The most sustainable solution to your teacher shortage is already within your school system. This district can be the model for your next residency program.
In California’s Visalia Unified School District, its residency program isn’t just a recruitment strategy, but an opportunity for principals to innovate their staffing models to improve job satisfaction and student learning outcomes.
Visalia USD partners with Fresno Pacific University and California State University Fresno to offer a $35,000 stipend to educators who participate in a 12-month residency with an experienced mentor teacher. Upon completion, participants must adhere to a four-year service commitment.
Traditional residency programs often struggle with a lack of personal investment from leadership when districts place residents into classrooms without considering ways the additional educator can be leveraged to support learning needs, says Serena Arias, the district’s coordinator for human resources.
Instead, Visalia USD administrators from high-needs areas such as special education and STEM are involved with recruiting and interviewing aspiring teachers.
“We know the success of our students is directly tied to having the right person, in the right place, at the right time,” says Assistant Superintendent Ben Dhillon. “Our teacher residency program allows us to grow our own educators while investing in the future of our teacher workforce.”
The district’s program was also selected as a finalist for the California School Boards Association’s Golden Bell Award.
Residents as ‘added value’ for principals
What makes Visalia’s program successful is the “added value” a resident brings to the school team. Arias challenges principals to “reimagine the bidirectional benefit’ a residency provides to support school goals.
For instance, a resident can sub for their mentor, giving the veteran teacher time for instructional rounds with the principal. This shifts the principal’s perspective from merely hosting a teacher-in-training to thinking, “Wow, I have a resident on campus! How can I leverage this passionate, caring and university-supported adult to enrich experiences for students and teachers on my campus?” Arias says.
Student outcomes like attendance and district climate serve as markers of program sustainability.
The district also surveys administrators and professional learning communities to gauge the value of hiring a brand-new teacher who “has a full year of residency experience in their repertoire.”
The financial case for residencies
Emergency credentials can provide a quick fix in an empty classroom but often lack a strong return on investment. Mentoring non-credentialed teachers or interns alone can cost districts thousands of dollars, only for them to possibly leave before completing the program.
Over the last year, districts across California have made severe cuts to their budgets, resulting in instructional coaches and teachers on special assignments returning to the classroom. Teacher residents can create release time for those teacher-leaders to continue sharing their expertise beyond one classroom without adding on exorbitant staffing costs.
The financial risk only increases if a candidate fails to meet program requirements.
In spring of 2027, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing will announce a new round of grant funding for districts interested in launching their own teacher residency programs.
District leaders have a unique opportunity to follow the lead of Visalia USD and use those grant funds to seed innovative, sustainable residency models that center the talents and needs of students, principals, experienced teachers and union leadership.
A sustainable pipeline starts with growing talent from within, something district-level leaders can put into practice right away. District-level leaders can get 14 days of DA+ completely free to explore our How Principals Can Grow Their Own Workforce training.
