Peoria Public Schools District 150 Superintendent Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat is using some of her final weeks in office to fight for continued funding of the Teacher Vacancy Grant, a state program she said transformed how the district recruits and keeps teachers.
With the grant, districts have flexibility in how they spend the money they receive, allocating it towards signing bonuses, tuition assistance or even down payments on homes.
Kherat said some districts, like Rockford, put much of their funding toward housing incentives. Peoria, she added, chose to put that money toward people already in the area.
"I was very adamant about investing in people and growing individuals," she said in an interview for WCBU Reports. "Some school districts spend a lot of their money attracting individuals from outside — but I wanted to focus on people from our own community."
That meant using the grant to pay for tuition, testing fees, childcare and other barriers standing between district staff and a teaching license.
The new state budget, passed into law this month, includes $15 million for the grant, down from $30 million last year and just a third of the $45 million appropriated in each of the program's first two years.
"With the Teacher Vacancy Grant, it's just done wonders for Peoria Public Schools," Kherat said. "The really cool thing — the super-majority, I would say close to 100% of the individuals who got their license through that grant, they're from Peoria, and they will stay in Peoria."
There are two programs the grant has helped support. Grow Your Own, launched in 2018 in partnership with Bradley University, supports non-certified district staff — paraprofessionals, clerical workers, substitutes — who want to become licensed teachers. TeacherReady is a faster track: an online certification program for those who already hold bachelor's or master's degrees but lack a teaching license.
Kherat pushed back on critics who argue these pathways might lower classroom standards. Both programs, she said, still require candidates to pass the same state licensing exam as any other teacher.
"When everything is said and done, they still have to pass that test," she said. "If anything, I would say it's probably a little more rigorous for them, because a lot of the onus is on them — they have to take those online classes and pass the competencies every step of the way."
If the grant disappears entirely, she said, the district would scale back significantly but would try to continue their pathway programs on their own.
"I know there are competing priorities, and limited resources [...] but we cannot forget the importance of investing in education and its impact on our democracy and our survival as the United States of America," she said.
"Those that are in those positions [lawmakers] — they had great teachers that guided them and prepared them to be where they are today."
She added that Peoria would push forward regardless.
"We're resilient, and we're creative, and if the funding is not there, we will still try our best with what we have."
Kherat's last day as superintendent is June 30. Jerry Bell takes over July 1.
