��������

Five years ago, educators in the Burlington-Edison and Mount Vernon school districts, at Skagit Valley College and at Western Washington University set out to solve a problem: how to get not only more teachers, .

“All students benefit from having a more diverse teaching population,” said Nat Reilly, diversity recruitment and retention specialist at Western Washington University’s Woodring College of Education. “Especially students of color.”

On Tuesday, those involved in what is now the Maestros para el Pueblo (Teachers for the Town) program celebrated not only the graduation of 11 students from Skagit Valley College who will now head to Western to become teachers, but the hiring of one of its graduates at a local school.