Some District 186 Teachers Not Properly Certified

foxillinois

The Sangamon County Regional Superintendent is auditing District 186.

He’s uncovered the district has 12 major teacher credential violations, six of those stem from an audit conducted two years ago.

teacher verification

It took more than 200 hours for school administrators to pour over more than 1,300 teachers records. So what did they find?

The Sangamon County Regional Superintendent’s office found district 186 is in violation of 74 state Board of Education codes. “Under my tenure here I can’t recall having that issue with other schools,” regional superintendent, Jeff Vose, said. Vose led the audit.

His team found 12% of teachers are missing official transcripts from their files. Seventeen percent are missing proof of tuberculosis tests, and 11% are missing employment verification forms.

Not to mention the more than 12 who are not certified to teach at certain grade levels. “We certainly believe that everyone should be certified to teach in the positions their teaching in,” Dan Ford, president of the Springfield Education Association, said.

Although hiring is not controlled by the union, Ford still believes District 186 teachers should be held responsible. “Sometimes people aren’t aware that what they needed or the endorsement they needed might have changed since their last certificate registration,” Ford said.

Jeff Vose agrees, but does not think this is an excuse for the 74 certification violations. He wants to make sure the students are receiving the best education from certified teachers.

“Someone who is not qualified to teach health or technology and don’t have the certificate, those are what I call major infractions,” Vose said.

“Students are getting a quality education, a free quality education just like they did every day before this happened,” Dan Ford said.

The district has 45 days to correct the violations. If they do not, they could be placed on a probationary status or a watch-list.

District officials declined to comment on the violations.

 This article originally appeared on foxillinois