The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) announced the launch of a new online teacher recruitment platform on Tuesday.
The platform - TeachMO.org - will be used to identify the next generation of teachers in the state.
DESE is partnering with TEACH, a national nonprofit organization, to create and operate the platform.
The platform is one of the many recruitment and retention initiatives that the state is investing in over the next three years.
TeachMO.org acts as the centralized hub for prospective teachers to explore the profession, access free, comprehensive resources, and receive support in applying to educator preparation programs, according to a press release.
“I hope Missouri families, educators, and K-12 stakeholders take note of this new TeachMO.org campaign and can see our agency’s commitment to addressing this serious issue for our state," Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven said.
Commissioner for DESE Dr. Paul Katnik said the big components of this new platform is recruitment and rendition grants.
"We're providing funds to every educator prep program in the state, every community college, all of our school districts and all of our charter schools to focus on teacher recruitment," Katnik said. "We're also providing grants to our school districts and charter schools to work on teacher retention and that's to try to boost the supply and demand side that's going on around the state right now."
This new digital platform is supposed to help people learn to navigate as an educator step by step Katnik said.
"It's basically the bridge between a person who decides 'I want to be a teacher' and entering an education prep program and beginning their preparation to be a teacher and it walks them through all that information," Katnik said. "What do you need to know? What areas of certification are there? How do you apply? Where are the programs in the state? All of that kind of stuff that kind of helps people go from one point to the other."
Katnik said they created this platform to help with the persistent areas of teacher shortages.
"We're creating less teachers, and yet our demand for teachers is up because our retention rates aren't as high as they need to be, and that's a bad combination," Katnik said. "We have greater demand and we have less supply and that just doesn't work."
Communications director for Missouri National Education Association Mark Jones said they are still reviewing this new platform but acknowledged finding educators is getting harder.
"In the state of Missouri, we have to take responsibility through the legislature that we're 50th in the nation in beginning teacher pay and we're constantly the bottom of average teacher pay," Jones said. "If you want to lure people into a profession, that requires the bare minimum four years of education in college and you're going to have to compensate them appropriately as you would any other profession."
Jones said for years they have seen the number of people entering the education profession dropping and that they're not replacing those who're retiring.
"The competition for educators is so bad that at one point Kansas put a billboard in our state that said 'Tired of low pay? Come over to Kansas, we pay better,'" Jones said. "That is the competition that we're seeing just on our borders and if we want to make sure that we have the best and brightest in our classrooms and our school buildings, we have to make sure we're compensating them appropriately and respectfully."
Spokesperson for CPS Michelle Baumstark said in an email that they are excited about the possibilities the recruitment tool poses.
"In Columbia, we are not currently experiencing a classroom teacher shortage," Baumstark said. "We are in a much better position in that area than other districts may be at this time. We are still in need of classroom aides, custodial staff members and additional nutrition services employees."
According to a press release, over the last decade, enrollment in Missouri teacher preparation programs has declined more than 25%.
Katnik said they have two goals for Teach.MO.org.
"One big goal is to get more people studying and preparing to be teachers and on the other is our retention side," Katnik said. "We need to control our hiring rate."
