Jan. 26—Hilldale Elementary first-grade teacher Molly Reeve says her passion for teaching “goes farther than anything you can learn in a course.”

Reeve, in her second year as a teacher, has a bachelor’s degree in health and human performance with a minor in psychology. It is not an education degree.

This makes Reeve part of a record number of emergency certified teachers in Oklahoma schools. Emergency certification allows a school district to hire someone with at least a bachelor’s degree to teach a subject or grade without having teacher training in those areas.

According to a story from the media outlet Oklahoma Voice, the state issued 4,676 emergency teaching certifications from June through December. The number, representing teaching hires for the 2023-24 school year, breaks the record of 4,574 set the previous year.

Hilldale Superintendent Erik Puckett said the district has hired between 15 and 20 new teachers a year over the past three years. Of those, six to 10 each year have been on emergency certification.

“We always want to find certified staff, the problem is we just don’t have enough people with certification apply to fill the positions,” Puckett said.

Puckett said a vast majority of Hilldale’s emergency hires go on to get their teaching certifications.

“You have to pass three tests, you have to take extra college classes on top of your bachelor’s and get what’s called an alternative certification,” Puckett said. “They give them three years to do that.”

Reeve said she is within one year of finishing her standard certification requirements.

“I’ve really always had a passion for teaching, and it’s been something I wanted to do,” she said. “It’s not what I went to school for. I was handed an opportunity, and it’s something I really love.”

Puckett said he has seen the number of emergency hires increase.

“I would feel safe to say 10 years ago we would have had one or two” needing emergency certificates, he said. “The hiring landscape for certified teachers who finished the process has changed over the past 10 years. Our teaching colleges are not graduating very many applicants at all with teaching degrees.

“We can hire anyone we want, it’s just praying we get classroom trained teachers available on year one, and that’s not getting any better. If anything, it’s just getting worse and harder to find teachers who have gone through the colleges of education and that is why you will continue to see an increase in the amount of emergencies.”

Fort Gibson Superintendent Scott Farmer said the district has eight emergency certification requests. However, many are from current staff members being hired to teach in different areas.

For example, a history teacher is assigned to teach humanities, even though the teacher is not certified in humanities, Farmer said.

“We make the request so he can teach that without us having to hire a full teacher,” he said. “It is continually getting more difficult to find certified teachers in some of the critical areas, such as special education, mathematics, science. All districts have had to become more creative with our staff in placing them in areas of strengths, but still trying to fulfill all the state requirements.”

Farmer said the district seeks certified teachers for core areas.