News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Putnam County School System is preparing its own tutoring program after declining to participate in Tennessee ALL Corps.
Federal Programs Supervisor Bridgett Carwile said the state’s program was restrictive and contains guidelines that would force the school system to pay back money if certain criteria is not met. Carwile said ESSER 3.0 money has been reserved for tutoring.
“We’re going to start with a couple of schools, start small and build it and see how it goes,” Carwile said. “Because of the sub shortage, we’re going to partner with Tennessee Tech. The Education Prep Program Department, we’re still in the works with that right now.
Carwile said the system is also considering using high school students who are taking CTE Teaching as a Profession classes. Carwile said the system wants flexibility to offer small but varying sizes of tutor groups instead of being locked into providing a 1:3 ratio.
“We may do a 1:4 or 1:5 ratio depending on how many students we can get from Tech that are interested in this,” Carwile said. “Then the same thing with the students that are in the teaching as a profession classes at their high schools right now.”
Carwile said one restriction that cannot be avoided is tutor training. She said those who participate in the tutoring program will still have to go through training.
“Right now we are working on some marketing tools to push out to the Tennessee Tech students,” Carwile said. “We’ll sit down with some of the professors over there and then we will start work on logistics at the school level. We’re having to work around some of the Tech schedule, some of our schedule.”
Carwile said the goal is to start the program at only a few schools at first. She said once they can gauge how effective the program has been, it could be implemented across the district.
Clay, Pickett, Van Buren and Warren County Schools are not participating in Tennessee ALL Corps, as well.
