The Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE), through a competitive bidding process, has selected the Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE) to implement a program designed to help recruit highly qualified teachers for low-performing schools and help meet a critical need.
In January 2006, the California Department of Education invited California county offices of education to compete for funding to launch the California Teacher Recruitment Program (CTRP). The program is authorized by Assembly Bill 146 (Laird), Budget Act of 2005, and provides up to $3 million for the program. In April, SCOE was selected to lead and coordinate the effort.
"It is our hope, and our expectation, that this recruitment program will help us find and place the best teachers in the schools where they are most needed," said Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools David W. Gordon.
The Tulare County Office of Education will implement the program. SCOE will monitor the contractor's work and expenditures, and evaluate the program. TCOE will focus its efforts on the recruitment of teachers meeting federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standards that are of the following types:
- Special education teachers in grades K-12,
- Mathematics teachers in grades 7-12, and
- Science teachers in grades 7-12.
TCOE identified the following three geographic areas in California in which it will focus its recruitment efforts for schools in deciles 1-3 on the state's Academic Performance Index:
- Riverside and San Bernardino Counties,
- Los Angeles County, and
- San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys.
The contractor will be required to focus on teachers with diverse ethnic backgrounds. Efforts must be made to recruit male K-12 special education teachers and female mathematics and science teachers for grades 7-12. The contractor also must work on recruiting individuals for whom teaching is a first career and individuals who currently work in other fields.
The program began August 24, 2006, and will end on January 31, 2008.
For more information about the California Teacher Recruitment Program, call Donna Glassman-Sommer at (559) 730-2549.