Back to SBEC Board Meeting Highlights (Part 1)
Option Considered for Master Teachers
TEA Pledges Support for New Teachers
Whose Training was Reduced by Pandemic
==================
(agenda /webcast-click Item 5)
==================
SBEC’s board spent the first part of its meeting (held virtually) being briefed — as a discussion-only item — on the various certification-related waivers the governor granted due to the closure of schools and ed-prep programs.
TEA Associate Commissioner Ryan Franklin (the SBEC’s de facto executive director) said the TEA was able to make use of several governor-approved waivers and that the board has previously — in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey — allowed for some flexibility in rules due to governor-declared disasters.
Franklin noted that the flexibility written into some of the board’s rules post-Harvey didn’t contemplate the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the key areas Franklin mentioned to the board included a gubernatorial waiver allowing that if a teacher intern had completed at least half of the otherwise required in-classroom experience when schools shut down, then that was all that is required. Intern teachers who were not able to complete at least half of their in-classroom experiences can complete the requirement via virtual or distance teaching experiences.
Two University of Texas professors asked the TEA and SBEC’s board, in testimony, to create statewide programs for the summer and into next school year to support beginning teachers in light of the fact that many of them would have completed only half of their otherwise required in-classroom internships and will be expected to teach students coming back from the summer break after their schools had prematurely closed this school year.
They also asked that the TEA try to identify any federal COVID-19 funding that could be used of this purpose.
A Priority
This led Kelvey Oeser, the TEA’s deputy commissioner of educator support, to pledge that providing the extra support for beginning teachers — over the summer and when school starts up again — is a huge priority for the TEA, and that staff will look into using federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding for this purpose.
The second coronavirus-related major waiver mentioned by Franklin was to grant one-year probationary certificates for a wide variety of educator certification candidates who lack only taking and passing the required certification test(s), to allow these candidates time to take the exams as coronavirus-closed testing centers reopen.
Traditionally, one-year probationary certificates have been granted only to a limited number of alternative certification program students under very narrow criteria.