By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
GREAT BEND — The Great Bend School District is starting to get applications from people who qualify to be substitute teachers under an emergency declaration issued by the Kansas Board of Education on Jan. 12. The declaration, which lasts until June 1 of this year, waives the requirement that substitutes must have at least 60 semester credit hours from a regionally accredited college or university.
John Popp, the district's assistant superintendent, told members of the USD 428 Board of Education at their meeting on Tuesday that he is already working with four people who fall under the new guidelines.
"We're going to keep them purely at the elementary level," Popp said. "We're going to make sure that they have some support because all of them will be younger than the TA's that they're working with. We're going to make sure that they're set up to succeed, but all of them have some type of background or history in working with kids."
The statewide declaration was motivated by a shortage of substitute teachers caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Popp said it may help reduce the teacher shortage in the future.
"I think all of them have expressed interest in becoming teachers at some point, and so this is a great way to bring them in and get them started in our district."
The emergency declaration requires substitute teachers to be at least 18 years old, have a high school diploma, be fingerprinted, pass a background check and submit a completed application to the Kansas Department of Education.