Local Education Agencies (LEAs)
LWC is in a rural region of Kentucky where the U.S. Department of Education has identified critical teacher shortages in science, career and technical education, early childhood education, language arts, and special education (Kentucky Department of Education, 2021a). Within the region and physically close to LWC are two high-need local education agencies (LEAs) with which LWC has longstanding relationships established through broad memoranda of understanding (MOUs). Russell County Schools, the closest and historically the most involved with LWC, is home to five schools serving 2,933 P-12 students. Of these students, 71.8% are economically disadvantaged, and teacher turnover for 2019-2020 was reported at 9.2% (Kentucky Department of Education, 2021b). Adair County Schools, serving 2,598 P-12 students at five schools, is also near LWC. Similar to Russell County, 71.7% of Adair students are economically disadvantaged, and teacher turnover in 2020 was reported at 9.7% (Kentucky Department of Education, 2021c). Notably, teacher demographics at both LEAs lack the diversity present in their respective student bodies. Russell County’s student body is 10.4% Hispanic or Latino, yet only one of the 183 teachers in the district is Hispanic or Latino—all others are White. In Adair, 9.8% of students are Hispanic, Latino, or two or more races yet there are no Hispanic or Latino teachers in the LEA—171 of the district’s 174 teachers are White. While the focus of this Capacity Building proposal is to position LWC for an overall increase in STEM education enrollment, the co-PIs’ vision for a Track 1 project involves an explicit focus on recruiting URM students to diversify the LEA STEM teacher workforce. LWC Local Education Agencies