Teachers With Lifetime Certification Will Have To "Register" For Certification Every Five Years Now (UPDATED)

The more you see in this Cuomo deform budget, the more you find to hate:

TEACHER CERTIFICATION:
Teachers and administrators with lifetime certification must register with the state every five years.

Applicants for registration must complete 100 hours of continuing education or professional development every five years. “The department shall issue rigorous standards for courses, programs and activities that shall qualify as continuing teacher and leader education,” according to the bill.

Principals or teachers who perform observations for the purpose of the state’s teacher evaluation system may count those hours toward the total.

If educators don’t complete the state-approved professional development, they will not be able to maintain certification.

Will the hours of PD we have to do as part of the UFT contract count toward this new mandate?

I'm betting not.

UPDATE: A commenter writes that the actual budget langauge says teachers with lifetime certification do have to "register" their license every five years but are not part of the PD requirement - that is for holders of professional certification.

I checked the language in the budget (for this post, I was using Jessica Bakeman's Capital NY article) and the commenter appears to be right about that.

I posted about that here.

However, the governor released this today:

The State currently requires teachers to pass a teacher “bar” exam – and will now also require teachers to complete 100 hours of continuing education and recertify every five years or lose their licenses.

So you can understand the confusion around all of this.

That's been true of the entire budget process - non-transparent, full of confusion and characterized by he said/she said depending upon whether we were hearing from the governor, the Assembly or the Senate.