Teach for America Expands to Jacksonville, Florida

On April 23, 2007, Teach for America announced that they are expanding to Jacksonville, Florida beginning in the 2008-2009 school year.

Teach for America is a national organization that recruits top college graduates with all types of degrees for public school teaching positions and places them in high need areas across the country. Currently they have teachers in 25 regions of the United States, areas such as Native American reservations in South Dakota, inner-city schools in New York City and small agricultural towns in Mississippi Delta. Corps members commit to the program for a minimum of two years and teach all grade levels. In the seventeen years since Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp founded Teach for America, over fifteen thousand teachers have been placed in low-income areas, contributing to the education of 2.5 million students.

Jacksonville's Duval County Public School System is 19^th largest in the nation, serving 120,000 students in 160 schools. It is home to two public high schools consistently ranked in nation's top ten, Stanton College Preparatory School and Paxon School for Advanced Studies, both of which offer International Baccalaureate programs. However, Jacksonville officials are aware that there is more work to be done. Almost 40% of Jacksonville's schools earned a C or less in the 2005-2006 School Accountability Reports, a key school grading scale administered by the Florida Department of Education. Certainly part of the problem can be traced to a chronic lack of teachers. The Florida Department of Education anticipates a shortfall of 22,000 teachers in the 2007-2008 school year for the state as a whole, and similar shortages in the past have led to instructors in Duval County teaching subjects in which they aren't certified. With all this in mind, the Jacksonville educational community actively recruited Teach for America. The Chartrand Foundation and the Weaver family together raised or donated $2.2 million for the cause. In addition, various organizations in the city have come together to pledge financial support for Teach for America's efforts in Jacksonville for the first four years.

Teach for America plans to place at least fifty teachers in Jacksonville in the 2008-2009 school year and an additional fifty the following year. The schools in which they will teach have not yet been announced, but possibilities include Eugene Butler Middle School, Lake Forest Elementary School and Raines High School. There could be as many as 25 Jacksonville schools in the program during the first year.

Jacksonville's addition to Teach for America's roster is just one step in their growth plan. By 2010 they intend to have 7,500 teachers in over one thousand schools around the nation.