For decades those were often the only options. But in recent years, California has expanded opportunities for teachers to get paid training for work at high-need schools, namely through special grants and through programs known as teacher residencies. This fall, the state will launch its first registered apprenticeship program for teachers, which means it gives students a chance to earn a wage and a teaching credential at the same time.

These programs are promising, but they’re set against a troubling backdrop, said Mary Vixie Sandy, the executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, in a state hearing last month. “More teachers are entering the profession, but too many are leaving,” she said, adding that there is a “continued reliance on underprepared personnel, emergency-type permits, and substitutes to fill persistent vacancies.”

In the last academic year, almost 16,000 teachers in the state entered the classroom underprepared, about 5% of the total teacher workforce, according to the most recent report by the commission. It’s a significant increase compared to the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years. Areas in California’s Central Valley, the far north, and rural parts of the state, such as near the Sierra, have some of the highest rates of underprepared teachers.

Being a teacher is burdensome and for many, cost prohibitive, even in areas with a lower cost of living. California requires teachers to get a credential, which can cost over $30,000, in addition to a bachelor’s degree. Students also have to spend at least 600 hours in a classroom, often unpaid. As a result, many teachers carry student debt for years, according to an analysis from the Learning Policy Institute, an education research nonprofit.

While cheaper education and training programs exist, and some teachers in high-need areas are granted temporary permits to work without a full credential, it can take years to pay off the college debt. Starting salaries for teachers are low, often around $63,000 a year. Many new teachers quit, and retention rates are especially low for those who lack the proper credentials.

Nationally, both Democrats and Republicans have supported teacher apprenticeship programs. In his gubernatorial campaign in 2018, Gov. Gavin Newsom promised he’d create 500,000 apprenticeships over the next 10 years, many of them in fields where apprenticeships didn’t exist before, such as teaching. President Donald Trump said he’ll expand apprenticeships, too.

Still, to be recognized as an apprenticeship program by the state, employers and local agencies must go through complicated planning and vetting. The Tulare and Santa Clara county offices of education spent roughly two years setting up the first teacher apprenticeship programs, which will serve just eight students in the first year.

A teacher prep program with ‘divisive’ ideologies

In 2024, the Biden administration awarded the Tulare County Office of Education roughly $18 million to expand and improve teacher training, including designing future residencies and apprenticeships.

The Trump administration abruptly cut that funding last year, saying the grants promoted “ divisive ideologies,” such as diversity, equity and inclusion that no longer fit the U.S. Education Department’s “priorities.” The Hanford Joint Unified School District, about an hour south of Fresno, was one of many school systems affected by the federal cuts. Hanford has about 55,000 people, surrounded on all sides by dairy, nut and fruit farms or manufacturers who support them. Most people in Hanford have never finished college, making it particularly difficult for the district to find qualified teachers.

The district often temporarily waives the education and training requirements for new teachers, in some cases allowing them to take on a classroom alone with no prior experience. These emergency-style waivers or permits are especially common for teachers in math, science and special education.

The federal grant would have provided a pipeline for teacher residents in Hanford. Residents get full training and mentorship before they are in charge of a classroom and, as a result, have significantly higher retention rates than teachers with emergency-style permits or waivers, said Melanie Leung-Gagné, a researcher with the Learning Policy Institute.

Of the teachers who started at the Hanford school district without the proper training during the COVID-19 pandemic, about half have since left, according to local teacher data reviewed by CalMatters.

An easier hire but at what cost

Hanford West High School is a collection of long, single-story concrete buildings near the train tracks, which run north-south through the town. In Luis Garcia’s special education classroom, long chains of colored paper and posters cover his wall — his students recently decorated the classroom to celebrate his Teacher of the Year award.

But Garcia’s excellence is an exception in more ways than one. When he started teaching in 2018, he didn’t have the proper qualifications. For the first few years, such underqualified teachers are often called interns but are treated similarly to regular employees — handling an entire classroom on their own —- complete with a full-time salary. They are expected to simultaneously enroll in a program to gain their teaching license.

“In a pinch it’s much easier to hire an intern but at what cost,” said Brooke Berrios, who oversees some teacher preparation programs at the Tulare County Office of Education, including many at Hanford West High.

In retrospect, Garcia said more robust training, such as the residency or apprenticeship model, would have better prepared him for the job. “It was difficult because I was on my own,” he said while tidying the decorations before class one morning last month. He mentors both residents and interns now and said he can see clear differences in the quality of their training.

Trump cuts put a student’s future in flux

Unlike during Garcia’s internship, resident teachers aren’t responsible for a classroom their first year. Students co-teach with the help of a mentor while enrolled in a teaching preparation or graduate program. Residents receive a stipend of up to $40,000 during their first year of training. The new apprenticeship program will work similarly, at least in its first year. The main difference is that apprentices will also have jobs as substitute teachers, allowing them to earn more money on top of their stipend.

Last spring, Hayden Pulis was finishing his bachelor’s degree and helping coach football at the University of Central Oklahoma when he decided to return home to Hanford and become a teacher. “I didn’t have any teaching experience before,” he said, stepping away from his class and letting his mentor supervise the students. “Personally, I wasn’t ready to take over a classroom.” He applied to join the residency program at Hanford High School, 2 miles on the other side of the railroad tracks from Hanford West High, where Garcia teaches.

But a few weeks later, he learned in a meeting that the money was cut, putting his future in flux. In an average year, the Tulare County Office of Education supports about 20 residents, said Berrios. With the federal grant, the office was planning to serve almost 100 students, including Pulis, in collaboration with other county offices.

For weeks the district scrambled to find a solution for its incoming class. Using other state funds, Berrios said the school district was able to fulfill its commitment to Pulis, though his stipend was reduced to $35,000.

It was a “weight off my chest,” Pulis said. If the program hadn’t come through, he said he’d probably still be coaching football.

An opportunity to build wealth

All told, California has spent roughly $2.1 billion over the past decade to address teacher shortages, often through grants to make credentialing programs cheaper and make the training better. The largest pot of state funding goes toward residency programs, including the stipends.

There’s also the Golden State Teacher Grant, which gives students up to $10,000 toward the cost of their teaching credential. In return, aspiring teachers commit to working in schools, such as Hanford West High or Hanford High, where the students are majority low-income, English learners or foster youth. Pulis used the money to cover much of his tuition. The grant program is set to end this year, unless state lawmakers approve new funding in the upcoming budget.

Starting this summer, the state is launching a new grant that pays student teachers $10,000 for the hundreds of hours of classroom work during their preparation.

For Pulis, just thinking about the impact of these programs on his life makes him emotional. The grants allowed him to get a head start on building wealth, he said, speaking for himself and his wife, who is working as a waitress while in nursing school. In the past year, Pulis got married and moved to California — major expenses that would have been much harder to bear, he said, if not for the Golden State Teacher Grant and the $35,000 residency stipend.

Many of these grants and programs didn’t exist when Garcia was starting as a teacher in 2018. The internship was the only feasible route financially, he said, since other programs required him to study or work without a salary.

Internship programs, such as the one Garcia did, often pay more than more rigorous training programs, such as residencies, though Berrios said she intends to continue bringing those costs down.

Garcia still has about $30,000 in debt from the graduate-level teaching program he enrolled in as an intern. He also has another $50,000 in debt from his bachelor’s degree at Sacramento State.

Still, he said he had no regrets and was proud of his recent Teacher of the Year award. “Am I rich? No. But it’s nice that your colleagues see your hard work and your students praise you.”

When asked if the award came with a cash prize, he laughed and said no. “I’ll gladly take a donation.”

The post Training to be a teacher is expensive. These California programs can help appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Gov. Gavin Newsom made a pledge to create 500,000 new apprenticeships in the decade after taking office, part of his broader strategy to boost the state’s job programs. 

He’s on track to reach that goal — with about 200,000 apprenticeships so far — according to a press release last month from the governor’s office. 

But a few weeks after that, he cited a new and much larger number. “On the trajectory we’re currently on — this is an actual number — and if you want to have us back into this number, I’m happy to provide that information later: 624,895 apprenticeships, 624,895 that we are currently on track to achieve well beyond the 500,000 by 2029,” he said.

What changed? Nothing, actually. 

The 200,000 figure represents the number of the state’s “registered apprenticeships.” To get registered, the state has certain requirements: most importantly, employers must treat their apprentices as employees, provide them with training, and pay them for the entirety of that training. Most registered apprenticeships are union-led and require years of prior education or work experience. Firefighters, for example, represent the largest apprenticeship program in the state, though the program is hyper selective.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, said the 624,895 estimate includes many other jobs programs, none of which are actually apprenticeships, according to the state’s definition. Along with the roughly 200,000 “registered apprenticeships,” the governor’s office counted people who participated in various internships and training programs from the state’s labor and health agencies, such as one grant that taught farmworkers how to increase recycling and composting. Those farmworkers received little, if any, direct compensation as a result of their training. 

Many adults lack the work experience or education to qualify for an apprenticeship, said Stewart Knox, secretary of the California Labor and Workforce and Development Agency. He defended the governor’s recent estimates, saying that these programs, while not “registered apprenticeships,” still offer similar benefits and have fewer barriers to entry. “For me, it’s less about the goal, it’s more about the people we serve.”

Knox said the state is still on track to meet the campaign goal of 500,000 registered apprenticeships.

Billions in public money for job training 

After Newsom’s election in 2018, Brent Parton was part of a team of researchers at New America, a left-leaning think tank, that devised a strategy on how to add 500,000 new apprentices by 2029. In his 2020 report — and in the state’s action plan, which he helped create soon thereafter — the definition was clear: only state-approved or “registered” apprenticeships counted. 

“Are there unregistered apprenticeships? Sure. How many are there? We don’t know because they’re not registered,” he said. “That goal is about growing the registered apprenticeship system.”

In a state-registered apprenticeship, the apprentice is an employee both during and after their training. An official apprenticeship program also agrees to provide participants with a standardized credential at the end of their training, akin to a college degree, that’s transferable for similar kinds of jobs. Yet many of the programs that Newsom cited provide only pieces of that model, such as an internship that doesn’t guarantee a job. 

“The governor is doing the right thing by setting a vision for where he wants to get to. I think the state is going to have to make choices about what’s the universe of programs that it’s including in that,” Parton said. 

Nonetheless, he noted that California has made unprecedented investments in job training over the last few years — a total of $5.7 billion, according to Newsom’s remarks at a recent press conference. Parton said California is one of the few states that gives apprenticeship programs public funds to offset training costs.

“Regardless of what goal was set or where the governor is saying it is, I think what California’s done puts it on a really strong track to get there. Whether it’s 500,000 or 650,000 (apprenticeships), the conditions are really right.”

Trump, Newsom agree: more apprenticeships

Both Democrats and Republicans support expanding apprenticeships, but they disagree about how apprenticeship should be defined. A year before Newsom announced his goal in 2018, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, calling for more apprenticeships across the country as a way to “promote affordable education and rewarding jobs.”

Trump’s order gave employers more discretion to create their own apprenticeships, effectively wresting control away from certain unions and government agencies. Biden rescinded Trump’s order in 2021, while releasing a statement saying that he was expanding apprenticeships too.

While some of the programs that Newsom most recently mentioned aren’t registered apprenticeships, Knox said they were included in the tally because they offer a pathway to access those apprenticeships. He said the governor’s language doesn’t reflect any change in policy. 

One such program, run by the nonprofit Public Works Alliance, used about $11 million in philanthropic and county funds to train roughly 600 youth to become emergency medical technicians and paramedics. The organization received an additional $21 million from the state’s 2022-23 budget to expand the training across the state. 

Unlike an apprenticeship program, the students receive a stipend to attend class and because they’re not employees, graduates must find a job on their own. Alex Briscoe, a principal with the organization, said the employment rate for graduates is about 90% but that the wages for emergency medical technicians are low, about $18 to $24 an hour.

One of the most lucrative options for graduates is to become a firefighter apprentice, where the starting wage is often more than $40 an hour. Certified emergency medical technicians and paramedics get admission priority but that program is so competitive that even qualified candidates often wait years to secure a spot. 

“Many of these young people face barriers to employment,” Briscoe said. Some are current or former foster youth while others have been through the juvenile justice system. The long-term plan, he said, is to partner with the fire department and create new apprenticeships, giving more youth a pathway into a better job. 

The post Fact check: Did Gavin Newsom really help create 625,000 new job opportunities in California? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.