The Senate passed House Bill 432 26 to 2 on Wednesday afternoon, then returned to the Ohio House, where lawmakers that night concurred on amendments made in the Senate.
The bill would allow people to apply to the Ohio State Board of Education for an initial career-technical workforce development educator license, regardless of whether they have an offer of employment. Currently, only a school district can apply on behalf of an applicant to whom it has extended an employment offer.
Currently, people seeking a career-technical workforce development license must be enrolled in a 24-semester-hour educator preparation program, often at a university, that meets state requirements.
Under HB 432, two alternative teacher prep programs would be allowed.
One alternative would be a program created by one or more school districts that includes at least nine credit hours or three semester hours of coursework in the area the person would teach and another 45 hours of local professional development designed by the employing district.
The other alternative teacher prep would be a two-year mentoring program created by one or more districts. The mentor would have to be a licensed educator or administrator. The new teacher would have a personal learning plan approved by the district and would have to have 90 clock hours of professional development during the initial licensure period.
HB 432 also seeks to cut red tape for existing teachers licensed in other areas who want to switch to career-technical education.
The bill is sponsored by state Rep. Don Jones, a Harrison County Republican.
“As many of you are aware, Ohio is facing a shortage of Career Tech Instructors,” he said when he first testified on the bill. “This is not because qualified instructors do not exist, but because of the red tape standing in the way of qualified instructors being issued a license.”
On Tuesday afternoon in the Senate Education Committee, lawmakers tacked several amendments onto the bill that had been requested by the state and associations in the education field.
One of the amendments cleaned up language in Senate Bill 29, which passed over the summer and sought to protect students records that are created or maintained by a technology contractor. Some districts quit allowing students to use YouTube, thinking it violated the law, which was never the legislature’s intention, said state Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Columbus-area Republican and chair of the education committee.
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