By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – Peninsula Community College is working to join community colleges around the country that are offering teacher-training programs amid what has become a national teacher shortage.

In Washington state, nine community colleges offer education degrees for teaching grade school and up. Six other states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico — have community colleges offering K-12 education degrees as well, programs that are traditionally found in four-year colleges.

Dr. Steven Thomas, Vice President of Instruction at PCC, told us they’ve submitted a Statement of Need document to the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to offer a Bachelor of Applied Studies, or BAS degree, in Teacher Education that will lead to a Washington Teaching Certificate in Elementary Education. He says once that is approved, the school will start building their degree program.

The expansion of these types of programs comes at a good time: Teacher shortages have worsened in the past decade, and fewer undergraduates are going into teacher training programs. A report in March showed the number of people completing a teacher-education program declined by almost a third in the decade that ended in the 2019 academic year.