MILWAUKEE — Supporters of a Milwaukee driver education program are worried about what will happen next since it now has only one state-certified teacher left.
Milwaukee Recreation, which is part of Milwaukee Public Schools, offers community-based driver education for anyone who wants to learn to drive. What makes the program unique is students can earn class credit toward graduation because it is taught by a state-certified teacher. However, over the years Milwaukee Recreation has been losing instructors.
“They are slowly retiring,” said Jodie Donabar, recreation supervisor at MPS Milwaukee Recreation.
She says 10 years ago, the community-based driver's education program had 10 instructors to teach kids throughout Milwaukee County and beyond. But as of January that changed.
“We have one left,” says Donabar.
Teachers in the community-based driver's education program are certified through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. That means they hold an active teacher’s license and driver's education certification. That was how it used to be when driver's ed was in all Wisconsin schools.
"That was how everything was done, usually as part of a school day experience for students. Driver's education was an elective you could take once you were age-eligible,” said Nicole Jacobson, manager of citywide programming at MPS Milwaukee Recreation.
Now there is an option for instructors to be certified through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. That means they are not Wisconsin teachers, but they can take a 40-hour class through the state so they can be a driver’s ed instructor. Most private driving schools use DOT instructors. DPI does not recognize those driver's ed classes for school credit.
"If they are DPI certified you are able to give a half a credit toward graduation for the students. If the instructors are DOT certified we can't offer that half a credit, and [for] some of those students that half a credit means graduation or not,” said Donabar.
Across Wisconsin, there were 110 certified DPI instructors for the 2021-2022 school year. DPI says preliminary numbers for this school year show the same amount.
Milwaukee Recreation wants to hire more DPI-certified teachers but says it is hard for people to get that certification.
"The reason we have a problem is we cannot find institutions of higher education offering the nine-credit driver's education program any longer. It is like a dying dinosaur going into extinction,” said Jacobson.
Milwaukee Recreation hopes DPI-certified instructors will consider joining their program. Otherwise, when their final instructor retires they will likely have to contract out to a private driving school and students will no longer get class credit.
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