December 2019 SBEC Board Meeting Highlights
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Note: Click Part 1 and Part 2 for the archived webcast of the board meeting. The Agenda Numbers below correspond to the webcast Item Numbers.

The SBEC board:
  • Agenda #6 / as adopted: Gave final approval (subject to State Board of Education clearance on Jan. 31) to a number of revisions to rules governing educator disciplinary proceedings, sanctions and contested cases. The rules implement several provisions of 2019’s HB3 by reflecting new educator misconduct reporting requirements for superintendents, principals, private school administrative officers, etc., that will be used by the TEA in compiling the Do Not Hire Registry. (See article in this issue.)

    A previously proposed section to revise rule language on sanctions for educators who abandon their contracts was removed, pending consideration at a later time, in consultation with stakeholder groups.

    Effective: March 5.

  • Agenda #10: Tentatively approved, for public comment, revisions to a large chapter of SBEC rules that:

    --Implement recent legislation by repealing the master teacher designation. Future rules will address accommodations for current holders of the master teacher designation.

    -- Allow the Educational Aide I certificate to be issued to high school students who have completed certain “grow your own” career and technical education courses and are at least 18 years old.

    -- Reduce the minimum amount of wait time for retaking computer- and paper-based certification exams from 45 to 30 days.

    -- Require that to be granted the new EC-3 certificate, the candidate must complete training relevant to the certificate instead of only having to pass the EC-3 certification exam.

    -- Set a six week deadline for individuals to notify SBEC that the certificates they were issued contained an error.

    Final approval is scheduled for the Feb. 21 SBEC board meeting.

  • Agenda #11: Discussed the principal School Year 2018-19 survey results on how well their first-year teachers were prepared by the teachers’ ed-prep programs, and surveys of first-year teachers of how well they believed their programs prepared them for the classroom.

    The surveys are a part of the accountability system used to measure the performance of ed-prep programs. A total of 91.2 percent of the 15,782 principals completed and returned the surveys, compared to 30 percent of the 20,530 surveys distributed to first-year teachers (this was the first year for the teacher surveys).

    The board rejected a TEA staff recommendation to delete one of the questions (asked in both of the surveys), about the respondent’s overall satisfaction with the ed-prep program. How a respondent answers the question will continue to not be used in calculating an ed-prep program’s actual accountability rating.

  • Agenda #5: Received TEA staff updates on various final Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 (Sept. 1, 2018, to Aug. 31, 2019) SBEC statistics. Some highlights:

    -- The number of standard certificates granted increased from 67,748 in FY 2018, to 85,708 in FY 2019.

    -- Just over 91 percent of Texas teachers are assigned positions to which they are certified, about the same as in FY 2018.

    -- The number of investigations opened of educators increased from 1,384 in FY 2018 to 1,429 in FY 2019, with the largest number of cases opened (442) of inappropriate relationships with a student. A total of 155 educators in FY 2018 had their certifications revoked for various reasons, compared to 132 in FY 2019.

  • Agenda #13: Approved East Texas Baptist University in Marshall to offer school counselor certification training.