Mom24
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Just thought I'd clear up some information regarding the requirements for TC's qualifications to teach Health Sciences at Culleoka Unit School. While it's true that the job did NOT require a Bachelor's degree as it was vocational in nature, it did however require RN Certification which as a Respiratory Therapist (RT), he doesn't have. RN and RT are not equivalents either from an occupational, educational, or certification standpoint. I am attaching the job posting from Maury County Public Schools to this post, it can be found as Page 27 of the Media Packet that was sent from Whatley (Thomas family attorney) to the media.
Note the wording: "Must have RN Certification". BBM.
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Sources:
https://mgtvwkrn.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/thomas-packet-to-media.pdf
http://work.chron.com/respiratory-therapist-vs-registered-nurse-25829.html
While that was the school's requirement, he was still able to be certified by the state for Health Science Education in specific subset classes such as Forensics. My guess was, they merely shifted people around. For instance, many states require different science teachers be certified in their content area. So if you have a degree in Secondary Science Education (grades 6-12) with a specialization in Biology, then you would get certified in Life Sciences. Now if a job came up that required certification in Physical Science you may be able to apply for that if you have enough credits in that area to qualify you for that certification and you would agree to seek certification in that science field within a certain time frame in order to be compliant with the job requirements, some of which may include further education. In this case, it appears Culleoka is a small school, they only have one guidance counselor and with all that a guidance counselor has to do for students in their JR and SR years, I'm shocked. That means the school is very small. Which means the community is very small, making job requirements kind of, well, smooshy. He was more than qualified to become certified through the state for Health Sciences, and given that they may not have had any other such qualified candidates, they may have chosen to put the RN requirement to the side since the state didn't require it and change the curriculum. I'm thinking the RN requirement was for a specific class being taught. This is a rather long drawn out post to simply state, the state board of ed doesn't require an RN to get certified to teach Health Sciences.