SBEC Recap: Discipline and Educator Preparation

The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) met in Austin on Sept. 18 and 19 for a discussion-heavy agenda. The board's legislative implementation load is significant after the 89^th session and covers two primary lanes of rulemaking work for the body: educator discipline and educator preparation.

Educator Discipline

Senate Bill (SB) 12 created several new definitions and restrictions that require educators to comply or else face disciplinary sanctions up to and including termination. The bill:

• Defines diversity, equity, and inclusion duties and creates prohibitions related to DEI duties.
• Defines social transitioning and creates prohibitions related to social transitioning assistance.
• Creates restrictions on instruction regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Provides that an attempt by a school district employee to encourage or coerce a child to withhold information from a parent is grounds for disciplinary action by the SBEC.

SB 571, meanwhile, is a substantial educator misconduct and disciplinary reform bill. It requires additional reporting of misconduct to the board and shortens the timeline for such reporting. It expands the Do Not Hire registry to include any school personnel, including all contractors and volunteers. The bill also gives TEA oversight into district investigations to ensure those are properly conducted.

Specifically, the SBEC is charged with defining what constitutes inappropriate communications with a student or minor, as well as failure to maintain appropriateboundaries with a student or minor. These are some of the offenses that superintendents must report under the new law, which applies to district employees and services providers. There was robust discussion around both the definitions and how to communicate them once they enter board rule. Chapters 247 and 249 will be brought up for discussion again at the December meeting.

SB 571 also authorizes the board to temporarily suspend educators' certificates during a criminal investigation. The July meeting saw the board name a committee for the purpose of considering temporary suspension of a certificate of an educator who has been arrested for certain offenses, typically involving bodily harm to another or improper relationships with a minor. The suspension will stay in place until the criminal matter is resolved. What is less clear and must be defined by the board is what constitutes a "continuing or imminent threat to public welfare." This committee met for the first time prior to the full board meeting and will meet additionally as the case load demands to consider these suspensions.

Texas AFT supports every aspect of student safety, but there is the unfortunate potential for these types of laws and rules to inhibit due process for employees. We will be closely monitoring this rulemaking as it continues to move through the SBEC process.

Educator Preparation

Most of the discussion in the board's meeting was related to House Bill (HB) 2 and the implementation of the preparing and retaining educators through the partnership program (PREP) allotment. Beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, this allotment will fund five different partnership pathways for districts and educator preparation programs to help address teacher recruitment, preparation, and mentorship across the state.

To be eligible for the allotment, educator preparation programs (EPPs) and districts must meet requirements of SBEC and commissioner rule, respectively. HB 2 requires that EPPs provide training in both the reading and mathematics academies, and the SBEC and commissioner may impose additional requirements of the EPP or district. It is worth noting that just a day prior to the SBEC meeting, Texas AFT participated in a stakeholder meeting to provide TEA with feedback on this allotment program. Both in the stakeholder meeting and in the boardroom, there were numerous questions about these criteria. TEA also published some information and a schedule of webinars on the PREP allotment on Sept. 18.

There is some urgency in this rulemaking to ensure funding can be unlocked for those programs and districts who wish to take advantage of it in the next school year. However, there is concern that the requirements might be significant enough that EPPs and districts opt not to participate because they do not have the desire or administrative capacity to meet the eligibility criteria.

What the PREP allotment does not address is the immediate need to ensure those teachers who are uncertified and already in our classrooms (now about 11% of the teacher workforce) can have a successful pathway to certification, most likely through an alternative certification program (ACP). While the bill provides a modest $1,000 per teacher for the next few years for districts who can demonstrate these educators are obtaining certification, it does not provide any financial support for those candidates or those programs.

Texas AFT along with our partners at the Texas Coalition for Educator Preparation (TCEP) will continue to engage with the agency to ensure the program is accessible for all who might wish to participate.

National Board Certification Review

The final version of HB 2 kept National Board Certification (NBC) as a pathway toward qualifying for the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). However, it also allows SBEC to review NBC to reauthorize or revoke authorizationfor the teacher's TIA designation based on whether the certification meets the requirements of Texas law including all the factors of the suitability rubric established for the instructional materials review and adoption (IMRA). The board will contract a review team to begin the work of analyzing the NBC materials and report findings to an SBEC committee next spring in order for the board to make a determination by the statutory deadline of December 2026.

Texas AFT will continue to support our members who have chosen to enter into NBC preparation regardless of the board's process and decisions.

The SBEC will meet again in Austin in early December.