Don’t let CTE become an episode of Flip or Flop! Here are 4 musts for success

Switching school districts and Career and Technical Education programs can be a challenging task for a CTE director. It’s even more difficult if your goal is to revitalize a program. It can even resemble an episode of everyone’s favorite HGTV show, “Flip or Flop”.

Where do you begin? Do you change the cabinets (courses offered)? Is that a good color of paint (curriculum)?

For a CTE director walking into a new program, there are four things to request (pull and print) and review to have a successful “flip”.  Each one serves its own purpose:

1. School District Summary of Finance Report
2. PEIMS October Snapshot Data & the TSDS PEIMS Payroll Information By Program Intent Codes 21 thru 25
3. Course Selection Guides (some districts’ call Educational Planning Guide)
4. Master Schedules, Teachers Certifications, and your state Teacher Certification Chart.

1. First, pull and print your school district’s Summary of Finance Report.  The things that you want to review within this document are:

• CTE State Allotment – displays the amount of money that the CTE program brings in for your school district. From this number, you can calculate the 58 percent that should be coming back to the CTE program.
  • Many districts pay CTE administrators/teachers’ salaries out of this 58 percent, but once you subtract this amount out of the 58 percent, the remaining money should be coming back to the program for supplies, equipment and etc.
    • This is where the TSDS PEIMS Payroll Information By Program Intent Codes 21 thru 25, comes in handy (see down below).
  • In addition, you cannot pay for middle school/intermediate teachers’ salaries and supplies out of the 58 percent, unless the class that the teacher teaches receives weighted funding, such as Career and Technical Education classes for Students with Disabilities (CTED).
  • Your district should not be charging you for electricity, water etc. out of these allotment; if they are, then make sure that the district is charging ALL special programs electricity, water and etc. It is against the law for a district to only charge one special program for these types of operational costs.
• CTE Transportation Allotment–make sure that your district is requesting monies if they use school district vehicles to transport CTE students to practicum sites or transport students between campuses.

(Next page: 3 more CTE requests and reviews for success)

2. Second, request the PEIMS October snapshot data and the TSDS PEIMS Payroll Information By Program Intent Codes 21 thru 25, CTE is code 22.  First, review the PEIMS snapshot data to make sure that CTE students are being coded correctly (accountability) per their personal graduation plan (PGP). There are flowcharts that can help assist you with this process, via your states requirements.

Next, review the TSDS report, this will help you verify that the correct teacher’s (CTE teachers), are being paid for out of the correct account, also verify your teacher’s classroom percentages. For example, if you have a math teacher teaching Engineering Mathematics for two periods of the day, then the CTE department should only be paying for those two periods of that teachers salary, not their whole salary.

3. Third, print out a copy of your district’s Course Selection Guides from all schools that offer CTE courses. Use the guides to review the courses that you offer, but also revisit your curriculum providers like iCEV to see what you can add that brings new life into the program.

You also need to verify that every CTE course is being coded correctly within the districts reporting system. If a course such as Engineering Mathematics is being coded as a math class, then you are losing your CTE weighted funding. This particular course is a CTE course that can used as a Math credit; there are several courses like this. SPECIAL NOTE: These courses can sometimes require additional PD required by your state, so verify that the teachers teaching them have completed this professional development. You must have a printed verification of the teachers’ completion on file; this is because these particular courses are utilized as other core credits, not just CTE credits.

4. Lastly, request each schools master schedule and make a spreadsheet of ALL of your CTE teachers–remember to check the CTE courses that can be used as other core credits (above).  Make sure to list all of the classes that each teacher, teaches next to their name.

After, you have completed the spreadsheet, pull and print all of your teacher’s certifications. Then, pull and print your states teacher certification chart; this particular chart shows what teacher certifications can be used to teach each individual course. Next, take the teacher spreadsheet you created, each teacher’s certification(s) that you printed out, and the states teacher certification chart (all 3 together) to verify that your teachers are certified to teach each individual class that is on the master schedule for the upcoming year.

Please note that just because a teacher is certified within a particular area/career cluster, does not mean that the teachers’ certification allows them to teach every course within a particular area/career cluster.

All of these documents combined, will give you a great starting point in the process of reviewing and improving your CTE program. Remember, this is not going to happen overnight, it takes time; but these will help get you started in the right direction. GOOD LUCK!