On Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, I submitted a perspective to EdNC called “Pirates Hunt for Hidden Treasures.” The article focused on edPIRATE, an East Carolina University federally funded, teacher resident program for high-needs districts in rural northeast North Carolina.
On the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 12, I received an email from the U.S. Department of Education indicating that they had posted a new grant award notification (GAN). This is not an unusual request — in fact, this is GAN number nine for our grant. However, when I opened the email, I noticed our new year-end date was that day, Feb. 12, 2025.
On page three, footnote 2 states, “the grant is deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.”
I immediately emailed and called my program officer for clarification. Specifically, I asked about four items:
- Payroll implications for our three staff members employed with grant funds,
- The final living stipend for our teacher residents,
- Honoring invoices from grant contractors such as our external evaluator, and
- Payment for instructors to complete the current cohort of teacher residents.
The response? “Yes, your grant is terminated along with all TQP [teacher quality partnership] grants, and I have no answers to any of your questions.”
What is edPIRATE?
Eastern rural North Carolina has numerous assets, both people and place. Our geographic location has beautiful waterways and rich, fertile soil. The people are culturally diverse and passionate about and engaged in improving their communities. Like other rural communities, however, they face past and present economic challenges.
At the nexus of these assets and challenges is an opportunity to better serve our rural educational communities.
The five-year, $9.6 million ($4.8 million from the federal fund and $4.8 million match from ECU and partner districts) initiative aimed to recruit, prepare, certify, and support new rural teachers in high-needs rural northeast North Carolina.
Midway through year three of the five-year grant, the edPIRATE team has partnered with these rural NE school districts: Beaufort, Greene, Lenoir, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank, Tyrrell, and Perquimans.
Residents are prepared over 13 months and receive a living stipend for this full-time program. These teachers then serve our partner districts for at least three years. Additionally, the grant has funded professional development, which includes community engagement, student de-escalation strategies, and evidence-based teacher observations.
We have worked with more than a dozen teacher residents in elementary and middle grades in social studies, language arts, and mathematics, as well as hundreds of current teachers and leaders. These participants engaged in a whole-child community school model that focused on building knowledge, skills, and dispositions specific to rural school settings.
The components that make this happen include coursework, residency, induction support, and professional development (micro credentials) for leaders in the resident schools. Alongside completing coursework, our residents are learning and teaching in a mentor teacher’s classroom at a partner district school four days a week for the entire school year. They are paired with an experienced mentor teacher who models effective teaching practices. After completing our program, residents are placed in a partner district and provided induction support and professional development during their first three years of teaching.
What does this mean for our team, including ECU faculty and staff, students, and district partners?
The ramifications are far reaching:
- Federal funding for at least 20 additional teacher residents has been discontinued,
- Federal funding for district induction support, which includes mentor teacher support and microcredentials for all teachers and administrators in the districts, has ended,
- The project staff has received notice of termination, and
- All support contracts, including program evaluation and teacher certification testing support, have been canceled.
Supporting our teacher residents and districts without funding
We remain committed to current teacher residents and partner districts despite the termination of federal funding. The College of Education (COE) and the Rural Educational Institute (REI) at East Carolina University are committed to supporting our edPIRATE graduates and partner districts.
We are committed to:
- Supporting course completion and testing certification for the current residents,
- Completing the three spring microcredentials for current district partners, teachers, and leaders, and
- Placing and providing induction support for our edPIRATE graduates.
We are heartbroken but resilient!
Our grant application stated our goal was to “improve student academic achievement for all students through improvement of teacher and school leader preparation, induction, and on-going support in rural districts.”
On Feb. 14, I received a letter from the Acting Secretary of Education confirming the termination of our federal award. The letter stated that the department must ensure that grants do not “support programs or organizations that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives… [these initiatives] conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education.”
We strongly believe the grant focused on making rural northeastern North Carolina excellent. The fairness issue is not being able to provide rural North Carolina with the highly qualified teachers the communities need and the students deserve.
There remains a clear, present, and persistent need for highly qualified teachers in rural northeast North Carolina.
We remain focused and committed to the true treasure of rural northeastern North Carolina: the people.
While funding has been cut, that resource remains abundant.
