As we've reported, Kentucky's teacher shortage continues to present problems for school districts all across the state.

The Kentucky Department of Education recently approved the creation of an expedited teacher certification program.

And Eastern Kentucky University is leading that charge.

It's called the Option nine Program, and it aims to be more adaptable to the needs of nontraditional college students.

More in tonight's look at education matters.

COVID taught us a lot.

Now we're focused a lot more on flexibility, meeting the state requirements.

But still accommodating those students that have different kinds of needs than the pre-COVID students.

But again, it's all digital.

You can get it all online.

Option nine is an expedited alternative route to teach us certification.

So what that means in layman's terms is that you can obtain your teacher certification faster than the traditional route.

A traditional route to teacher certification in Kentucky requires a completion of a Bachelor of Science in elementary, middle or secondary grades in a four year.

Usually a four year program.

And the of the option nine allows you to complete this in three years.

While you are teaching full time in the public schools.

There are people that are mid-career, that are people that are starting a new career.

A lot of the phone calls I'm having recently are from students who are right out of high school, started college.

But then life happened.

They got married.

They had kids, but they want to get back into the school setting.

And I think option nine is a great alternative and an opportunity for us to get those people in our Kentucky schools.

We have a real chance here to use option nine to to change the way that we think about who teaches and how our school invests in those teachers early and then throughout their career.

It lets us be co-investors with with schools as they achieve goals for meeting students needs and meeting teachers needs, addressing retention, those kinds of things.

Candidates in the Option nine still have to meet all the requirements, state requirements.

What we're doing is we're allowing option on candidates to teach full time while they complete their degree.

And this is one of many ways that EKU is listening and responding to our our teachers, principals and our superintendents who are desperate for teachers in the schools.

The teacher shortage is across Kentucky, and there's no geographic area that's been spared the shortage that we have in our classified per educator positions is equally shared across all geographic regions.

So I think most importantly, this is an opportunity for us to help our Kentucky schoolchildren, and that's what it's all about in education.

Miss Alice, another friend.

Absolutely.

William, would you help?

About 90% of our graduates stay in Kentucky.

Their their ambition is to go back to a public school because they are products of public school and they want to contribute to the the lifeblood of the state by entering into the most important profession in the state.

And that's education.