Nevada governor signs emergency regulation to address statewide teacher shortage
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 08/29/2022 - 2:30pm
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak signed an emergency regulation earlier this month at the request of the Commission on Professional Standards in Education to help address educator workforce shortages, according to an announcement Monday.
The emergency regulation, signed August 2, reduces the cost of a substitute teaching license from $180 for initial licenses and $150 for renewal licenses to $100 for all substitute teaching licenses. The emergency regulation allows the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to extend expiration dates of certain provisional educator licenses for up to 6 months, ensuring over 600 educators can continue teaching this fall.
“I want to thank the Commission on Professional Standards and Governor Sisolak for taking action to help address Nevada’s educator workforce shortages,” said Jhone Ebert, State Superintendent of Public Instruction. “The Nevada Department of Education is committed to partnering with districts and schools, traditional and alternative educator preparation programs, educator associations, and other stakeholders to continue to support teacher recruitment and retention efforts Statewide.”
“Administrators, teachers, and school staff are charged with the care of Nevada’s most valuable asset – our children,” said Governor Sisolak. “I am grateful to the Commission on Professional Standards for identifying an opportunity to address school staffing shortages this fall because all children deserve access to caring and qualified adults.”
The Commission on Professional Standards in Education is an 11-member public body with oversight of educator licensure and professional learning requirements. State law mandates that the Commission cannot set fees of less than $100 for educator licenses. Active duty and retired military personnel, veterans, and their spouses are eligible for a $50 discount on licensure fees. Please note the Nevada Department of Education is unable to adjust or refund fees that have already been paid.
Additional efforts by the Nevada Department of Education to support educator recruitment and retention include:
— NDE has invested over $2M of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to launch Career and Technical Education (CTE) Teaching and Training programs in 9 additional high schools across 4 rural counties. CTE Teaching and Training programs encourage Nevada’s high school students to consider careers as educators in Nevada as early as ninth grade. Upon completing high school, graduates can immediately be employed as a paraprofessional (teacher assistant) in the classroom while they continue to pursue educator preparation to become licensure-ready. In the 2021-22 school year, over 3,600 students were enrolled in this CTE pathway, which is available in over 50 high schools.
— NDE has invested over $20M of ESSER funds to launch the Incentivizing Pathways to Teaching grant program that will benefit up to 3,800 future educators. This program provides tuition assistance of $2,000 to support pre-service educators who are in their final three semesters as well as stipends of $8,400 ($700 per week for 12 weeks) to support educators who are student teachers. Recipients must agree to teach in a Nevada public school for two years. This grant complements the Teach Nevada Scholarship, which awards up to $24,000 in scholarship funds to future educators who meet certain criteria.
— NDE is supporting a partnership between the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Clark County School District to enable current school paraprofessionals to earn credit towards licensure through an accelerated 12-month program while maintaining their paid positions. To date, the Paraprofessionals Pathways Project has admitted and supported more than 100 students on their journeys to become licensed, full-time teachers in Southern Nevada schools. A summary of additional federal relief funding efforts to support teacher recruitment and retention is available.
In October 2019, NDE was awarded one of six competitive federal grants totaling $10 million over a five-year period from the U.S. Department of Education (USED) to support School-Based Mental Health Services (SBMHS). The focus of this grant is on recruitment, retention, and re-specialization of mental health providers in schools, with an emphasis on increasing linguistic diversity and serving vulnerable learners. NDE has partnered with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), and Nevada State College (NSC) in many of the recruitment and re-specialization strategies. NDE has also awarded funding directly to many districts and charter schools to support hiring incentives, relocation stipends, field placement incentives for current university and college students, and clinical internship incentives for master’s level licensees.
Nevada’s Teacher Recruitment and Retention Advisory Task Force was established by the Legislature in 2019 and includes teacher representatives from each of our 17 school districts to the Task Force. The Task Force findings and recommendations were presented to the Legislature’s Joint Interim Standing Committee on Education in June 2022. The Task Force’s report included 16 recommendations across five areas: data, messaging/branding and transparency, removing barriers, salary/compensation/benefits, and strategic use of funding.
