A federal grant awarded to Isle of Wight County Schools and three nearby school divisions last year to address a regional teacher shortage has been canceled.

The Tidewater Consortium, which consists of Isle of Wight, Franklin, Portsmouth and Suffolk public schools, had been awarded approximately $9 million last fall from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Quality Partnership grant for a partnership with Norfolk State University and the University of Maryland to provide stipends to students pursuing certification as a teacher or principal at those colleges.

The Department of Education, during the final year of the administration of former President Joe Biden, announced plans to award roughly $25 million in grants for “the recruitment and training of diverse candidates who can meet the needs of partner high-need districts and provide compensation to residents in exchange for a three-year teaching commitment, which helps to promote teacher retention.”

Isle of Wight County Schools, which served as the fiscal agent for the grant, received a notice on Feb. 12 that the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department policies.”

IWCS spokeswoman Lynn Briggs said the consortium had received access to $2.1 million as of the date of the grant’s cancellation, of which just under $1.4 million had been awarded for the program’s first year and $716,478 had been front-loaded for the program’s second year, with the stipulation that it not be spent until Oct. 1 of this year.

The grant had funded the hiring of a grant manager at IWCS tasked with overseeing the grant’s distribution of the money to the consortium’s member schools.

When IWCS learned the grant had been canceled, “we were able to move her to an assistant principal position for the remainder of the school year,” Briggs said.

Franklin City Public Schools, the smallest of the school divisions in the Tidewater Consortium, had the third-highest teacher vacancy rate statewide with 21, or 26%, of its teaching positions unfilled as of the start of the current school year, according to Virginia Department of Education data. Suffolk, the largest of the four Tidewater Consortium divisions, had 121 vacancies, or 12%. Portsmouth, the second-largest in the Tidewater Consortium, had 75 vacancies, or 8.1%. Isle of Wight had the lowest vacancy rate within the consortium at 16 positions, or 4%, as of the Oct. 1 VDOE staffing and vacancy report.

Briggs said IWCS had three teachers in the principal certification program at the University of Maryland who were in their first semester at the time of the grant’s cancellation.

“They can continue with the program after this semester, but they will not receive a stipend through the grant to defray expenses,” Briggs said.

Jacqueline King, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, told the Times the grant cancellation form letter is one of many the Department of Education sent to school districts nationwide following President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 return to office.

The AACTE sued Education Secretary Linda McMahon on March 5 contesting the termination of the Teacher Quality Partnership program and in federal court filings alleged the termination to be tied to a Jan. 20 executive order by Trump titled “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”

According to court filings, the majority of grant recipients received letters from the Department of Education stating their grant awards were being terminated as part of an effort “ensuring that the Department’s grants do not support programs or organizations that promote or take part in diversity, equity and inclusion (‘DEI’) initiatives or any other initiatives that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, maturational origin, or other protected characteristic,” followed by a press release announcing the Department of Education had “terminated over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies.”

On April 4, the U.S. Supreme Court, in response to an appeal filed by the Trump administration, overturned temporary restraining orders by a federal judge in Massachusetts that had mandated the grants be reinstated in eight states, not including Virginia, that had separately sued the Trump administration over the loss of funding. On April 10, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Maryland federal judge’s temporary restraining order, which allowed the grant terminations to proceed.

King said the court proceedings didn’t affect Isle of Wight, since the AACTE suit was brought on behalf of AACTE members, which IWCS is not.

Isle of Wight is pursuing other avenues to attract and retain licensed teachers and principals.

As of Jan. 30, 2023, 28 of 446 IWCS teachers, school counselors and librarians did not hold a provisional or full Virginia teaching license, and another 30 held provisional licenses that would expire after three years, Human Resources Director Laura Sullivan told the School Board that year. That same year, the School Board approved a partnership with iTeach, a non-college teacher licensure program accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, which provides a pathway for those with bachelor’s degrees to obtain their teaching license.

Briggs said IWCS hired eight long-term substitutes this school year who were required to hold bachelor’s degrees and be enrolled in the iTeach program.

“They have moved into contracted positions as they have received a provisional license this year,” Briggs said.

IWCS is also participating in the VDOE’s “Grow Your Own” grant, which has over $7 million in federal funding for instructional assistants and other paraprofessionals who hold associate’s degrees to earn free bachelor’s degrees in education at Old Dominion University while maintaining full-time employment at IWCS, conditioned on their committing to teach at IWCS for a minimum of three years after completing their bachelor’s degree.