(The Center Square) – This week senators heard from educators how waiving unfunded mandates could provide relief to Pennsylvania’s financially overburdened schools.
Many say demands of the mandates are untenable given the limited resources made available to support them, though one area that has gone largely overlooked in the conversation is career and technical education, or CTE.
Dr. Michael Herrera, executive director of Upper Bucks Technical School, said challenges centers like his face come directly from the mandates.
“They deplete resources, stifle innovation, and create a dissonance between our curriculum and industry requirements, directly undermining our mission to equip students for the workforce,” he said.
In particular, Herrera focused on a widespread complaint legislators have been fielding from experts in professional communities, ranging from healthcare and policing to education and infrastructure: staffing shortages.
While Parkland Schoold District Superintendent Dr. Mark Madsen lamented that his district wasn’t even able to attract applicants for an open position for a German language teacher, Herrera says CTC’s face an often impossible task in recruiting subject matter experts to the profession.
Reform advocates claim that obtaining certification within the state is too difficult, deterring qualified candidates from pursuing teaching careers within the commonwealth. According to Herrera, it can take professionals up to 11 years to complete the path to teaching, and for many, the time-consuming process isn’t worth the cost.
Furthermore, much of their time is spent on curricula like history, which Herrera says is “inconsistent with the skills first model,” adding little to a candidate’s ability as an instructor in their field. Typically, candidates already have thousands of hours of experience in their field of expertise.
Fewer teachers means fewer spots available for students. In an interview with The Center Square, Lynda Sims-Morris, CEO of South Central PA’s Partnership for Career Development, said over 700 student applicants were turned away from Dauphin County Technical School this year, depriving them of a vital opportunity to pursue skills in their fields of interest.
For career development and learning a hands-on trade, working closely with teachers is vital to ensure comprehension, safety, and practical application.
“It’s all about mentoring,” says Sims-Morris, whose organization is one of only three in the state acting as liaisons between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor and Industry. “We have the framework. We just need the funding.”
Initiatives like hers are largely funded by grants from the Schools-to-Work program rather than consistent allocation from the state’s budget. In August, the state increased funding to CTE schools by $14.5 million.
“The money I think needs to come from the state directly to those programs to help ease that financial burden,” said Herrera, referencing successful CTE paths in states like Delaware and Ohio. “Allow us at the local level to be innovators.”
Pennsylvania’s CTE enrollment is currently 36th in the nation.
Upper Bucks serves as a model for what can go right with CTE, Herrera said. The school has partnered with NASA to create hardware used on the International Space Station, and 81% of their 2022 graduates had job offers before completing their diplomas.
To see more results like these, Morris-Sims insists that the emphasis — and the funding — needs to start early with well-defined metrics for success. Starting the career conversation as early as elementary school, she says, can create the common language needed to bridge the gap between career and the classroom.
