in the ways that we need to. Apprenticeships and classified grants provide an opportunity to recruit and develop the early learning workforce at both Tk and at the preschool levels.

So if we're successful in recruiting the teachers that we need, how will we keep them? Salaries and working conditions continue to be of paramount interest and concern. We need to pay teachers a worthy wage. We need to build community grounded in purpose for them to work in and they need to work in effective schools. So building strong schools is a very important part of creating working conditions with effective school leadership. Teachers tend to stay in effective working environments. They tend to leave as quickly as they can from very dysfunctional working environments.

We should not hire teachers until we have prepared them. In the last couple of years with COVID we have seen so much chaos, really. Every student teacher who was placed during the reopening of schools after the pandemic was placed in substitute teaching roles, in emergency roles, placed as teachers of record before they were really ready to begin. If we let them get their preparation before we employ them, we have a much stronger chance of keeping them in the teaching workforce, which is what we really need to do.

Finally, we need to manage our expectations. Gen Z is different than our prior generations of teachers that we've recruited into teaching. They may not be in for 30 year careers, so we need to think about what our models are for projecting the workforce we need and recruiting and preparing them accordingly. So thank you, I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you Ms. Sandy, for your testimony. So we're now going to provide questions to the panelists I'm going to start and then I'll open it up to my fellow Members here first for anybody, and I'd be particularly interested in the non state participants. When we take into account that workforce compensation and conditions such as class size are generally bargained for at the local level, and especially considering all of the investments we've made which have been referenced today. How would you characterize the state's optimal role against that backdrop in recruiting and retaining high quality teachers? Anybody?

Thanks for that really important question. What I would say to the state's role there is districts can do a lot in partnership with their education prep program partners to build strong local teacher pipelines. But the state has the paramount role there because districts will poach from each other and that leads to so much of the inequities that we see if the district down the road can offer a higher salary. You may, as school district, prepare and invest in preparing teachers, preparing your workforce, growing your own, only to see those teachers poached away by higher resource districts.

The state, I think, has the ultimate role to ensure there's an adequate supply of fully prepared teachers to teach all students in the state because that we know that's so critical for student achievement. So that would be my answer to that.

No, I appreciate that. Senator Laird.

Thank you. One comment and then a question. And the comment is that a few times the Golden State Education and Training Grant Program was mentioned and we have a Subcommittee hearing tomorrow and that is item three on our agenda. So we will be having a discussion about that tomorrow and it's great that we are being informed by this discussion today.

I have a question. Understand the superintendent still on the line and maybe I'll start with him. And it's a difficult question and that is, as we heard a presentation about all the generations, but the one generation that didn't get mentioned was the baby boomers. And that is relevant because they are the generation that is retiring right now.

And many times they are the ones that might be hiring their successors. And a lot of times people hire people that look like them. And that is a disproportionately white group of people, I'm one. So I know the question is, are we taking any steps to ensure that if that is the dynamic, there's pressure to have diverse hires when it might be boomers that are hiring on their way out the door? And I know that's an ethereal question, Mr. Superintendent, but I thought I'd start with you and asking if you have a comment to that.

Thank you. Thank you, Senator. I'm happy to take the ethereal. The reality is that thanks to the help of the Legislature, our partnership, and the governor's office, California is providing a number of grants to support implicit bias training. Those training programs can stretch across many departments and divisions at a school district, including human resources and recruitment.

Having said that, I do think that your question necessitates a very intentional approach to how we focus on recruitment. And I'm grateful just to say that in the recruitment fairs that we have held with the California volunteers, we have noticed that there are a number of representatives who are recruiting. Some are traditional recruiters, some are principals who've been at the school site level and it has been a very diverse coalition of those who are doing the recruitment.

There's certainly more work to do. There's one other thing that didn't get mentioned today, and I think people have I appreciated Ms.. Vixie Sandy's, pointing to the generational shifts. And right now a number of our programs in the state are focused on building grow your own programs that focus on students who are in school now and helping them to understand that there is a great profession for you in the future.

There's some programs out in Fresno that have done this at a very high level of success, or programs all across the state. We use our career technical education pathways to help students understand about the future. Now, this is very long term and so we have a lot of work to do, but there's no question that we have to make sure we address diversity in how we recruit and who recruits and address bias to make sure that we are open to all the candidates that we might recruit from.

Thank you. I appreciate that, and I would just note it as a priority and you clearly have taken it, but to anybody that's within the sound of this hearing, that is an important concern. Then my other question, and I'm not sure who to start with, but maybe I'll start with the superintendent, is there was talk about retention and there was talk about recruitment, but a lot of it is in specific subjects and that didn't seem to get mentioned.

And my question is where across the state are the gaps by specific subject in needing to recruit and how are we addressing that?

It won't surprise you that historically the gaps have been the greatest in subjects like science, math, special education and bilingual education.

I know that Ms. Kini has incredible data and can share in more detail. We typically look at the great data that we get from the Learning Policy Institute, and it really does focus on our biggest challenges around retention are compensation and working conditions. Sometimes working conditions more than compensation, while compensation is critical.

But we have heard from teachers during the pandemic who have been attacked. They feel blamed. What was already a difficult profession at times due to shortages understaffing has just been those conditions have been exacerbated, as you can see from the testimony of everyone who spoke today, all the investments being made by the state, the Golden State Teacher Grant, the residency programs, they all are interweaving ways to help attract candidates who can become special education teachers, who can become bilingual education teachers and teach in science and math.

But we have to work on the working conditions and compensation simultaneously. And let's face it, this is not just a California challenge. This is a nationwide challenge. And so we're up against it, but we're going to mount the challenge and find ways to bring more great educators to our classrooms.

I don't know how to phrase this, but there are places where there is better compensation and there is better working conditions. And believe me, I appreciate what you just said because I haney been visiting with teachers just the last few weeks throughout my district, and sort of feeling under attack during the pandemic was a theme that came up almost every place that I met with people.

But even where there is good compensation, there are still gaps in some of these subjects. Is there something we're doing other than compensation or outreach with regard to educational institutions or just development of teachers in these subjects that goes beyond that?

I would just say that California takes a very thoughtful approach. In other states, they're just sort of saying, we'll take anyone to become a teacher. And that, I think, does disrespect to the profession and does disrespect to the needs of our students.

And as you heard from Ms. Vixie Sandy, California does better because we push teachers to getting a credential. And the data shows that when you get a credential, you're more likely to stay. And so all of these programs are saying, we know what works. we have to stay the course, but we also have to think about low do we get the word out there to more candidates? And so I think California is going to fare better than most states because of the thoughtfulness and the design around all of these programs.

How they all connect the Golden State Teacher Grant, the residency programs, apprenticeship training programs, the build your own training programs. And so there's a kind of thoughtfulness based on research about what works. But we're up against it. And as you said, teachers have felt attacked. And we've got to get past the days when a teacher can say that I can make more money working at Costco.

You all have seen the social media posts where someone leaves the profession because it's just been difficult, or where our classified staff are up against jobs that might pay more in fast food than classified positions. We know it takes the entire family of educators, certificated and classified and administrators altogether. And we've got to find ways to help our districts raise money.

The question came up, and I think part of the answer is the state's role is to help districts get past the one time money. They have lots of one time money. But districts are hesitant to make hires if they think they're going to have to lay somebody off when that one time money goes away.

So to the degree that we can help districts come up with more permanent ways to fund the workforce, our districts can become more competitive as employers and then more incentives, like the one that California has provided an incentive, a subsidy to support teachers who pursue the National Board certification.

California is moving in the right direction. We need time and we need more resources to get there, but the work is underway.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. I do appreciate your emphasis on one time money. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas has a question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I wanted to follow up on something that the chair mentioned earlier about out what can we do in terms.

... terms of the state's role in this process. And in preparing for this hearing, I was trying to get a sense of how large the workforce is and what are, as Senator Laird talked about, the particular subject areas where there are gaps, but where are the teacher shortages? And I'm just curious, what is the current size of the education workforce and is there sort of a process by which the state is tracking that shortage?

And particularly, is it by the subject areas, by those inequity pockets where we have low income communities and we also have high numbers of ethnic and racial diversity? Just trying to get a sense of what is the workforce and how is the state actually tracking those numbers in the crisis? And I guess this is for the superintendent, but for any of the presenters.

Thank you, Senator. And I will invite our partners at the Learning Policy Institute and at the CTC to share because they probably have more accurate data about the number of educators that we need in each of the subject areas. You heard reference to the need for what's more than 11,000 teachers around TK and then needing a second person and assistant educator in the TK class.

And so, I'm certain that there are more precise numbers and subject matter, but generally people think about our teacher size right now; the workforce being somewhere upwards of 300,000 in many cases. But I'm going to invite our partners to share with you. Perhaps they can build on the answer about the number of classified staff, administrators, because, let's face it, we have seen retirements in this country in education at every level.

Teachers, classified staff, and administrators all have felt the brunt of just the angst that our education system has been thrust into like every other sector in the last few years. And it will take the efforts of our Department, and the CTC and our partners at the Learning Policy Institute, and the LAO and others can help, but also ACSA, our Association of Administrators, and our California School Boards Association to triage together to assess where are we now, in terms of the numbers, make some projections about retirements.

And then, what more will we need to continue to manage as we go and prepare for the future? And we get great data from places like CalSTRS. And so one of the things that we often do is pull together all the partners that are presenting before you and a few others to think through what are all the components, because the work lives in multiple places. So we'll be convening these partners together again soon to think through some of your questions, Senator.

No, that is helpful because I guess what I'm hearing is that there isn't sort of one statewide dashboard where we're tracking this data and we're looking at where the shortages and and how the research that's coming in and sort of updating at the state level, what those numbers look like. And I'm excited about the progress that's being made.

But I was concerned that just in my process of trying to prepare, that I couldn't find, in one place, a sense of what is our workforce, what is the number of jobs we need to fill, what are those sort of specializations that we should be thinking about, in one location. So that's one question that I wanted to ask. How can we begin to kind of have a common part of departure in this crisis of building our workforce and able to track it in real time?

So appreciate that question. It's been a question of frustration for many years, and we don't have a single dashboard yet. The Cradle-to-Career data system is in the process of getting that dashboard put together and drawing from a variety of different state agencies, from CalSTRS to the CTC to the Department of Education, all of us have some information to contribute to that dashboard.

What we have right now that we've been using as kind of the placeholder to gauge and make our best guess about shortages is a number of things. First off, every year, every local education agency reports their projected hiring needs for the next year. That data is reported to the Department of Education and goes into some of their data snapshots.

We collect those data for our teachers supply report that we publish, and annually, for years now, the number has been 20,000. They expect to hire 20,000 new teachers. It went down to about 17,000 during the COVID years, but it's hovering right around that number. Don't know the science of that, but it's HR professionals projecting into the future.

The largest area of need right now, probably because of transitional kindergarten, or I project, the largest area of need is going to be for teachers who can teach in the TK space, and that's going to be multiple subject teachers as well. Special education has been a chronic area of shortage and continues to be an area of high need STEM fields as well.

Geographically, our large urban areas are experiencing some of the greatest hiring needs, the Central Valley as well. We collect those data from these LEA reports that come in. We also look to how many emergency permits we're issuing every year, because we issue emergency permits when an LEA cannot find a fully qualified teacher to hire.

So in the years when we were issuing and about 50% of the credentials we issued went to fully prepared teachers, and the other 50% went to emergency permit holders, we knew at that point we had significant shortages.

We can track within those emergency permits where they're located, and they largely track with what the LEAs are telling us about their future needs. So, that may be more in the weeds than you want it to go, but putting all of these data together with the Cradle-to-Career data system should produce a dashboard that is really helpful to all of us, shortly. That's our hope.

Thank you. And so I'm going to have to move things along. We're running a little late on this panel. Senator Min, I know you had a question. You'll get the last question for this panel. Go ahead.

Thank you. I had a comment and a question. And first the comment. I don't think we've seen data on this yet. I'm aware that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I've heard a lot of anecdotes from teachers about politicization and the politicization of education, which we have seen The City of Orange.

I know Senator Newman has a bill addressing some of what happened in Orange Unified School District, where a brand new school board immediately fired in a very unusual move, the well respected superintendent and assistant superintendent. It was clearly done with intention, and I think teachers are very concerned about what they're facing right now, with parents coming in with misinformation propaganda about what's being taught in our schools, et cetera.

So that's a comment. The question I have is around housing, because I know a lot of teachers, I know a lot of young teachers, and one of the biggest barriers to them considering teaching as a long term career is the high cost of housing in areas. And I just wondered if our superintendent or anyone else had any thoughts on this or wanted to speak to this, because I do see this as an important and related issue.

Thank you, Senator Min. And again, you heard we will pull together the data that was requested by Senator Smallwood-Cuevas. We'll pull that together, we'll pull all of our partners together and put together a snapshot of all the data needs for recruitment. And we'll get that to the members of both committees today. In terms of housing, there's no question that the lack of affordable housing has been a barrier for the educated workforce, just like every other workforce in our state.

And in 2019, we sponsored legislation at the Department to support more funding for teacher housing. And we were able to get tax credits that were made available to developers who were working in partnership with school districts, who took surplus property to use the surplus property to build affordable housing. These are extremely successful programs.

Historically, the state has had a first time home buyer subsidy, but that program needs to be replenished with funding to support that. We have sponsored a Bill, AB 1169, that would provide support for educator housing, and that's for both teachers and classified staff. And so we're looking at it from the standpoint of using affordable housing to address the needs of our educator workforce.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. Thanks for making the time to the other three panelists. Thank you, Ms. Barocio, I know you're going to stay on. We are going to now move to the second panel. And as we do, I want to emphasize we're now running short on time, so if folks could keep their testimony and then their questions fairly concise, that would be helpful.

We have a hard stop here at noon. The second panel is about the Educator Pipeline in preparation. Our first witness, welcome and good morning to Mr. David DeGuire, Director of the Professional Service Division for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Good morning, chairs Neman and Laird and Senators. My name is David DeGuire and I'm the Director of the Professional Services Division at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Our division is responsible for all things related to the preparation of educators in California, including the administration of some of the state's investments in the teacher workforce grant programs.

I was asked to provide you an update on the new PK-3 Credential. So based on recommendations from work groups and staff, the Commission approved proposed regulations relating to the credential requirements at its August, 2022 meeting. Last October, the Commission adopted Preparation Program Standards and Teaching Performance Expectations, or TPEs, for the credential, including specific standards and TPEs for literacy and mathematics.

In December, the commission approved proposed regulations pertaining to the authorization, credential requirements, program standards, and TPEs for the PK-3 Credential. The Commission will be holding a public hearing on these regulations at its regular meeting on April 20th and 21st.

Commission staff have been providing technical assistance to program sponsors interested in offering preparation programs for this new credential, including Webinars on literacy, math, and equity standards, and a number of informational presentations around the state. We have already received one program submission and expect more before our initial round of submission reviews on April 13th and 14th.

We anticipate approving a number of new programs to start this fall. Commission staff have also been working closely with the California Department of Education to provide information and technical assistance to local education agencies as they implement Universal Transitional Kindergarten.

LEAs have reported feeling reassured by the abundance of financial and other supports available, including the Emergency Transitional Kindergarten Permit that the Legislature created last year for situations where they are not able to find a fully credentialed candidate.

On a separate topic, committee staff asked if there are any common themes or characteristics of grant programs that seem to be more successful or attractive than others among educators or educators in training. Based on data collected from grantees, two characteristics of successful grant programs stick out to me. First, when grants allow for local choices on how to best use funds provided provided by the state, and second, where grants require strong partnerships.

For example, we are currently dispersing the final funding for the local solutions to the shortage of special education teachers grant. Grantees ended up focusing more on retaining special education teachers than training or hiring new teachers. They reported funding for debt relief to seem to have the greatest impact on teachers, allowing new energy and focus, and that retention efforts positively impacted relationships between teachers and their students and families.

In addition, I have very promising data to report on how partnerships built through the teacher residency grants are helping to address both shortage areas and retention. 91% of the first cohort of 300 residents from the 2018 teacher residency grants have earned credentials, including 100 education specialists, 83 in STEM areas, and 76 bilingual authorizations.

All who earned a credential were hired by a California public school, and of those, almost 97% were retained in their second year of teaching. In the second cohort of 342 residents, almost 74% have already earned a credential, including 96 education specialists, 86 in STEM areas, and 70 bilingual authorizations.

Considering that these results were achieved as grantees were struggling with school closures and reopenings, we are optimistic that the 2021 and 2022 investments in residency programs will have strong and positive impacts on addressing these shortage areas. Especially considering that a new statewide Residency Technical Assistance Center will be starting later this year to support grantees in building and maintaining high quality sustainable partnerships and preparation programs.

In addition to the residency grants for teachers and school counselors, the Commission is also managing the following grant programs. The Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program, which supports current classified school employees to earn a bachelor's degree and a teaching credential.

As Ms. Barocio's data show, of the Commission's current grant programs, this one is the closest to being fully awarded. The Integrated Undergraduate Teacher Preparation Grants, which provides funding to institutions of higher education to develop, implement, and expand preparation of programs that allow candidates to earn their credential while they are earning their bachelor's degree.

This is currently the only grant program available to develop programs for the PK-3 Credential. The Computer Science Supplementary Authorization Incentive Grant Program helps already credentialed teachers earn their computer science authorization and the Reading and Literacy Supplementary Authorization Incentive Grant Program supports already credentialed teachers to become experts in reading and literacy instruction. And I will be happy to stand by for any questions.

I appreciate that. Thank you for your testimony. Next panelist is Dr. Shireen Pavri, the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Educator and Leadership Programs at the California State University. Welcome, and please proceed.

Good morning. As you mentioned, I'm Shireen Pavri. I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor at the CSU for Educator and Leadership programs. I have worked in the CSU for the past 24 years, 23 years at Cal State Long Beach, where I was a faculty member and then a dean as well. I am extremely optimistic about the field of education and the deep impacts that our CSU prepared educators are having on California's young people.

The legislature's recent policy decisions have energized the field, invested new funding that has made a notable difference, and have helped reduce barriers to entry into the state's educator workforce, especially for underrepresented candidates.

So I will share with you a little bit about educator preparation in the CSU, and then I was asked to speak to opportunities and challenges regarding growing the educated workforce. Educator preparation is a high priority in the CSU. We prepare half of California's teachers, 62% of whom are persons of color.

Over the past five years, the CSU prepared 32,000 teachers, more than any other higher education system min the state, and registered a 15% increase in the number of teachers prepared. As of fall 2022, 10,800 students are enrolled in our teacher preparation programs. The CSU also prepares a large number of the state's curriculum specialists, principals, counselors, psychologists, and PK-12 and community college leaders.

We have focused our work on deepening partnerships, creating new pathways, reducing barriers, and creating incentives to prepare a high quality and diverse educator workforce. So I'd like to speak to four opportunities that have been made available by the state that help to diversify the educator workforce and grow the workforce that we have adopted widely in the CSU.

The first being the residency programs that you've already heard a good deal about. 20 of our 23 CSU's now offer teacher residency programs. 17 of them are funded through the CTC Residency Grants. These teacher residents are hired by the school district and complete a year long clinical experience in a classroom while earning their credentials.

And these programs, as we've heard, attract a very diverse teacher workforce, and the residents typically stay in their employment. Most of our university partners partner with multiple school districts, both urban and rural. Many are rural consortia as well, and we have residencies across the state from Humboldt County down to San Diego.

We've also targeted partnerships with nonprofits to recruit men of color into the profession. For instance, our online Cal State Teach Program offers two urban residency programs in partnership with nonprofits in the Oakland Unified and LA Unified regions to recruit men of color into teaching. The second is the investment in the accelerated four year integrated teacher preparation programs where candidates earn a bachelor's degree simultaneously with a teaching credential.

Our CSU universities have strengthened partnerships working really closely with our community colleges, since most of our CSU candidates come from the community colleges, and are creating new iTEP programs or expanding programs in the areas of bilingual education, special education, multiple and single subject, including STEM credentials, and working towards the new PK-3 credential.

The third is the Classified Employee Grant program that offers $24,000 per classified staff member to work on their teaching credential. This has proven to be a very popular route to credentialing in the CSU. And finally, a majority of our CSU's are rapidly developing programs to launch the new prekindergarten to third grade Early Childhood Education Specialist credential.

Again, working really closely with our community college partners and our school district partners. This new credential promises to provide a strong equitable early learning foundation for all of California's young children. And we're building programs with multiple onramps in the CSU to this credential at the undergraduate, post-bacc, and even graduate levels.

Now, I'd like to speak to three challenges to growing the educator workforce. The first relates to national enrollment declines, the second to the need for infrastructure development, and the third for the continued focus on student affordability. So we have the national declines in college going rates are now catching up with us here in California.

Young people today are more eager to enter the job market and start earning, often making decisions to defer a degree or a credential. The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, AACTE, in 2022 has documented declines in enrollments in teacher preparation programs nationwide. And we're beginning to see a slight decline in our enrollments in teacher preparation this year as well.

Secondly, the CSU has welcomed state initiatives to develop new educator program pathways to reduce barriers to admission by allowing candidates to demonstrate subject matter competency through coursework rather than relying on tests, and to update program standards to increase relevance and currency of what's taught in the curriculum in our credential programs.

Yet these initiatives also place new infrastructure demands on our preparation programs in terms of faculty workload, advising supports, technology platforms, clinical placements, and many other financial investments. In most cases, these initiatives are not accompanied by the funding required to cover these infrastructure costs.

And finally, as we work to grow the educator workforce and diversify the ranks of educators, we must focus on sustainable affordability options for our candidates. We hear regularly from our teacher candidates who are challenged to pay their bills, who experience food and housing insecurities.

They typically have to give up at least one of their additional jobs when they are completing clinical practice in the schools. So it would be really beneficial for the state to braid funding sources to raise residency stipends, I was thrilled to hear that that is under consideration right now, to bring them closer to a full teacher or counselor salary with benefits.

Also, to pay traditional student teachers who cannot work while student teaching, possibly through the new and exciting emerging apprenticeship models that the state is exploring. And third, to develop coherent and simple communication materials for educator candidates, and also for our financial aid advisors and faculty to help get the word out more effectively to our candidates about the funding resources that are available for educators in preparation. Thank you, I am happy to answer any questions.

And thank you for your testimony. Next up, we have Dr. Robin Duncan, Dean of the Medcalf School of Education at California Baptist University. Good morning. Please proceed.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and represent the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. I am Dr. Robin Duncan. I serve as the dean, as you mentioned, at California Baptist University for the School of Education.

As a sector, AICCU is made up of 86 member universities and colleges. These highly diverse institutions combine to provide opportunities for 21% of our undergraduate student population, 55% of our graduate population across the state.

78% of our students receive institutional, state, local and federal funding. 27,000 students in our sector are enrolled in Cal Grants, and over 43,000 of our students receive Pell Grants. 75% of our institutions are Hispanic-Serving or emerging Hispanic-Serving institutions. So we provide a diverse and important sector of our population.

Now focusing on teacher preparation among our institutions, we recommend, as it combined, about 50% of our total teacher credentials in the state. Without independent colleges and universities preparing educators, California would have an even greater shortage of teachers. Among these, half of the new teacher workforce AICCU graduates are 53% non-Caucasian.

So the work we do in the sector is making an impact on providing that teacher workforce and also diversifying our teacher workforce. In recent years, we appreciate that state lawmakers and the Credentialing Commission have been fervent in modifying, as needed, teacher preparation requirements in light of COVID and additional financial constraints

We in teacher preparation field appreciate the collective response and support of these different entities. As COVID situations continue to improve, lawmakers have continued to remove barriers. As already mentioned by other colleagues, the Golden State Teacher Grant has been a huge impact on the increased teacher workforce.

55% of the applicants for the Golden State Teacher Grant actually come from our AICCU institution. So we and our candidates appreciate the expansion of these funds and the continuation of these funds. Second, I want to thank you for the state's support of the test fee assistance. So this is the CSET, the CBEST, the RICA, the TPAs.

I can personally attest that our candidates have been able to continue and move forward in their preparation programs and into the field because of these removal of these barriers, so thank you very much. That being said, we're also here today to talk to you about ways that we can continue to support our future teacher candidates.

So I urge you as a committee to consider carefully the AICCU sector when you look at funding and grant opportunities and programs developed in legislation because of the unique and diverse institutions that we represent. So in the future, as an example, as you continue to fund and support residency grants, this is a fantastic pathway.

As mentioned, I was excited to hear about the expanded financial support of residents, but I would also urge you to continue to look at the student teaching. That was an exciting piece that came up this week at the SPAN Conference here, potentially looking at those as apprenticeships and be able to support that student teaching.

It's a more financially viable option, particularly from our most underserved candidates. So that as well as our internships, and we've certainly seen an increase in internship requests from our districts, and we're happy to support that. But we also want to be able to support candidates in those student teaching and residencies at a livable wage so that they can get that support and training at that level.

Second, I urge you, and I know this is already on your table, to continue that support of the fees for the testing requirements, that's really important to our candidates. And then as you look at to sponsor and fund additional opportunities, innovative programming. When you look at our independent and private colleges, we have the opportunity to really be nimble and respond to the urgent need at hand.

So, for example, at Cal Baptist, we were able to create a four year undergraduate program that the population of that has just expanded as candidates are understanding that they can do their undergraduate work alongside their credential.

This especially in those STEM areas that was discussed in the meeting today because they can take that math major, that science major, and along with that get the credential in the four years. So funding new and innovative pathways to credentialing is especially attractive to the independence, again with our nimbleness to respond quickly.

So, as I wrap up my comments again, I just thank you for the important work that you're doing. The additional funding is appreciated and noted. And I urge you to leverage the power of the independent California colleges and universities as we work together to address this teacher shortage. Thank you.

Thank you, Dean Duncan. And next we have Mr. Edgar Cabral, who is Deputy Legislative Analyst for K-12 education with the LAO's office. Welcome, sir.

Hi, good morning again. Edgar Cabral with the Legislative Analyst Office. I think you just heard from lots of the panelists on the information related to specific activities that they're involved in to increase the supply of teachers in California. I just wanted to provide a little bit of context related to the UC, CSU Compacts, and the Community College Roadmap, which do not, in most cases do not directly affect these educator preparation programs.

But it's part of the context that universities are taking into consideration when they're thinking about expanding their programs and addressing teacher shortage issues. So these agreements are between the segments and the Governor, and they encompass a broad set of ayes and goals related to higher education. And the segments are required to submit annual reports to the Governor and the Legislature in these areas.

The UC and CSU compacts have goals in six areas, same goals, and they include things like improving student access and advancing equity, increasing intersegmental collaboration, and supporting workforce preparation and high demand career pipelines. So, addressing teacher workforce issues is one part of the broader set of goals, but it's embedded within these larger goals and the segments are trying to meet these goals and the variety of other goals that they have with the existing funding that they receive.

I did want to highlight a couple of specific areas where education is mentioned specifically. So for community colleges. Community colleges are to collaborate with UCs and CSUs to develop more associate degrees for transfer in the education, more of those pathways in the education field, to have them available at more campuses and to increase enrollment in those programs.

The Community College Roadmap also has expectations about establishing or expanding academic programs in education and early education. for both UC and CSU, they are both required to collaborate with the community colleges on developing these associate degrees for transfer, since the whole goal is to have them create a smoother transition without a lot of excess courses that are taken at the community college level to get students to complete their degrees more quickly.

Regarding workforce preparation for both UC and CSU, early education, and education are considered high-demand careers that both UC and CSU are to prioritize. And for these high-demand careers overall, the universities are expected to increase enrollment by 25% by 26'-27'.

The CSU has indicated that these targets are likely not possible given some of the declines in enrollment into the system and in addition to other challenges. So that's something to keep in mind. But in the area of high-demand careers, the compact specifically states that CSU's primary focus is to produce more K-12 educators.

So that is clear in the compact. Again, the compacts are broad. They set these goals in terms of low. The universities get to these goals, there's flexibility for them to decide how to do so. So the best way for the Legislature to be informed is to stay apprised on what the activities are of the universities. And you will be receiving these annual reports to get additional information that may not have all of the specific information that you want related to these particular programs.

And so if that is not sufficient, we think the Legislature could ask for additional information on what the status are in terms of these very specific priorities. I'll stop there, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Cabral. Let me open the questions, and I'll turn it over to my fellow Committee Members for Mr. DeGuire if you wouldn't mind. So Dean Metcalf mentioned the support for test fees. In addition to that, right? Or beyond that, what are some of the other remaining obstacles that you see to increasing enrollment in teacher prep programs in California?

Well in talking to colleagues at preparation programs, what I have heard is that the startup costs for them to create new programs or expand enrollment capacity, the startup cost to get new faculty is a challenge for them, and there's no direct funding source for them to grab that. I would say that that's probably the biggest challenge that I have heard.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Anybody other panelists want to speak to that? I know you were volunteered by the superintendent earlier. I won't do that to you. Okay, good. Senator Laird?

I wanted to ask the CSU representative a question, and maybe have, the Legislative Analyst prepared, and on the program side, and I think you alluded to it CSU has established four integrated programs for teacher education. And in terms of student demand and program cost, I was going to ask, how do these compare to traditional pathways for teacher education?

I would say a majority of our students in the CSU still come in at the post baccalaureate level in teacher preparation. But we've had several long standing undergraduate, four year integrated teacher education programs. Several of our campuses that have worked really closely with our community colleges in clear articulations, ADT pathways ,and really, these four year programs do allow our candidates to graduate quicker and with less debt. So they have certainly been a very attractive pathway.

And also, as we work with our community college partners, they have brought in a more diverse group of candidates into our teacher preparation programs. We do have students in our ITEP programs who start as first time freshmen in the CSU as well.

And then I don't know if you're equipped to answer the next question, but maybe the Legislative Analyst is. We had our CSU budget hearing last week, and in these compacts, they give a 5% increase. And yet CSU said the 5% wasn't adequate to meet their needs, and they put forward a budget for next 5% that includes compensation and a number of other issues that aren't covered by what's going to them basic.

How does the teacher training that's post baccalaureate that you just mentioned fit into that? Is there enough money within the compact to continue to pay for that, or is that something that's threatened, given what's going on?

I might let the LAO speak and then maybe I can chime in.

That'd be great, although I'm sure the LAO isn't happy about it.

Yeah, I definitely cannot tell you exactly in terms of CSUs priorities, whether that can be fun. I think the broader challenge in terms of the legislative oversight of these issues is that we provide funding to CSU. CSU makes decisions about how that funding is allocated across campuses and programs. And ideally, you would have an increase in an area that is a legislative priority, like teacher preparation programs.

But that is not necessarily always the case. So I can't tell you in terms of with the amount in the current budget, whether that would necessarily get to teacher prep programs or not. I think what I can say is, in general, looking at the cost of programs, we do think that compared to, say, some of the health majors, the cost of providing the program is a little bit low than some of those other high costs.

Say, for example, you're working in health where you need a lot of technology.

Well, let me close on this. And we actually have every Member of the Subcommittee here, so they're listening to this conversation. And last week, CSU took the unprecedented step of saying, here's precisely how we would spend the 5%, here's precisely how we would spend above that. And we were left by the time the hearing was done of deciding low we might bind that or how we might be specific about that in how we appropriate. And the legislative analysts said they have not been transparent.

And then by the time we got to the hearing, they said some version of, well, they're starting to be transparent and we have to figure out how to do that. So I would just say to CSU, it would be good if you would follow up to this hearing to make sure we understand where the teacher programs fit in that.

Because if in fact, we aye being specific in what we do for the CSU budget, when we approve the budget, we should see if that's in or out or needs to be specifically addressed. So I would just appreciate that response when you get there. Thank you for responding to the question, both of you.

And let me ask you a question. Okay, so probably for Dean Duncan, let's start with you and see. And also Dr. Pavri, to the extent that the state is now funding multiple made many investments recently that creates multiple pathways, how are your universities actually helping students become more aware of and navigate those pathways?

Right, so full service coaching for our candidates. We have advisors and coaches that we have to make sure that candidates as well as faculty, of course, understand that they have different pathways.

So be it. Making sure that they understand the Golden State Teacher Grant. We do not have residencies at our particular university, but internships and student teaching placements and how those can work. We also make sure that we connect them well with their employers. That's an important part, we feel like, of our job is to connect them with their employers so they can move forward quickly. I don't know if I answered your question.

No, that's helpful. Dr. Pavri speaking for the CSU.

Lots of information meetings, lots of working closely with district partners, going out to anywhere we're invited, including many of the events that Superintendent Thurman has been talking about and holding across the state website resources and then making sure that our students are connected with the financial aid offices on their campuses so that they are aware of the different kinds of funding that's available to them.

That's absolutely critical for our students, especially our underrepresented candidates, returning candidates, folks who have family, who have other responsibilities and need to know what funding is available as they pursue these programs.

Appreciate that. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas? Actually, Mr. Deguire.

And if I could add, the Legislature funded eight career counselor positions in our certification division in this current budget. We've hired all of them and are training them. The goal is for them to be available to anyone in the state who wants to become a teacher, answer their questions about what is the process to become credentialed and what financial resources are available. So they're going to be building additional online resources, working with our partners in each of the sectors of preparation and with the Department of Education.

And how would prospective teachers learn about that resource, so they could connect to it?

as we get it going we'll be doing a lot of advertising on that and again working with the California Department of Education and probably looking more broadly at our partners like the CTA, AXA, the county superintendents.

Great. Thank you, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas you have a question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really insightful discussion. I had a question for Mr. DeGuire about the grant program. One, I was excited to hear about the debt relief as a way of retaining workforce. Would love to see more about how that program worked in the ways that you saw the districts using those grant funds.

But I also had a question in terms of the lens for how the grants, particularly around the credentialing process and student teaching process, how do those grants work? In the earlier panel, there was discussion about the high turnover in inner city, lower-income schools located in lower-income communities.

And also there was a discussion, a point about how those schools often have teachers who are more inexperienced and who need more support in preparing for their final process for certification.

Is there an equity metrics by which these precious because it's 20,000 is not a whole lot of money in these grant programs. So what is the metrics for actually making sure that those dollars are going to these kinds of institutions that have some disproportionate impacts.

So there's nothing in the legislation that funded these grant programs that requires any kind of equity like that. But one new program that will be coming online is the Residency Technical Assistance Center, for the state. And I think that that center will be able to address some of the inequities you're talking about because the inequities in those districts often end up going all the way up to district office and that there's no one there who can help write grants.

So if you're underfunded, you don't even have people often who can write to get you the money to help train your own staff, your classified staff, to become teachers, to set up residency program with an IAT. So we are hoping with that new Technical Assistance Center that they will be able to provide that support to districts across the state.

And that office comes online when what's the capacity of that?

So it's a $20 million grant over five years that will be awarded to an LEA Odds are probably a County Office of Education. That's kind of what's been done in other areas in the past with CDE grants. So they will have that money over five years. To hire staff is really the biggest thing is to hire staff and irwin them and then find ways to connect with districts who are interested in support in, having a residency program and then apply for that.

And you know, part of that's going to come down to in rural areas, you've got smaller districts and they may not have enough people for a cohort of residencies. So it's going to be pulling districts together, working with their county offices to create consortium.

Got it. And that office has an equity sort of metric for how when you think about rural, you think about the urban areas, how will those resources get distributed?

Again, there's no requirement, but the Commission does have direct oversight of the office and they'll be working very closely with us. And so we will be ensuring that's part of the Commission's new strategic plan is to look at everything through the lens of equity, and diversity, and inclusion. And so as we get this new Technical Support Center up and running, that will be a key thing for us as we work with them.

It just sounds like there needs to be some legislative equitable metric that can help really determine how these resources get allocated and where. My final question is just around apprenticeship and I'll leave it open to whoever wants to respond to this.

There have been so many very successful apprenticeship models 100 years old when you think about the building and construction trades, and I know the state has done a lot to create apprenticeships and nontraditional sectors. Are you all working with the workforce agencies, the labor and workforce?

Okay, I'm actually on a state work group with the workforce agency and the Department of Industrial Relations to build residencies or not residencies apprenticeships which will be probably be built on some of our residency programs across the state.

We hope to get two to three pilots this year and then, from what we learned from those pilots, share that information with others across the state. We're going to need to identify who's going to be the kind of leadership agency because that's required min applying for federal money.

So there's a lot of details we need to work out. But we are working with those agencies and with CSU and UC and with CTA, I mean we need everyone involved in that and with employers as well.

Well, I'm glad to see moving toward that earn-and-learn model, especially because min industries that women have by and large led, we have been left behind and out of that process. And so it's good to see a largely women led industry now stepping into the apprenticeship pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship model for high-road jobs. So thank you.

Welcome.

Any questions from y colleagues? No? Good. Thank you Mr. DeGuire, Dr. Pavri, Dean Duncan, Mr. Gabriel completes the second panel. Let's move on to the third. Haney, the third panel is on educator recruitment and retention. Ms. Barocio from the LAO's office. Welcome, you're our first panelist.

Yes. Jackie Barocio with the LAO. This panel you'll definitely hear from people that are actually on the ground on issues related to educator recruitment and retention issues. Just as quick summary as was previously mentioned, the state has created many programs and has allocated many dollars to try to address these issues.

However, many of these programs are instilled mid flight. So in terms of gauging the effectiveness of at least these state level interventions, it's very difficult at this time. But as other presenters have mentioned, many of the ways in which we could directly address educator retention and recruitment issues is really at the local level. Specifically, research shows that pay really matters. Starting pay but then also pay throughout the teaching profession really matters when it comes to retention and recruitment. And the pay issue is a local issue that's locally negotiated.

Another factor that many of the presenters have pointed out is working conditions really matter. And what working conditions means in the school setting is do teachers feel supported? Do they feel like that they have the necessary resources and support network to manage complex issues that their students may have, homelessness, foster care issues, food insecurity, things like that?

But also, as people have mentioned, during COVID too, there was a lot of teacher burnout. So also do teachers feel like they're being asked to do too much. In those working conditions again, relative to the state, it's really locals that have a bit more control on those issues. So with that, I'll just pass it over to the other presenters that will definitely be able to provide a more holistic and real perspective of these issues.

And thank you for that. Next up is Mr. Joshua Salas, who is the 2021-22 Teach Plus California Policy Fellow who teaches 10th-grade special ed at Alliance Renee and Meyer Luskin Academy High School in LA. And also serves as the Department lead and an Advisor for Black Student Union on his campus. You're obviously very busy. Thank you for taking time out today.

Yes, very busy. And also, it's always nice talking in front of adults than 16-year-olds, but good morning, everyone. My name My name is Joshua Salas. I am actually now 11th-grade special education teacher because I loop with the students at Alliance, Renee, and Luskin Academy and also a Teach Plus senior policy fellow.

So teach plus as an organization empowers experienced and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policies and practical issues that advances educational equities as well as student successes. And because of how I feel believing in the mission that I decided to step up in my leadership and become a Senior Policy Fellow, particularly over educator diversity.

And I resonate with this issue a lot, especially given that I am a Black and Pacific Islander male teacher of color here in California. And also I am still in the classroom as a fourth-year teacher, but also too, it resonates a low because even within these short four years, I've seen a lot of my friends leave the classroom. I've also seen data reports about lower enrollment of teacher prep programs and a lot of teachers who are even veterans considering leaving the classroom.

And even now in 2023, I still get asked the question, are you sure you want to be a teacher? Which shows a negative perception that we have on our profession. And when I think about this issue, not only as a profession overall, but also thinking about the teacher shortage and our educator workforce, not only do we have to think about filling those classrooms with people, but we have to think about not only how quality prepared they are, but also ensuring that our students have teachers that reflect them, particularly a sustainable and diverse teaching workforce.

And the research has been shown and very clear that when students have a teacher of color or even having a diverse teacher workforce, they particularly benefit a lot, particularly when we seen this data from California.

From 2018 to 2019, approximately 61% of public school teachers identify as non Hispanic White, while approximately 21% identify as Latinx. However, when we look at the student population, it's the reverse 21% of students identify as White, while 61 or 56% identify as Hispanic Latinx.

And it's imperative that we continue to build a more diverse teaching workforce and recognize how educator diversity is important. Teach plus has already trying to push that mission forward through various studies with educators of color nationally and in California to better understand their experiences.

So in the report that you see attached to the agenda. It's time to be bold in diversifying our Teacher Workforce we emphasize a lot that the importance of educator diversity is not new to California leaders. And we've heard from different panelists today that there have been a low of initiatives to address not only teacher shortages, but also addressing educator diversity such as Golden State Pathways as well as the creation of the Educator Diversity Advisory Group, just to name a few.

However, though we are moving in the right direction, it's more important that we need to be faster about this and also making sure that we are ensuring the increasement of educator diversity. Because again, as I mentioned, we're seeing more teachers leave the classrooms and stay in them. And also, as we've seen before, that a lot of teachers are leaving before their fifth year, which is a very important time for teachers not only making career decisions, but we've seen from the data that students benefit heavily from teachers who are in the classroom longer term.

We need to be bigger and bolder actions in order to start shaping the current and prospective teachers of color. But what are some of those actions? In the report we outline a few, but today going to name about three that will have the greatest impact on sustaining diverse educated workforce.

One is investing in targeted preparation and support for educators of color. Two, investing in robust benefits and wraparound supports for educators. And also three, investing in strategic retention strategies like fostering teacher leadership opportunities and career support.

Research has shown that the recruitment and support of a diverse teacher workforce not only increases student engagement, but also increases their learning, also decreases in exclusionary discipline, and also outcomes not only for students of color, but all students.

And the reason I could speak to that truly today, is because I was one of those students. I was a student and I was 17 years old, steen in the news not that long ago. Surprisingly about like Black Lives Matter and Trayvon Martin, being a 17 year old. Seeing another 17 year old pass away brought a lot of confusion and anger to me.

However, when I had the support and love of my English teacher, Ms. Penny, who showed me that not only did I need to understand the real ward experiences, but education was more than what the words were taught in the class. It was more putting the language and tools to my lived experiences that I lived and breathed every day. And not only do I show her gratitude for having me pushing me to be here today, but also because of that impact on her, now I get to have an impact on other students of color.

And I always wonder if we could do mathis for myself and other students, what can we do as a system and as a whole? And in order to develop some of these strong targeted preparation, we also must consider the responsibility the state must do to support and evaluate the effectiveness of the current investments.

I want to thank to some of the committee Members for already bringing up this point about how do we see that the current investments that we're making low are truly having a big impact on the teacher pipeline. How do we see that the number of teachers in the classroom are increasing? Yes, we have annual data posted on dataquest and also the California School dashboard showing the breakdown of race and ethnicities.

However, we do not have a clear picture of what is currently with each investment nor the implications on the demographic makeup that it has on the teacher workforce. So it's important to think about the greater transparency of not only in these investments and programs, but overall the oversight and the makeup of our teacher workforce and making sure that they have the fullest effect that they're supposed to have on our teachers and also min that report. In that research, teacher leaders have also expressed the biggest point if you value teachers, don't just tell us, show us.

Teachers are calling on the state leaders to address high cost entries into this profession and also making it more sustainable to be in this profession. One of the things they acknowledged was increasing beginning salaries. So that is a reflective of the skills, knowledge and work performed by educators in the classroom. And I also want to say that I do experience a lot. So earlier you all mentioned the different roles I have.

Also I'm a special education teacher for 11th-grade students which, you know, in junior year, college prep is a very big goal amongst them. I am also a Black Student union advisor where I try to empower black students to speak on their culture, their identities, to be very self-determined.

Also as a special education teacher, I'm also the chair of the Department where I help meet the compliance, the deadlines, also high levels of stress, as was mentioned earlier, why we have a shortage in special education as well, but that will be for another day. And I'm also an instructional coach as well where I help and support other resource teachers and other general teachers to think about how to differentiate their instruction and providing their supports to other students in the classroom.

And it's sad to say, but that's only my responsibilities in the classroom. And I'm not the only teacher who has to take on additional responsibilities min order to get additional money from stipends or the rules in order to meet the high cost of living here in California and also today, we need to consider that compensation is more than a salary boost.

It was brought up before ,like there are other ways to help financially sustain teachers to stay in the classroom so that way they don't need to worry about the next meal or choosing between other careers because they need to either pay off student loans or help provide a next meal to the kid in the classroom.

Programs such as student loan forgiveness, home buying and rental assistance, as well as childcare credits and tuition assistance could help greatly reduce the financial burden teachers face within our state. And as I mentioned before, we should also consider retention strategies like fostering teacher leadership opportunities. Because when we allow educators to have a voice min decisions regarding their profession, their curriculum, even just what is going into a learning environment is empowering. Because when you empower educators to have the ability to create that they feel not only collaborative and supportive, but also feeling valued and inclined to stay in the classroom.

And so one thing I want to reiterate and push forward as well to you all which was brought up was not only should we consider the short term needs in addressing this, but also like the long stern goal of increasing educator diversity. Particularly the most important folks that we think about our students. We need to continue investing on our students, particularly students of color, by attracting them into the profession.

Things were mentioned before that was greatly helpful into mathis growth is grow your own programs. Because again, when students could see themselves in the teachers in the classroom or even folks coming from the community, they feel more invested to jump into that profession and come back and teach the next generation. And so with that, and because of time's sake, I will say thank you and I will take questions at the end.

And thank you for your testimony. Next up, virtually, we have Superintendent Dr. Lucy Van Scyoc who is from the Tulare Joint Union High School District and also an alumna of TJUHSD. Welcome, Superintendent.

Good morning and thank you. I appreciate being here today. I have a PowerPoint, so I'm going to share that with you real quickly. Hold on, I'm sorry, I thought I would think I may have been muted.

No, you're good. And we see the presentation.

Awesome, thank you. So first of all, thank you again for being here today. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. My name, as you said, is Lucy Van Scyoc. I'm the superintendent of Pellerin Joint High School District and I'm a product of the school system here and I'm very thankful for the school system here. I immigrated from the Azores at the age of eight here to California. I was an English learner and as you said, an alumni of our district.

Our district has an enrollment of about 5,750 students. 77% of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged and 13% of our students are English learners.

So talking to you a little bit about the recruitment that we use, the efforts we partner with our county office of Ed and CSU Bakersfield in what's called the Tree program, which is a teacher residency for rural education programs. We actually have two teachers on our sites now through that program we also partner with our local universities for student-teacher placements within our school.

We want as many student-teacher placements as possible because that gives us an opportunity to be able to have really a first look at those teachers and make sure that we can recruit them for ourselves. We also focus on teaching pathway course offerings for our own students. We offer internship opportunities, for our high school students, and careers in education.

We encourage our students to major in education, come back and teach for us, and then we also encourage our classified employees to continue their education and to pursue a career in education.

I wanted to share with you a little bit about how many of our staff right now of our teachers are not fully credentialed. We have eight teachers on steps, we have one on using a pip, and then we have nine interns. It is really hard. It has been really hard in the last few years for us to find teachers who are fully credentialed to come and teach for us sometimes there aren't always benefits to be in a rural community, but I do feel that we have some benefits.

We have affordable housing, which has been mentioned a lot today. Teachers can make a decent living in our area, and then being a smaller community, we're big on relationships. We do our best to connect with our students out in the community, and a lot of times our students want to give back like their teachers have given to them.

Again, I was an English learner. The reason I'm here today as superintendent of our high school district is because of the teachers in my district that I had, they're the ones that encouraged me to come back and give to our community, and I do the same. Then I see our students out and about a lot of times I'll ask them, what are you majoring in? You need to come back and teach for us. When you finish, give me a call so that we can connect them and get them back to teach for us.

So teacher shortages. We have lots of staffing concerns. Our most difficult ayes are those single subject areas. Math, Science, and English are the hardest to staff. Unfortunately, in our area, our local universities are not graduating enough math teachers, and the COVID has really aggravated the math issue. We had students for two or more years that were not getting adequate math instruction. They're behind. We need to be able to catch them up, and that means more math sections, and we're not able to fill all those needs that we have right now.

So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about math. We have a teacher this year who was on a short-term permit, and they were not able to pass their CSETs in a timely manner, so we had to remove them from the classroom at semester. We have not found a replacement for that teacher. So currently at one of our schools, we have students who, since January, have been taught by a long-term sub because, unfortunately, we can't find someone to be in that classroom.

And then for next year, we are going to be in need of three additional teachers, math teachers. We've already started recruiting, but it's difficult. Science is another high area of need. At the beginning of this year, we were forced to remove a Biology teacher from our classroom. She was coming to us from a community college. She taught Biological Anthropology, but she couldn't pass the CSETs. So again, we had to remove her from the classroom.

We're currently flying in a chemistry position for next school year, and at this point, we've had no applicants for that position. Special Ed is another great area of need. Even though we are experiencing declining enrollment, the number of special ed students continues to increase. So we actually added three special ed teachers this year in our district, and we're going to have more of a need for next school year.

And then CTE credentials. We used to have this amazing electronics program at one of our high schools. The teacher retired, and we have not been able to find anyone for that program. So we actually went away from the electronics program.

We have a Pre-med program that we currently offer at one of our schools, but the majority of those teachers are our own science teachers. They don't have that CTE credential. So what does that mean? Currently in our district, we have 54 missed assignments. We have 19 misassigned teachers because they don't have any CTE credentials. But we can't compete with the industry, the industry wages. We cannot recruit those teachers to come and grove up their current jobs and teach for us. So that's been a huge issue for us as well.

And then the administrator shortage. Our administrators, if you're a teacher, you need to go back to school to get your Admin credential to become an administrator. So that's more time, more money, and then our administrative wages, they're not competitive. So just to give you an example, an entry salary of an administrator in our district is about $122,000.

They have a 205-day work year, and the number of hours are way beyond the 7:30 to 3:30 or 7:30 to 4. So they have multiple events each night that they have to supervise after school. The top salary for a teacher in our district is hundred and $23,000 and they work 185 days. So we really have a difficult time getting our teachers to take that next step and to want to become administrators. So we're struggling with the Admin positions as well.

And then education post COVID. So I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the support you've provided education. The funding really has allowed us to do a lot in our district we've added math labs for just in time intervention. We have a response to intervention pull out class, which is usually typical in elementary, but not in high school. We have English learner intervention labs.

We've been able to add teachers and instructional aids to support our labs. We've added social workers, which we've never had before. And we've been able to bring our counselor ratio down to 200 students to one counselor, which has been extremely helpful. Because of this, 97.5% of our 2021-22 senior class graduated.

56% of our English learners who took the LPAC increased one or more levels on the LPAC. And we have one of our schools that last year they had 62.2% of their seniors who completed the A through G requirements and were eligible to apply directly to a CSU and UC, and that's because of these programs that we were able to put into place.

But I wanted to show off this quote here real quick because people these days are a little more fragile. The presenter before just shared, there's a lot on everyone's plate right now and it is a very tough time for education. Teacher has never teaching has never been easy, but it's definitely more difficult than ever.

Students are academically behind. They're behind socially the social emotional concerns that we've been dealing with. We've never experienced anything like this before. We did not have social workers at our school sites until last school year. And our social workers, currently we have a social worker at each of our comprehensive sites. And then we partner with our County Office of Ed to provide two additional days of social workers on our sites.

And our social workers have an average caseload of 72 students, which is, again, we didn't even have social workers prior to last year. Our high schools are having to rebuild their culture. Our current seniors, they never experience what it was like to have a normal high school year and what it's like to be in high school. Our teachers are tired, they don't want to take on more extracurricular activities.

There's a lot going on. And they also want to be able to enjoy their own families and their own time. So one of my big concerns is we've been able to do a lot to support our students and our teachers and so that they stay in the profession.But what happens when these one time monies are exhausted?

So my last piece is the teacher shortage is real. We need math teachers, we need science teachers, we need special ed teachers, we need administrators, we need the ability to grow our own. We need programs that allow us to encourage our students to become teachers, to encourage our classified staff to become teachers.

Again, like I shared with you guys, the majority of our students are Hispanic. So being able to grow our own allows us to have that diversity and education that we need. And then we need to continue the financial opportunities to encourage our paraprofessionals to pursue teaching credentials we get our instructional aides, our paraprofessionals, we get to see them and how they interact in the classroom with our students. And a lot of them are amazing, and they should be teaching and supporting our education system. Once again, thank you for your time.

Thank you, superintendent. Our last panelist. In this panelist is Ms. Kelly Blanc, the Induction Coordinator from the Modesto City School System. Welcome. Please proceed.

And we appreciate that

Okay. Hi everyone. I am Kelly Blanc. I have been teaching for 26 years for Modesto City Schools. I've done K-6. I'm currently actually at a high school. I used to be the induction coordinator for nine years, where I was a full time release, mentoring new teachers, interns, STSPs, and PIPs and so forth. I am thrilled to sit on this panel and present some of the association's many ideas for educator recruitment and retention.

I have a list of twelve recommendations to help retain and recruit teachers. Because of time, I will only highlight some of the ideas. Please refer to CTA's Handout. It includes the research that informs our recommendation and rationale, and your staff received a digital copy.

Our list of recommendations. One eliminate the teacher performance assessment, TPA. Two resolve the TPA flexibility issue for the cohort of preliminary teachers who aye affected by the pandemic. Ensure the Literacy Performance Assessment does not create burdens or roadblocks. Align program standards for teacher prep and induction to reduce redundancy quality teacher residency and apprenticeship programs.

Six reduce financial barriers to preservice teachers and new teachers. Seven instead of choosing residencies, many teacher candidates are opting for internships, which allow them to earn a full salary as a primary teacher of record. But it doesn't offer the intense one on one training with a veteran teacher that comes with residencies.

Eight strength and supports for early career educators. Nine encourage people who might be looking to change careers to consider a career in education, especially early childhood education. You talked about data earlier. Given the estimated 16,000 Credentialed educators needed for full universal TK implementation by 2025-26, ten create a minimum salary by regions indexed for the cost of living.

Eleven class size reduction. Twelve prep time connected to the Arts music initiative. CTA's first recommendation eliminate the teacher performance assessment. TPA the rationale is California requires teacher candidates to pass a series of exams to become fully credentialed. Due to the high cost of the exams, the multiple hoops they pose, at least 40% of those interested in teaching in California are waylaid by testing.

Further data estimates that about 8,600 candidates of color each year are unable to enter the classroom because of the licensing test barriers. Further rationale to eliminate the TPA include the TPA is Duplicative Assessment of Instructional Standards.

Teachers already complete 600 hours of free teaching, submit six TPEs complete two years of coursework at accredited University and will complete over 100 pages as part of the Ed Cal TPA assessment.

The time, stress and cost of assessments are burdens on aspiring teachers. Data shows that TPAs are an overwhelmingly negative experience for most aspiring teachers, and specifically, TPAs are a barrier to diversity in the California teacher pipeline. CTA is not alone in supporting the policy to eliminate TPAs.

Five states have already done so. New York, Washington, Georgia, Wisconsin and New Jersey. The second recommendation is to resolve the TPA flexibility issue,for the cohort of preliminary credential holders who aye affected by the pandemic shutdown. I call them the TPA bubble group. During the pandemic period, test companies did not offer all the exams needed to earn a preliminary credential. So an Executive order was issued in May of 2020 allowing candidates to have a preliminary Credential without completing the TPAs.

There are 8,000 to 12,000 of these teachers hired as probationary educators. I can tell you some things about them. Since 2020, these educators probably completed their bits of induction program. However, districts cannot recommend them for professional clear because they haven't passed the TPAs. Since 2020, these educators have been evaluated multiple times every year by their site administrator. Assuming their success, these teachers were recommended for probationary to permanent status.

But California will lose these teachers if they do not pass these exams. I have worked with these teachers in the bubble group, and many discuss leaving the profession if they are forced to complete their TPAs, because TPAs are a preservice work, some of these teachers were interns before they became preliminary teachers. So they've been teaching up to six years without the TPAs, and they've been successful.

Why would the state hold a test as an obstacle? CTA recommends to reduce financial barriers to preservice teachers and new teachers. To begin with, many teachers are forced to pay to clear their credential introduction. Induction replaced the former BTSA. When BTSA was in place, it was protected under a block grant, so clearing your preliminary credential was free.

Now, with LCFF funding induction, it just depends. So even our largest district, in, our state LA Unified, charges their teachers to clear their Credential, and induction is a two year process, and it costs between 2,200 to 5,000 a year to clear your credential.

Student teaching is a barrier. Financial stress is a major factor why many students cannot enter or finish a teaching prep program. For example, many students cannot afford to student teach for free. In fact, data shows that students of color are less likely to become teachers due to financial hardships. Paid student teaching will alleviate under stress and encourage more students to complete prep programs.

Data also shows that a large majority of teachers report that it's difficult to afford housing on a teacher's salary to keep up with basic living expenses, save for retirement, provide for their children.

My personal examples in my district, there's a four year teacher I mean a teacher who's a veteran teacher of four years. She chooses the least expensive medical option at our district, and her monthly paycheck 40% of that goes to cover her medical expenses.

My friend, my neighbor twins graduated from nursing school three years ago. Their annual salary individually is more than mine, and I've been teaching 26 years. I am not alone of my peers. We have side jobs. I haney taught at the local community college for ten years, teaching night school. At summer, I've schlepped drinks at the county fair. I have sold tickets via soccer game. I do this to provide for my family. I moved from the Bay area to Santa Slice County just so I could afford a home.

The last recommendation I have is class size reduction, a reasonable goal for California's? Class size is a program that places California in the upper quartile of low class sizes in the United States, with class size calculated on a true teacher-to-pupil ratio. Thank you so much for your valuable time, and I eagerly await your question.

And thank you for your testimony. I have two quick questions, and I'll turn it over to my colleagues on the first, actually. Let's start with you, Ms. Blanc. I'd ask for some others, especially the superintendent. Which state level initiatives we've discussed, many do you believe are having the biggest positive impact currently on teacher recruitment and retention?

I think the TPAs for both the bubble group and aspiring teachers, and then the financial stress, the financial hardship.

Those are the challenges, which are the current initiatives that the state has invested in over the last couple of years do you think are helpful?

Oh, I know the state has thrown a lot of money into education. From my personal opinion, it's been all those we now have more money for tutoring. We have social emotional health initiatives, things like that, that are before and after school, during school, that these kids are so isolated, they're not connecting, and they're behind. So things like that have really been helping.

Alright superintendent here, virtually. But which state level initiatives have you seen that you think are having the biggest positive impact on recruitment and retention so far?

So recruitment and retention, I do feel like the opportunity for the classified employees, the grants that allow them to go back and have support when they get their credential. I think that's been very beneficial, and we're definitely going to tap into that one and then the other piece of that is the grants are the loan forgiveness. Especially, we're a Title One school, and because we're a Title One school, sometimes people it's harder to get qualified candidates.

So I believe that those grants are also very beneficial. And we have a lot of teachers that bring in their grants for us to sign off on so they can get their loans waived.

Thank you. That's helpful. My second question Ms. Blanc touched on. One of the CTA recommendations was to encourage people to look at teaching as a second career. And I was struck that this wasn't something that had come up in anybody's testimony prior. And so I see Mr. DeGuire and Ms. Kini are still here.

Would you mind? Where does that fit in? Where should it fit in to some of the initiatives that we're currently pursuing, which specifically recruiting teachers to work for us who might have been doing something else as a career up until that point and how would you sort of wait that or include that in kind of the larger strategies?

So that's something we certainly have discussed. But the biggest challenge is how do we identify who these people are? We're hoping with our career counselors that we will be ready for them when they say, okay, I want to teach. But in terms of going out and actually recruiting people in other professions, we've struggled with how we would actually do that.

Are there resources for those who are sort of proactively seeking to make that change either provided by the CTC or other resources?

I think there's a lot of good resources available, especially when you combine the Golden State Teacher Grants with a residency. That's not quite a livable wage, is what the research is showing, but it certainly helps a lot.

As you've heard from a number of panelists, a lot of times I think people who are changing careers will choose the internship, which means their teacher of record while they're doing their teacher preparation program. It's not ideal, but financially that's the only way some people can make it work.

And Ms. Kini, if you wouldn't mind, does this represent a promising source of prospective teachers and if so, how should we address it?

Yeah, it's a great question and we should be tapping every source we can. I'd say a couple of things. One, we've heard today from others about the importance of grow your own programs, like those classified staff teacher training programs.

We have a lot of professionals working in our schools who want to continue to grow. They'll be paid more as they move up the ladder into teaching, both early educators, para educators, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers. That option is there. And I think it's one to continue to grow and build those people know what being in school is like and want to do that work and stay.

I think for career changers, compensation in teaching is just going to continue to be an issue. It's not a well paid profession. Teachers make about $0.80 on the dollar of what other college educated professionals make, even when you take into account the shorter work year. So I think we're going to have to continue to make progress there to really make it an attractive second career unless someone's coming in with a lot of financial resources to sustain them.

I appreciate that. I do appreciate your reference to grow your own. I know there's legislation pending to try and facilitate that. Any of my colleagues questions for the last panel? Senator Smallwood-Cuevas?

Well, first, I want to just say to all of the presenters in this last panel, thank you, I heard you and recognize the sacrifice that you're making to give an education, quality education, to our future leaders. And from the presenter who spoke about 27 years and having to serve, sell drinks at the state fair to Mr. Salas, laying out all of the responsibilities that he is doing, but earning only one paycheck that doesn't make ends meet.

We have a long way to go in making sure that this profession gets paid and recognized and valued in the dignity that it absolutely deserves. And I know the chair of our budget sub, we have talked a lot about that in our tracking on the investment directly in sustaining the lives of folks who are doing this work every day.

I wanted to ask a question. I was really struck about two things. The TPA coming out of higher ed. Sometimes when there are a lot of assessments back to back to back, you question, well, what am I getting out of this process that is actually going to help me do better that's fong to improve the system? What benefits do the teachers themselves get out of this TPA other than having to do what seems to be just a significant level of preparation and training? I'm curious about how much feedback, analysis, actual time is spent in sort of analyzing these assessments and then actually putting something in that can be useful and helpful.

Well, I'd like to begin. There is a handout with the data and sources, but there is data that conflicts on how useful the TPAs are. And it's taking away time from the student teaching where you're hands on learning with that mentor teacher, but instead you're working on how to pass the TPAs. And then, I said 100 pages. That's true.

In the last year and the year before with a COVID bubble group, I went to Saturday school at our local state college with them. Our district paid for them to try to work on their TPAs for TPA cycle one and two. And I would go with these teachers and we would meet at Starbucks afterwards and would try to ride out the detailed information that is needed about how I will teach.

And it comes from a good place, but it's too much, it's insanely. too much work of videotaping and stopping and writing down and talking about what I'm going to do. This is what I did, this is what I will do. And little pieces of nuances that you might not meet if you're videotaping a lesson and you didn't include this is what we'll teach next time. Because at your school district, we do exit tickets. And they said an exit ticket, which is about do you have questions about the lesson?

It's an automatic bail If you didn't in this one part of the TPA mention, oh, I'm not going to this is what I'm teaching next time. And so if you miss those directions, especially the bubble group who is teaching full time, it's devastating. It costs a lot of money. It's a lot of time, and it doesn't honor their first three years of teaching had so many different changes of teaching online teaching with plexiglass, teaching, the A and B group, how to walk to the cafeteria.

There's rules, for, everything. And now we're saying they have to go back and prove to us that they're good at their job. They've been evaluated. They've worked in the California Standards of Teaching profession for the TPEs through injection, through their formal evaluations with their administrators. They've done that over and over again.

Thank you for clarifying that there isn't necessarily anything that's coming back that's beneficial for those teachers, and it's replicating information that we already have. I appreciate that my last question or two has to do with the diversity piece. And this goes to what Mr. Salas laid out. And I wanted to understand, is there data on school district retention rates before and after COVID that looks at the demographics of those teachers.

I don't know who might have that. I don't know if any of the presenters know where that data might be in terms of retention rate for educators of color.

So based on the report and we saw, the last data set that we've seen is 2018 to 2019. And that was because of we went into the pandemic and there was pauses on collection of data. But as of the last data set we have, it was proposing a report.

Okay. And is there any particular focus? I know we talked about the increase in Latinx teachers, which is really exciting to see. 37%. That is amazing. What are we seeing in terms of black instructors? What are those numbers looking like in the data set?

In a sense, it's still in the single digits. Last to check was about two to 5% of teachers are black educators. And I know that there's been initiatives across other states to increasing black teachers overall. In terms of California, that's kind of like the push. We're hoping that with data transparency to one have that number.

Like alright in terms of different LEAs or districts, how many black teachers do we have overall? And then thinking about not only just the percentage of coming into the classroom, but also retaining them. So what is the percentage of like many percentage of black teachers are staying at your school site? Because again, back to the report was we want to make sure we're not only just bringing teachers in the classroom, but also keeping them there as well.

Great. And you said that the report came out before COVID when is the next. Sort of oh, no, the data set was the report.

The report just came out.

Just got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. DeGuire, I think you wanted to respond to some of the input about TPAs.

I can also give you a little information about black teachers. So what we see is kind of a flat line in terms of enrollment and completions of black candidates who are going into teacher preparation programs and completing them, whereas with the Latin, Latino, Latina teachers definite increase.

And I did want to address TPA. So the purpose of the TPA is to help teacher candidates get into the habit of the cycle of planning, teaching and assessing, reflecting on their teaching and what their assessments tell them and then applying what they've learned.

It really depends upon the context of your preparation program and your placement. But a lot of people do have very positive experiences with the TPA. And we've heard a number of candidates say that it has really prepared them for when they go on to the National Board Process because the TPA really is somewhat based off of the National Board Process where you do have to videotape and you have to reflect on your own teaching.

So as far as the Commission standards go, reflective practitioners is one of our primary goals that we want all of our teachers to reflect on their teaching, see what they're learning from their assessments, see what it's telling them about their students, and then make changes based on what they learn.

And on the first point about the flat line on the black teacher coming into and being retained, what is being done to address that flatline?

Well I think clearly not enough, and this is personal opinion, not commission opinion, but I think so many black students have a negative experience in K-12 education that they ask themselves, why would I want to become a teacher? There's a small percentage that say I want to change this so that people who look like me have a better experience in K-12. But I think part of the solution is really addressing what happens in K-12.

So you're saying that the students negative experience in the school district is why there's no intentional efforts at your level to ensure that we do a better job of recruiting and retaining black educators?

No, I think that's the underlying cause. There are a number of things going on, especially the Superintendent of Public Instruction has led a number of efforts to try and get more, especially black students, male black students. A number of districts are doing the same.

Fresno, not just the school district, but the county as a whole has some strong efforts to get more male black teachers. As far as our grant programs and the things that we administer, that's something that we emphasize. And as we have reported and others have reported, the diversity among our residents and our classified staff who are supported through those programs is high. And I don't think we completely understand why there's kind of a flatline with black candidates.

Well, it sounds like there needs to be some research done to understand what that is. And beyond emphasizing how do you operationalize resources to address, I would love to hear more and see feedback on what those programs are and what efforts you think can be taken to address this disparity.

Yeah, I think the first step is finding out what's working around the state, because I think there are places that are having success.

We look forward to hearing the results of that inquiry because I think that helps to determine where to make the investments and how to address the flatlining of that. So thank you for that.

And thank you, Senator. Points well taken. Ms. Blanc, you are on the move there.

Hi, I'm Deputy Superintendent Cheryl Cotton. I'm representing our state superintendent, and I wanted to respond to the question that you raised.

Some of the work that we have been doing, the superintendent convened a group of teachers and educators, researchers, professors in 2020 and 21 to focus on diversifying the teacher, the educator workforce. That group came out with a report, and so there's lots of information and research that has gone into that, but also has convened community of practices. So we have been running CDE, has been supporting, working with West Ed, is working with our county offices and LEAs on best practices.

What are other districts doing? So that work is happening, trying to focus on what are we doing to support our bringing teachers of color into the workforce. In addition to that, as the superintendent mentioned earlier, national Board Certification. So it's recruiting, but it's also retention, retaining teachers, providing opportunities for that reflection piece, but also leadership opportunities as well.

We are supporting folks coming into the profession who are novices or veteran teachers who have stepped into getting more information around National Board Certification. So we have certification subsidies as well as incentives for those folks who are working in high priority schools with that special certification as well. And so there are a number of efforts that we are putting into place to support our African American teachers and our teachers of color, but also to recruit as well and really supporting at the LEA level and the county office level on strategies to bring folks in.

Thank you for sharing that. And it sounds like these are some new initiatives that are just starting to take hold. It would be good to see how effective they are and what impact they're having, but thank you for giving me more info on that.

Ms. Blanc, I'm assuming you wanted to respond with respect to the TPA discussion, and I would ask this is obviously part of a longer discussion that will proceed beyond this hearing, so if you could keep it brief.

I will keep it brief. Two quick points in my handout. You see cited Heart Research, which talks about the TPAs, and I'm just going to share a little bit. Data by Heart Research. Developing a strategy for teacher retention and recruitment. September 15 2022 shows that one min, three new teachers think that the TPA had a negative impact, and three in five current teachers believe the better and more realistic teacher preparation and assessments should be a top priority for improving teacher retention and to sort of change the scope as far as reflection.

Reflection is so important in teaching, so I didn't want to discount that with my comments. Induction has a teach plan, reflect, apply part in it. I think the redundancy is purposeful, but I don't believe that it's it's very helpful for new teachers. They over and over again, they're told to reflect. I think it might have a negative impact.

And I would like to recant something that I said. It may not be an automatic fail. If a teacher forgets to state in a TPA what I will do next, it might just be points off.

But your broader points about the rigidity of the process. aye, well taken. So thank you. Any other questions from my colleagues? Okay, thank you. So we're going to now move on to the public comment period. As a reminder, we will take both in person and virtual public comment. Today's participant number, if you want to join virtually, is 877-226-8216. Again, that's 877-226-8216 and the access code is 621-7161. That's 621-7161. Moderator, if you could please start prompting individuals waiting to provide comment, that'd be helpful. I'm going to ask in a little bit for the number that you have.

Let's please begin with witnesses here in room 2100. And I'd ask you again, we have a hard stop at noon. If you could keep your comments as close to a minute as possible, we'd be grateful.

Okay, thanks. Hi. My name is Tiffany Mock. I represent CFT, a union of educators and classified professionals. Educating the next generation has always been one of American California's highest priorities. At the same time, as you heard from panelists today, particularly those in the field, the desire to educate our next generation does not pay the bills. It does not heal the wounds from our attack on public educators and work through the health risks teachers face during this recent pandemic.

This amounts ultimately to putting our children's education and risk in this shortage. At the same time, I appreciate this committee addressing the diversity shortage and having this focus with great questions from the Members. Having a workforce that fails to reflect our students, they teach fails to provide the opportunities we know we can give our students in this state.

Fortunately, this crisis is solvable. By treating teachers and school staff like the professionals they are, ensuring adequate planning time, and increasing the compensation for school staff and educators. Without these supports, we will not be able to educate another generation of future.

Senator Laird, Newman's, Ochoa Bogh's, Cortese, Min's, Smallwood-Cuevas and others. CFT has a title report Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, which I've sent many of your staff and is available on our website. I'm happy to answer questions and be available whenever anyone needs it.

Appreciate that. Thank you for your testimony. Good morning.

Hi. Good morning, Senators. My name is Serette Kaminski with the Association of California School Administrators. We represent over 17,000 administrators statewide and are the largest statewide association representing administrators nationwide.

Just want to acknowledge the exchange that was brought up by Senator Smallwood-Cuevas during the first panel and as well as a little bit on the third panel. Just share the sentiment about the importance of understanding these data points and understanding the need that we see in the field.

Regarding the snapshot of administrators, we've been trying to get a hold of CalSTRS data. They don't discern between teachers and administrators when they give the report out on educators leaving the workforce. In the fall, they reported retirements increased 26% during the second half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

And of those retirees surveyed by CalSTRS, 62% had retired earlier than planned and 56% cited the challenges of teaching during COVID Again, this is administrators and teachers lumped together the amount of new administrative credentials issued in California has steadily decreased min the past six years, with only 1500 preliminary administrative credentials issued in 2021. That's a nearly 18% decrease since the year prior.

And then I also want to talk about a quick it's a new report that came out in February by the Rand Corporation with nationwide data. The report is called educator turnover has markedly increased, but districts have taken actions to boost teacher ranks. That report survey found that 10% of teachers retired or resigned during the 21-22 school year. That's up four percentage points from pre pandemic levels, but among principals, the turnover was much higher. That's again 21-22 data. They said 16% of principals retired or resigned, and that was up 13 points from pre pandemic levels.

So just want to reiterate something that you heard from the superintendent psych that our administrators are finding that seasoned educators aren't interested in pursuing the administrative credential when the AP assistant principal position may only pay slightly more annually. And then they're also paying out of pocket to pursue their administrative credentials, and then also considering that many millennials are still paying their student loans.

So we just share the sentiment that this is a real issue and we stand ready to partner with all of you folks and the state agencies on these efforts. So thank you for your time.

Thank you for your testimony. Next, please.

Song Nor with the California School Employees Association. We represent a quarter million classified school employees in California, and classified staff are educators too. So more than half of our members make $30,000 or less a year, and the majority of which are women and people of color.

Much of the news and even this hearing is focused on the teacher crisis, yet we see the same issues in our classified space. And so we want to make sure that when we're talking about a shortage, it's not really a shortage of workers. It's actually that workers are not willing to take poverty jobs in our school system when they only pay less than $30,000 a year.

And at In-n-Out Burger, we heard Costco paying a lot more. So we appreciate the Legislature having invested in classified support in the previous years, but without addressing the low pay, lack of benefit part-time classified jobs were not going to be able to attract or retain our classified staff. Thank you

Thank you. Next, please. Good morning.

Good morning, Chair and Members, Brianna Browns on behalf of the California County Superintendents, I'll keep my comments brief. It's very clear that there is a major educator workforce shortage that is exacerbated in problems throughout the local educational agency in the system.

We are very grateful that you all are dedicating time and space to looking into this issue and we look forward to continued collaboration as we work to develop a solution to best serve the needs of all of our students.

Thank you very much. Next, please.

Good morning. My name is Patricia Rucker, and I'm here on behalf of the California Teachers Association. I want to thank the panel for having this workforce conversation today. CTA absolutely believes that the teacher shortage is not an intractable problem, but it has been a problem for the entire 25 years that I have worked for the California Teachers Association.

And while we have had a number of solutions that have made a dent or have even created local pockets of innovation and support in many districts across the state, the fact remains there are not just gaps in the workforce or hard to staff positions, but there are also hard to staff schools.

We need to understand the individual and unique needs of schools and communities across our state and understand the unique pressures in the schools, particularly our lowest performing schools that have the highest needs students we are asking to become part of the workforce.

It's not that African American students are being ill treated in their schools, but the fact is teacher working conditions are student learning conditions. So when a student is sitting in a classroom that is underresourced, understaffed, they have no textbooks, they have no dictionaries, or they feel the school does not value them.

For the individuals they are, they do not look at the individual standing in front of the classroom who they admire, who they respect, and who they absolutely have a connection with. They don't see that as a rendon to turn around and look at the workforce, we have to understand that the teaching profession has a unique pipeline. Our pipeline begins with those pre-K students who matriculate through the system, graduate out of high school and enter college.

If we do not identify and understand that that's where our pipeline is and we treat that pipeline well, the problems we haney will continue to exaggerate, continue to be exacerbated, and continue to frustrate the policymakers sitting on this panel. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anybody else here in room 2100 wishing to make public comment seeing none let's now go to the teleconference line at&t Moderator if you could let us know how many callers you currently have on the line?

Right now we have four queued up. For anybody else you would like to put yourself in? For public comment, please press one file by zero. One file by zero. Would you like to start?

Yes, please. Thank you. We'll take the first caller

Line 16, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. This is Christina Salcedo with Californians Together. We heard a lot today about the success of the Grow Your Own program. We would like to highlight our 20 million budget request to bring back the Bilingual Teacher Professional development program that does just that uses the Grow Your Own approach to address the bilingual teacher shortage by allowing LEAs to apply for these funds in order to provide professional learning opportunities for their own staff. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, next, please.

And next we'll go to line 13. You are open.

Your association for bilingual education. I would like to echo the comments of my colleague with Californians Together, in support of a budget allocation of $20 million for Grow Your Own approach to specifically try to address the bilingual teacher shortage, which impacts over 1.2 million of our students.

Also on behalf of the California Retired Teachers Association. I did want to note that there was a very constructive dialogue by Members of the committee expressing the need to try to recruit and retain teachers as a second career. I do want to note that there are two Federal Social Security offsets that do negatively impact thousands of California retired teachers when they do retire.

And unless California is able to work with our congressional delegation to eliminate these two federal offsets, that's going to serve as a further impediment to recruiting and retaining teachers if they're only going to be negatively impacted by losing or having their Social Security benefits reduced. Thank you so much.

And thank you. You got cut off before you said your name. We only know the associations you're representing.

Yes. Jennifer Baker.

Thank you, Ms.. Baker. Next, please.

Next we'll go to line 15. You are open.

Greetings. Good morning. Carolyn Fowler. Educator. But speaking as a private citizen, I would hope thank you so much for this dialogue today. It would be helpful if we can see some of the presentations, but I appreciate I definitely want to dig on the last speaker about Social Security and my CTA sister, but I want to understand that this is like a homeless crisis. It really is. And until the partnership between the local, state, federal, it won't change. It won't change.

We've got to think about things as the pipeline, teaching students, having students take an opportunity to learn the profession while they're in high school, for example, teach them for a day programs. But also, more importantly, we want to think about teacher magnets. We have magnet schools. Why don't we have that as a professional magnet? So there's a lot more. But I know you were trying to end on time. So thank you so much.

I appreciate it and Ms. Fowler to your point, all the materials used in today's hearing will be posted on the website for public access. Thank you for calling. Next please.

Thank you, Senator.

Yes. Next please.

Thank you. We'll get one final reminder. Please press 10 if you would like to comment on today's presentation and we will go to line 18. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for all the information and feedback. My name is Patricia Hansel. I am a parent here in Southern California in the city of Fullerton. And I wanted to highlight to the folks that presented today to please support teachers, principals, and librarians at my local school board. There has been an attitude shift where teachers are being harassed, belittled curriculum is being watered down.

And so I am wanting to alert you to the situation that aye you're local for the senators. In this meeting for the senators to please check up on your local school district to see if there are issues surfacing. Because the state of California and US Senators will need to make a statement, public statement, to denounce the propaganda, to stand up for teachers and to discourage the harassment of educators.

We have lost in my school district, a lot of teachers last year and expect to lose more because my school board has extremist MAGA school board, which they belittle books, they are harassing teachers, holding their book list request. The morale is low. So the ideas you have today along all these plans, please promote and encourage your institution to stand up and denounce these things.

My school district passed a resolution to ban critical race theory in April of 2022, hence that we have had more harassment of teachers, more tense environments. And our Cal State University of Fullerton CSUF did take a stand after the resolution was passed, Cal State University of Fullerton denounced it and said we're not going to send student teachers or place them or Belinda school district because we don't want curriculum to be watered down and we don't want to discourage education.

So please support those type of positions because we need to denounce the propaganda. And so I thank you for your time and I encourage you to be an ally to our educators.

Thank you and I appreciate the call and Ms. Hansel is actually a constituent of mine. Any other commenters on the line? Moderator not at this time. Any comments from my colleagues to close? Well, thank you.

So thank you, first of all to all of the educators and the experts who participated in today's panel, thank you to my colleagues, thank you as well to the Members of the public who participated. I want to especially honor the comment made by the representative from CSEA about the challenges facing classified employees.

That wasn't discussed today, but it is equally important as we think about the current state of education California today. If you were not able to testify, or if you have additional thoughts to add to your testimony, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the Senate Education Committee or the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee or visit our websites for instructions as to how to submit your input.

As I mentioned, you'll also find the materials from today's hearing on that website. You're comments and suggestions are important to us. We want to include your testimony in the official hearing records. Thank you again to everyone for your patience, especially the staff, for setting this up and for conducting this hearing. We have concluded the agenda for today's hearing. The joint Oversight hearing on the state of the educator workforce is now adjourned.