LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Kids have begun another school year in the Clark County School District, but the teacher in their classroom may not be a full time CCSD teacher.
With roughly 750 teacher positions left vacant at the beginning of the school year, long-term substitute teachers have been filling the gaps.
Nevada State College announced a plan Thursday to change that trend.
"We had a 35% shortage of teachers nationwide," Shartriya Collier, associate dDean of the NSC School of Education, said. "When you think about that in the state of Nevada, those numbers are even more dramatic."
Collier said NSC will break ground on a new education facility, The Glenn and Ande Christenson School of Education Building, in November, eventually quadrupling their annual graduation rate of qualified teachers.
"By 2025 we will be graduating 400 students at minimum every year," Collier said.
She said locally educated students are more likely to stick around the Vegas valley potentially filling badly needed gaps in CCSD classrooms and impacting the communities around them.
"My personal motto is transform the world one mind at a time," Collier said, "teaching is your opportunity to go into the community and see change."
Collier said the Glenn and Ande Christenson School of Education Building should be complete and ready for eager minds to hit the books by the Fall semester of 2021.
She said high school students can take advantage of their six Teacher Academy programs that allow freshmen through senior students take dual credit courses while the building is under construction.
Information on those programs can be found at NSC.edu.
