Pennsylvania boosts student teacher stipend, but funding still falls short to cover all

Pennsylvania has allocated a total of $30 million to a stipend program for student teachers, but the funding will cover only about half of the students who applied for it.

Gov. Josh Shapiro signed off on the stipend program in December, allotting $10 million to support college students spending a semester student teaching in the 2024-25 academic year. This year’s state budget, which passed last week, funneled an additional $20 million to the program.

The state requires all future educators to complete at least 12 weeks of a student-teaching placement.

While student teaching gives college students valuable experience in a classroom, it is also a time when universities advise students not to work an additional job in favor of directing their attention and energy to the demands of the placement.

This creates a financial burden for students such as Brianna Savko, who is unsure how she will afford to pay for groceries, rent and gas to travel to her 16-week student teaching placement at Greensburg Salem’s Nicely Elementary School in the fall — all without working a paid job.

Being 14 weeks pregnant with a child due in January further complicates Savko’s financial situation, the Hempfield resident said.

“I’m really left with the choice of student teaching and working and trying to get my work done and be pregnant, or not student teach,” said Savko, a rising senior at Carlow University. “But then it’s like ‘Why did I put all this time and money and effort into my school to come so close and not cross the finish line?’ ”

Stipend impact limited

The stipend program — awarded on a first-come, first-served basis — is meant to mitigate the financial strain on student teachers. It will provide $10,000 to each recipient, plus an additional $5,000 for students working in hard-to-staff schools. Each students’ mentor teacher will also receive $5,000.

Of the 3,800 students who applied for the stipend since its opening in April, about 2,000 will receive it, said Laura Boyce, executive director of education nonprofit Teach Plus Pennsylvania.

This is an increase of more than 200% from the 600 students who would have received a stipend with the initial $10 million allocation.

“We’re really grateful in particular that we were able to get more than what the governor proposed,” she said, “because we know that that is really unusual and required a lot of hard fighting from a number of fronts to get that number higher.”

Teach Plus partnered with the National Center on Education and the Economy about three years ago to tackle the statewide teacher shortage, forming PA Needs Teachers, a coalition that has advocated for the stipend program.

But advocacy for the stipend is far from over, Boyce said.

“We certainly would’ve loved to see the program fully funded, and we know there are going to be some disappointed student teachers who don’t qualify for the stipend this year as a result,” she said. “So we’ll be fighting again next year to get to that level of full funding.”

Lawmakers who introduced the stipend program previously estimated it would take about $75 million to fund each application.

Although applications will remain open until Dec. 15, the state Higher Education Assistance Agency now estimates it will take about $45 million to fully fund the program, Boyce said.

Savko applied for the stipend the second the application opened at 9 a.m. April 11. But, because the program is short about $15 million, there is a chance she will not receive the critical financial aid.

This is the exact predicament Pitt-Greensburg student Amber Bloom has sought to prevent.

Bloom, of Irwin, served last school year as vice president for the Student PSEA — Pennsylvania State Education Association — and spoke in April about the stipend in Harrisburg on behalf of 7,000 members.

“Of course, we’d like to get it fully funded,” Bloom said. “That is our main goal. We don’t want any student teacher to not be able to get their student teaching paid for.”

Allie Taffera will take over as Student PSEA vice president in the fall while Bloom fulfills a student teaching placement at Franklin Regional Intermediate School.

“We still have so much more work to do,” said Taffera, a rising senior at Marywood University in Scranton, “but I’m really excited about the progress we made, and hopefully we keep the momentum going.”

As the first in her family to attend college and pursue a career in education, Taffera looks forward to expanding on the support already shown for the stipend program.

“Knowing that there are people out there advocating for us and advocating for quality teachers in the classroom, that’s so amazing,” said Taferra, of Scranton.

Record allocation

The state budget includes $8.1 billion for education, a $1.1 billion increase from last year’s budget. It is the largest allocation for K-12 public education in state history.

The education budget also features $100 million for environmental repair and other school facilities, a $100 million increase for special education funding, a $100 million cyber charter reimbursement and a $17.7 million increase for early childhood education.

An account created in the 2022 school code to make teacher preparation programs more accessible was not funded, despite Shapiro’s $10 million allocation proposal.

The account is meant to support “grow your own” programs across the state, which reduce the barriers for students and working adults to pursue a teaching certification.

The Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center, for example, offers a free Aspiring Educators program that exposes high school students to a variety of teaching experiences with the possibility of receiving college credits.

Similarly, the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s BridgeUp program helps people with associate degrees pursue a teacher certificate without paying a cent.

These programs, Boyce said, are meant to attract more teachers to the profession and diversify the workforce.

“There are examples of ‘grow your own’ programs around the commonwealth already, but there has never been state funding, and unfortunately, we still didn’t see that this year,” Boyce said. “We’ll have to keep on fighting for that.”