Ashley Canto, a teacher at Central High School in Bridgeport, expressed a sense of pride when sharing that she recently graduated from a teacher residency program at Sacred Heart University, called Teachers@Heart.
The program equips undergraduate students with the various skills needed to foster a successful career as a teacher, specializing in working with students in high-need school districts, where teacher retention is low, such as Bridgeport and Stamford.
Canto was disappointed to learn that the U.S. Department of Education recently withdrew more than $3 million in federal funding to the program through the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant.
She called it a “heartbreaking” loss that will largely affect teacher retention and burnout in urban settings.
“Especially in Bridgeport, we have a [substitute teacher] shortage,” Canto said. “People are out, and we have kids going to the cafeteria because we don’t have enough people to cover classrooms.”
The U.S. Department of Education informed the university through a letter in February that the Teachers@Heart program no longer met the goals of the department, according to René Roselle, the program's principal investigator.
Roselle said the letter included mention of recent DEI cutbacks from the Trump Administration.
The revocation in funding comes amid increasing student interest in the Teachers@Heart program.
From Jan. 13 to March 3, at least 125 people expressed interest in the program, according to Roselle. She says this is the highest level of interest in teacher education she has seen in 20 years.
In the program, student residents are introduced to a class of students at the beginning of the academic year, presented as a co-teacher alongside a teacher mentor.
Beginning in January, student residents take over the classroom full-time.
“The residency program prepares you a lot better because you are alongside your mentor teacher on day one in the classroom,” said recent program graduate Matthew Librandi.
“By the time the winter rolls around … you’ve already been in the classroom with the kids, you built relationships that [in] traditional student teaching you don’t get to experience,” Librandi said.
Librandi currently teaches seventh grade at Jettie S. Tisdale Middle School in Bridgeport.
Sacred Heart still has plans to run Teachers@Heart, but without the grant, Roselle said the school can only provide “limited district funded stipends and tuition support, which will make the program unfeasible for most.”
Along with assistance on teacher retention, the Teacher Quality Partnership grant provided tuition benefits and a living stipend, which covers food, housing and other basic expenses for participants.
Librandi and Roselle said these inclusions allow teacher residents to better focus on their career preparation without having to worry about other expenses.
Canto told her students about Teachers@Heart and recommended it to anyone pursuing education in college. After hearing the news of its funding cut, one of Canto’s students asked if the program would be unavailable to her in the future.
“It’s getting people interested in their future, but also, like, you really can’t replace the experience it gives you,” Canto said.
Without this grant, Librandi believes many potential teachers will be deterred from the profession.
“Not having that [support] is going to make teaching less attractive to many people,” he said.
Librandi and Canto agree that it is important to foster young educators into these under-supported environments. Librandi thinks high-need districts are a great place to learn teaching through multifaceted experiences.
Teachers@Heart program was created in 2019 and launched its first student cohort in Bridgeport in 2021. Last year, it expanded to Stamford Public Schools with a program called Para Pioneers.
It addressed high-need areas in Stamford schools such as special education, science and math, adding that the district just started to gain momentum.
Charmaine Tourse-Davis, director of talent, recruitment and retention at Stamford Public Schools, called the cuts to federal funding, “especially disappointing.”
“When you have that kind of a model, I can tell you that it was quite a blow,” Tourse-Davis said.
Since President Donald Trump took office, more than 1,300 U.S. Department of Education workers have been laid off.
“This leaves the department to roughly half of its workforce, which is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws in schools, supplying student loans and grants and tracking student achievement,” according to NPR.
Currently, Teachers@Heart is seeking alternative funders to keep the program alive. The program’s original funder offered a $60,000 challenge grant that matches donations dollar-for-dollar.
Roselle said the grant allotted 20 teaching spots in the program.
Without a funding cut, Teachers@Heart would have assisted 80 new teachers enter the profession in the next five years.
