Cal Lutheran Adds Evening Program in Response to Demand for Teachers

Swamped by a growing number of people who want to become teachers, Cal Lutheran University will offer its third teacher certification program, starting in fall 1998.

With state legislators expected to appropriate roughly $1 billion to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade for the upcoming school year, Cal Lutheran is planning a two-year evening program for people in the workplace who want to switch to the teaching profession. It will accept 20 people per semester.

Shortly after $971 million was appropriated last summer, Cal Lutheran began its first two-year evening certification program, currently serving 50 people who were granted “emergency permits” to teach while completing their certification classes.

To enroll in a certification program, a student is required to have a bachelor’s degree.

“[The state money] put an increased demand on an already strained system,” said Carol Bartell, Cal Lutheran’s dean of education.

The school also has about 200 full-time students in its daytime credential program, which lasts one year.

Before the new program begins, faculty and administrators must develop a plan that would enable those with day jobs to get the necessary experience teaching pupils, which is done under supervision as part of the course requirement.

“We feel it’s an experience that can’t be duplicated through a video,” Bartell said.

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Many of those students might have to resort to using vacation time or taking brief leaves from work, she said.

Despite the inconvenience, administrators do not anticipate a shortage of applications, particularly since Cal Lutheran is the only four-year school with its main campus in Ventura County.

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Bartell said all of the 192 students certified in 1996 who sought teaching positions got hired. Some get hired on the spot at the school’s annual on-campus spring job fair.

Two-thirds of the students in the programs are vying for certification to teach at the elementary school level. Some teachers in the upper elementary grade levels want to switch to K-3 because of the reduced class sizes.

“Teachers see this as a very attractive option,” Bartell said.

Cal Lutheran hired one full- and six part-time teachers to handle evening classes during the last school year. More part-time teachers will be hired for fall 1998.

The $325-per-credit tuition pays the entire cost of running all three credential programs. “It’s not a hardship for us,” Bartell said.

A student needs 32 credits for certification.

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The enrollment boom comes after the state last July made available $771 million--about $650 per pupil--for 895 qualifying school districts to reduce class sizes to 20 students or fewer in the lower grades.

The Legislature also appropriated $200 million to pay for additional structures to house the classes. The vote came with guidelines that gave priority to first- and second-grade classes, followed by either kindergarten or third grade.

Ventura County’s 18 districts with elementary schools received a total of $13.9 million for class-size reduction in 1996-97 and another $4.4 million to purchase 147 portable classrooms, according to county schools Supt. Charles Weis.

“The school districts saw the importance of this and really jumped on it,” he said.

Weis said 91 additional classrooms were found in existing space traditionally used for other purposes, including libraries and computer rooms.

The county hired 343 additional teachers for kindergarten through third grade and is expected to hire an additional 150 to 200 for the upcoming school year.

Weis said 18,764 of the county’s 41,650 lower-grade pupils were in smaller classes last school year, dropping the average class size from about 30 to 18.5, he said.

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With the Legislature expected to appropriate $800 per pupil for the upcoming school year, Weis estimated that 30,000 of an anticipated enrollment of 42,000 pupils will be in smaller classes.

“Unfortunately we won’t be able to get them all in reduced classes due to a lack of space and a lack of [portable] classrooms,” he said.

About two-thirds of Cal Lutheran’s students in credential programs are either longtime area residents or degree holders who decided to remain in the area, according to Bartell. The need for teachers from outside the state continues to grow.

Even before school districts received the $971 million, about 6,000 students received credentials each year in California, representing roughly half the number of people hired, according to the state Department of Education.