#Career Pathways
#CNA to CDA
#ECE
#For Aspiring Educators
#Workforce Development
From Care to Classrooms: How CTG Is Bridging the Early Childhood Teacher Gap
When we invest in early childhood education (ECE), we’re investing in the future—not just our children’s futures but also New Orleans’ future. The New Orleans City Council responded to this need for investment by first allocating funds from the city budget for ECE, and then voters passed a dedicated annual millage for ECE.
There are now more than 2,200 ECE placements available from the City’s City Seats program. More seats are needed, but this is a great start. However, another pressing ECE issue has surfaced: recruiting and maintaining teaching staff in early childhood education centers. According to data from Agenda for Children, 46 percent of early childhood teachers annually leave the profession.
The crisis demands a solution, and a local ECE organization, Career Training Group (CTG), has found an answer: the CNA to CDA program (Certified Nursing Assistants and Childhood Development Associates).
As CTG founders Ariann Sentino and Niki Da’Jon discovered, Certified Nursing Assistants generate 6x the hiring pool of early childhood education teachers, so why not recruit CNAs to become CDAs?
Sentino and Da’Jon designed a CDA training program, and then earned funding for an initial orientation into the field of early childhood education for certified nursing assistants. Sentino and Da’Jon have set up a system of matching candidates with New Orleans early childhood education centers, so that these CNA recruits will have positions before they start formalized training. The State of Louisiana will pay for a candidate’s training once they have a paid position with a center, and CTG would then provide the candidates with formal training.
“It’s really innovative thinking,” said David Schmit, PR representative for Career Training Group, in the original press release. “Anyone connected with early childhood education will tell you that recruiting and keeping early childhood teachers is a huge challenge. Sentino and Da’Jon are providing a solution.”
