Rules Eased as Schools Hunt New Teachers

On the eve of the most competitive race to hire elementary schoolteachers in California history, Gov. Pete Wilson loosened requirements for using intern teachers and complimented schools on their early progress toward shrinking classes, and the state’s largest school district took steps to protect itself.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, fearing that surrounding school systems may lure away some of its 32,000 teachers, began enforcing employment contracts that prevent teachers from leaving during the school year.

The scurry was touched off earlier this month after the California Legislature allocated $771 million, or $650 per pupil, to schools that reduce class sizes in the first and second grades, and either kindergarten or third grade, to 20 students by mid-February.

Most districts hope to begin when classes resume in September, and year-round campuses in two areas--Oakdale Union Elementary Unified near Modesto and Irvine Unified--have begun.

“That’s truly a remarkable feat,” said Wilson, who proposed the class reduction plan in May, “one that I hope other forward-thinking and innovative districts will repeat many times over in the coming weeks.”

The challenge aimed at improving reading and math instruction is particularly steep for urban districts such as Los Angeles Unified, which already were scrambling to find enough teachers and classroom space to accommodate the largest kindergarten and first-grade classes ever.

State education experts estimate that 19,500 additional teachers will be needed to scale back three primary grades at all of the state’s public schools. That is double the already spoken-for group that received California elementary teaching credentials this year.

Los Angeles Unified hopes to attract 2,000 new elementary teachers on top of the 1,000 it had initially expected to hire.

Although there have been hiring blitzes in the past to offset enrollment spikes, officials say the need has never emerged so abruptly or so broadly.

“We’re all hiring this group on top of the regular group, and it’s a more compressed time period,” said Sam Kresner, director of staff for United Teachers-Los Angeles. “We’ve always been in competition with the rest of the state, but not this kind of competition, where every district needs teachers. It’s fierce.”

To help increase the labor pool, Wilson on Friday signed into law a bill allowing districts to launch and expand internship programs. These programs allow people with college degrees, who have passed certain teacher tests, to enter classrooms and receive on-the-job training from mentor teachers and others.

The law, sponsored by Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico), a former teacher, removes the requirement that districts first prove they cannot fill an opening with a fully qualified teacher.

At a news conference, Wilson described the alternative credentialing law as a way to make sure that the eagerness of college graduates who are interested in teaching is not destroyed. Sometimes that enthusiasm is “blunted by an education bureaucracy,” he said, “that welcomes outsiders as warmly as aliens greeted earthlings in ‘Independence Day.’ ”

But some described the new law as largely symbolic, saying it would hardly begin to meet the gaping need. Bob Salley, director of certification for the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said no district intern request has ever been turned down for failing to prove it lacked sufficient teachers. But the programs are expensive and complicated to run, Salley said, and only five exist. They enrolled fewer than 200 new interns last year.

“There’s a certain exaggeration of the importance of this bill,” Salley said. “But if it serves to highlight the internship programs, that’s a good thing.”

Wilson also lauded those districts that have already begun limiting class sizes. Five classrooms at El Camino Elementary School in Irvine Unified now have limits, as do several more in the three-campus Oakdale Union Elementary District near Modesto.

Typical of smaller districts around the state, Irvine needs 33 more first-grade teachers to meet its short-term goals. Los Angeles Unified on Thursday took steps to ensure that its staff does not leave the district and head to Irvine and beyond by enforcing a much-ignored state law that requires teachers to stay put for an entire school year. The penalty for teachers who do leave can include suspension of their credentials for a year.

Generally, the provision--included in employment contracts signed by teachers when they are hired and automatically renewed every spring--has been routinely waived in Los Angeles. Some of the smaller surrounding districts have occasionally denied transfers to Los Angeles based on the 1976 Education Code rule.

Inglewood Unified, for instance, has made exceptions only in rare cases because, with $25,000 annual entry-level salaries more than $3,000 below those in Los Angeles, the district finds it hard to hold on to teachers.

“We’ve been the victim of this before, but we’ve always tried to be the nice guys,” said Michael Acosta, Los Angeles’ administrator in charge of teacher hiring. “It’s a situation now where we have to look out for the students.”

The new stringency came as unwelcome news to people like Suzanne Nassen, a kindergarten teacher who has worked in Los Angeles Unified for 11 years. Nassen gave notice a week ago after landing a job in Pico Rivera’s El Rancho Unified, near the home of her parents, who had offered to care for her year-old son. When she arrived at Rosemont Elementary near downtown Thursday, however, she found that her planned move had been blocked.

“I was surprised, but I’m willing to abide by my contract and wait until the end of the school year,” Nassen said.

Some of the teachers affected by the ruling were less understanding, flooding the United Teachers-Los Angeles offices with calls of protest, only to find that the union does not plan to fight the enforcement.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Unified is looking farther afield for its candidates, recruiting newly credentialed teachers at state college fairs, beginning with one at Fresno State in mid-August. Next week, district recruiters plan to kick off their out-of-state search by traveling to Portland, Ore., where there have been recent teacher layoffs.

By February, everyone involved in the process acknowledges, more untrained teachers--who receive what is known as an emergency permit--will land in Los Angeles’ classrooms. Currently, 1,700 elementary teachers hold such permits in Los Angeles, out of about 6,000 statewide.

Unlike interns, those teachers receive no formal on-the-job training and have not passed teaching tests required of other instructors, such as the California Basic Educational Skills Test.