Dear Colleagues:
I had the privilege last week of presiding over my first in-person Kentucky Teacher of the Year ceremony at the Kentucky State Capitol Rotunda.
I got the chance to help recognize 24 outstanding public school teachers from across the state. Together, these teachers have almost 400 years of teaching experience and have influenced the lives of literally thousands of students over their careers.
During that ceremony, we named Crittenden County’s Mandy Perez as the 2023 Kentucky Teacher of the Year and Middle School Teacher of the Year. Hopkins County’s Kelly Gates was named the 2023 Elementary Teacher of the Year and Woodford County’s Amber Sergent was named as the 2023 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year.
Perez, a 6th-grade English and language arts teacher at Crittenden County Middle School, said her goal is to help her students fall in love with reading. This mission has been her life’s work as an educator, helping students connect to reading as “the purest form of entertainment.”
“Educators and society owe it to our students to promote a love for reading,” Perez said in a Kentucky Teacher story. “Stories can be used as learning tools to teach the importance of understanding one’s culture, being kind, showing acceptance, exercising patience, working through differences, practicing the power of giving. There are so many lessons students can relate to and connect within a story. It’s these types of stories that teach them how to cope, deal with situations and understand who they are.”
Gates has been a teacher in Hopkins County Public Schools for her entire 26-year educational career. One of the ways she impacts her students is through the Courtyard of Curiosity, Pride Elementary’s outdoor learning space. She applied for numerous grants opportunities, secured funding, worked with a local volunteer organization and collaborated with a local landscaping business to create the garden space.
Gates also uses the Courtyard of Curiosity for some of her favorite lessons with local partners like the Pennyroyal Master Gardeners. For the past five summers, master gardener and retired teacher Laura Teague has invited the Courtyard of Curiosity Club to her personal garden to learn about the hybridization of daylilies. Gates said her students, “feel like mad scientists when they learn about diploids and tetraploids and how to cross flowers for desired characteristics.”
Sergent, a social studies teacher at Woodford County High School, said one of her main goals in the classroom is to find ways for her students to fall in love with the past the same way she did back in Pam Harper’s 8th-grade social studies class at Pendleton County Middle School. Harper found a way to tie together a class in U.S. history from the American colonies through the Civil War with Operation Desert storm in the early 1990s, helping Sergent and her classmates see how the past influences the present.
“The very first thing, it doesn’t matter what we’re using as a resource, we have to first invest in the ‘Why does this matter?’” she said in a Kentucky Teacher article. “Why does this matter to you at 15, 16, 17, 18 years old beyond a test, beyond a score? That’s the first thing of establishing a relationship to the past and understanding human beings making decisions and affecting others.”
These remarkable teachers live out the three big ideas in United We Learn every day in their classrooms – creating a more vibrant experience for every student, encouraging innovation in our schools and creating a bold new future for Kentucky’s schools through collaboration with our communities. I am so thankful I was there to help present these awards and I look forward to seeing what they accomplish next.
And remember, nominations for the 2024 Teacher of the Year award will begin on Nov. 1. Please pass this information along to your families and start thinking about who you think makes a deserving candidate.
I also wanted to note that the Local Superintendents Advisory Council (LSAC) will meet virtually tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. ET. They will be reviewing charter school regulations that will be presented to the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) at its October 12 meeting.
These regulations should not be confused as my recommendation of best practices for charter schools. Instead, the regulations I have developed for consideration by the KBE represent KDE’s attempts as an executive branch agency to comply with the law we were given by the Kentucky General Assembly in House Bill (HB) 9 from the 2022 session. Like many of you, I believe there are numerous constitutional uncertainties with HB 9. However, until the judicial branch holds otherwise, we must presume HB 9 is constitutional and move forward with implementation.
Unfortunately, HB 9 was very prescriptive and left little to be decided by the education policy experts on the KBE, at KDE, and throughout the state. The proposed regulations are drafted to fulfill the KBE’s obligation in HB 9 to promulgate regulations carrying out the legislation.
You can watch LSAC on the KDE Media Portal.
Kind regards,
Jason E. Glass, Ed.D.
Commissioner and Chief Learner
Emergency Substitute Certifications
If an applicant for emergency substitute certification does not meet the requirement of 64 hours of college credit but was issued an emergency substitute certificate for the 2021-2022 school year, they are eligible for an emergency substitute teaching certificate for the 2022-2023 school year.
Senate Bill 1 from the 2021 special legislative session expanded the qualifications for emergency substitutes during the 2021-2022 school year. Specifically, the bill provided:
Section 8. (1) Notwithstanding the requirements of KRS 161.100, 16 KAR 2:030, and any other statute or administrative regulation to the contrary, for the 2021-2022 school year, a local school district may employ individuals to serve as short- or long-term substitute teachers under the requirements of this subsection. An individual must comply with the background checks required under subsection (5) of this section and have:
(a) At least 64 hours of college credit; or
(b) A high school diploma or equivalent and 4 years of occupational experience related to education, childcare, or the subject area to be taught.
An individual hired under this subsection must apply for the one-year emergency substitute certification from the Education Professional Standards Board, and a school district may employ the individual prior to the receipt of the certificate if all other requirements of this subsection are met.
House Bill 277 from the 2022 Regular Session included the following language extending emergency certification for the 2022-2023 school year:
Section 2. Any person granted an emergency teaching certificate pursuant to KRS 161.100 by the Education Professional Standards Board during the 2021-2022 school year shall be eligible to renew that emergency certificate for the 2022-2023 school year, notwithstanding any administrative regulation to the contrary.
While the House Bill 277 language specified emergency teaching certificate, it is believed that this was meant as a broad term to include both emergency teaching and substitute certificates. Therefore, those individuals who were issued an emergency substitute teaching certificate under the expanded criteria for the 2021-2022 school year may be issued an emergency substitute certificate for the 2022-2023 school year.
The application for emergency substitute certification has been updated in the Kentucky Educator Certification System to allow districts to request an emergency substitute teaching certificate for those individuals who were issued the certificate for the 2021-2022 school year under the expanded criteria.
For those candidates who have less than 64 hours of college credit but held an emergency substitute certificate during the past school year, the district should select the second option under Element Confirmation. Please note that in accordance with KRS 161.020, an individual must possess the certificate before providing services as an emergency substitute.
If you have any questions, email Todd Davis, director of the Division of Educator Preparation and Certification in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Educator Licensure and Effectiveness.
2022 Comprehensive Improvement Planning Regional Trainings
The Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Continuous Improvement and Support will offer a free three-hour training session at various locations across the state regarding comprehensive school improvement planning (CSIP) and comprehensive district improvement planning (CDIP).
Participants will explore the various diagnostics that drive the CSIP/CDIP process, using improvement planning to connect the district/school level goals and strategies aligned to the key core work processes. The training also will explore the leadership team’s role in cultivating and leveraging improvement plans to drive daily work.
Those responsible for CSIP and CDIP development should attend. In-person morning sessions will be available at each location from 8:30-11:30 a.m. local time, along with one virtual afternoon session. For more information, email Ruth Swanson.
To register for a training, go to the Comprehensive Improvement Planning Regional Workshops registration website. Training locations and dates are:
-
Oct. 12: Kentucky Educational Development Corporation, Lexington
-
Oct. 13: Kentucky Educational Development Corporation, Ashland
-
Oct. 18: West Kentucky Educational Cooperative, Murray
-
Oct. 19: Green River Regional Educational Cooperative, Bowling Green
-
Oct. 26, 12:30-3:30 p.m. ET: Virtual Microsoft Teams training
School Report Card: Final Collection/ Approval Reminders
The School Report Card (SRC) data entry and approval tasks are due by the end of this week.
Sept. 30 is the due date for entering the superintendent message, other collection items and district approvals. The Kentucky SRC Data Approval and Collection Tool is used to complete these tasks for the Overview, Education Opportunity and Transition to Adult Life domains.
District School Report Card contacts can download a summary of approval and collection data for their district within the SRC Data Approval and Collection Tool under the “downloads” tab to verify all collector items have been entered and approvals are complete.
The deadline for having the School Profile Report available in the local board office is Oct. 1. The schools in your district will need to complete data entry, print and collect signatures – school-based decision making council members if applicable, principal and superintendent – this week to meet this legislative requirement.
Data recently loaded to the SRC Approval Tool for high school and district review includes:
- Educational Opportunity, Advanced Coursework: International Baccalaureate data.
- Educational Opportunity, Career and Technical Education (CTE): Career Pathways, CTE Participation, CTE Student Objective, Early Postsecondary Opportunities
- Transition to Adult Life, Transition to Adult Life (2021 graduates)
Public release dates for the 2022 School Report Card, including assessment, accountability and federal classification data, are:
-
Thursday, Oct. 13: District embargo opens
-
Friday, Oct. 14: Media embargo opens
-
Monday, Oct. 17: KDE media opportunity mid-day; embargo ends 11:59 p.m. ET
-
Tuesday, Oct. 18: Public release
|