Des Moines Area Community College student Jay McCord has been working as a paraeducator in the Perry Community School District for three years, and is taking advantage of the community college’s teacher pipeline program to further his education.

He and other Iowa educators got to share their experiences last week with the U.S. secretary of education in the hopes of eventually spreading the opportunities they’ve utilized through DMACC to schools and teachers across the country.

“Education was really something that was hard for me just because I needed an awful lot of extra help,” McCord said. “So this program really helped me with being in the classroom while taking those classes, and being able to connect my schoolwork to what I’m actually doing.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited Iowa Dec. 7 to hear from students, both in lower and higher education, and teachers about the triumphs and trials, and how programs like those implemented at DMACC open doors for those wanting to work as an educator.

After a tour and discussion at Perry Elementary, which was named a 2023 National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, Cardona spoke to DMACC students, who also work as educators in Perry and other schools, about the community college program and the opportunities it has afforded them.

Each group emphasized that schools need more teachers to support students, and that programs like DMACC’s Teacher Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship program, housed at the DMACC Perry VanKirk Career Academy, are necessary to make earning an education degree more accessible.

“I heard it from college students and a college president, but earlier today, I heard it from second-graders,” Cardona said. “They said the same thing — we need to support teachers and we need more teachers. Seven-year-olds.”

He said the earn-and-learn program does just that. It allows anyone from high school students to adults to current paraeducators in the district to take classes and work at the same time, getting career experience while learning the curriculum that will eventually lead them to getting the degree to have a classroom of their own, if they wish.

Students get access to support from professors and mentors, and are able to offset costs with up to $7,000 provided for tuition and fees for up to two years. To qualify for the program through the Perry school district, students must be committed to remaining in the district for three years after graduation. Students also support each other, DMACC student Emilie Cross said, as they work and learn in the same cohorts.

“We feel like we have somebody to lean on,” Cross said.

One thing that McCord said would help the DMACC program is more exposure — if more students and educators learned about what the program offers, more would join, eventually swelling the workforce.

Just under 30 states have teaching apprenticeship programs like the one at DMACC, Cardona said, and he hopes to spread the idea systematically and ensure every state can create pipelines for potential teachers.

“What you’re doing over here is an example of what we want to replicate,” Cardona said. “I want to get to 50 (states), I want all of them.”

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“Everyone is waiting for someone else to blink, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for parents and principals,” said Julia Martin, legislative director at Brustein and Manasevit, a law firm specializing in education.

On Friday, the state board sent the Broward County and Alachua County school districts in Florida a letter saying they were out of compliance with a health department order that requires districts to allow parents to opt out of having their children wear masks. The state gave the districts 48 hours to either comply or turn over the salary figures for school board members who voted for a mask mandate.

“We don’t believe we have done anything inappropriate,” Broward County school board President Rosalind Osgood said Tuesday, adding that the district is seeking “legal avenues that we can challenge those things that we believe are unlawful and out of line.”

Broward’s detailed response pointed to the circumstances in which a student would not have to wear a mask and did not provide salary information.

Alachua County Public Schools Superintendent Carlee Simon’s letter listed salaries, but also stressed that the district was in compliance with the health order. She said the number of positive COVID-19 cases is “growing every day.”

The Miami-Dade County Public School is among the in the state requiring masks for students, but the district has not yet received a similar letter, a spokeswoman said.

The responses from Broward and Alachua were the latest move in a three-way chess game involving several Florida districts, DeSantis and President Joe Biden. The administration has said the districts can use federal relief funds to cover any salary costs that the state withholds and that parents can file civil rights complaints if they think a ban on universal masking means their child is missing out on learning. U.S Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona suggested in a Sunday on “Meet the Press” that the department doesn’t plan to withhold funds from Florida or any other state banning local mask mandates because it “adds insult to injury to these students who are trying to get into the classroom.” But in a letter last week to North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, ranking Republican on the House education committee, he said states standing in the way of districts “adopting science-based strategies” are infringing on districts’ ability to follow federal law.

Martin added that using the civil rights route is a slow process that could drag out for months. The virus might be less of a threat by the time an investigation is complete.

On Monday, over DeSantis’s mask order went before a circuit court judge in Leon County, where pro-mask parents argue local school boards have the authority to set their own policies while the attorneys for the state say districts are out of compliance with a parents’ “bill of rights.”

In her letter, Foxx asked whether districts had to require masks to receive relief funds. Florida is among the states that have not yet submitted a proposal for how it would use American Rescue Plan funds for K-12. Arizona, another state banning universal masking, has submitted its plan, but the department has not yet approved it. The department released $81 billion to the states in the spring — two-thirds of the relief funds — and requires states to submit a plan to receive the remaining third.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education, said the notes the June 30 state law banning districts from mandating masks, but that the state “has not yet received feedback.” Since the state submitted its plan, Gov. Doug Ducey has launched an , using federal relief funds, that awards an additional $1,800 per student to districts without mask bans. But the said the state can’t use the relief funds to discourage districts from following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

In Florida, education department spokesman Brett Tubbs said he was unaware of any discussions over whether the mask controversy could impact approval of the state’s plan, once it’s submitted. “It will be interesting to see how it plays out,” he said.

The department has already approved plans from other states with bans on universal masking — Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. But officials have a couple options if they decide not to approve Florida’s or Arizona’s, Martin said.

They could say that the states’ plans don’t adequately consider CDC guidance, or that the state is not considering feedback from parents and school employees who want everyone to wear masks. A Quinnipiac University released Tuesday finds 54 percent of Floridians think schools should require masks.

What’s tricky, Martin said, is that the rule regarding the relief funds was written in April before the Delta variant sparked another wave of positive cases and increased hospitalizations.

“We’ve gotten into a situation where all the documentation was in the spring,” Martin said, “and we have a very changed landscape now.”