A Central Coast school district is starting a program to help district employees become teachers.
Santa Maria-Bonita School District is kicking off the Pathway to Teaching program, in collaboration with California Lutheran University.
The district says the primary goal of the Pathway to Teaching program is to diversify their teaching workforce and make it more representative of their student population.
The program also hopes to deal with the teacher shortage the district, and many other districts across the country, is facing.
“Over the course of the last couple of years, we are seeing a teacher shortage, some of it came out of the pandemic, as teachers decided to leave the field, and as a result of that, combined with less people being interested in teaching these days, it’s kind of created a high need situation,” said California Lutheran University Dean of Graduate School of Education Mike Hillis.
The program starts next year. It will be 3 semesters long.
The district is focusing on filling elementary school and bilingual teaching positions.
When they finish the program, candidates will be fully credentialed teachers.
