Indiana teachers frustrated, rushing to renew licenses before new requirements take effect

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WAVE) - Many teachers around Indiana are staying busy, getting to work toward renewing their teaching licenses this summer. It's not for fun - it's part of a new requirement lawmakers passed this session without much discussion with educators.

“It’s so frustrating, one more thing without bothering to talk with educators about it and teachers have just had it,” Indiana State Teachers Association President Teresa Meredith said.

A new Indiana law requires teachers renewing their licenses to do an externship or professional development work after July 1, that would educate them on their community’s work-force needs.

Typically, teachers renew their licenses every five years and are required to complete 90 hours of professional growth plan experience points. Under this new requirement, 15 of those 90 points would come from the externship, career navigation or workforce needs study programs through the state, a local business or community partner.

The law passed quickly, without much teacher input or awareness.

“It says you have to do 15 hours for professional growth points," Greater Clark Education Association President Mark Felx said. "There’s very little clarity in it but also, what’s the necessity of a kindergarten teacher going and working in a business?”

Felix and his spouse are teachers within Greater Clark. He said these new license renewal requirements are an unpaid burden, particularly for teachers who don’t readily have businesses willing to help them with these requirements nearby.

“It’s okay here in Jeffersonville, we’ve got River Ridge, we’ve got a lot of businesses willing to work with us but imagine the unfairness of someone working in one of our rural communities and they have to drive, I don’t know how far they have to drive, to get to a business to do something like an externship,” Felix said.

If you start your license renewal and log some professional development hours ahead of the July 1 deadline, you’re exempted from the new requirements for now.

According to the Indiana Department of Education, 22,760 educators have started the process of submitting their professional growth plans for their license renewal and 4,500 have already been approved over the past year. The previous year, just 515 had started the process with 1,892 being approved.

With around 77,000 educators in the state of Indiana, the Department of Education said nearly one-third of the state’s teachers are working to input professional growth plan right now because of these requirement changes.

Recently, the website to input the information crashed, but the Department of Education said the site should now be able to keep up with the high demand from teachers doing this over summer break.

In a year where lawmakers didn't approve pay increases for teachers, Meredith said many see this new unpaid mandate as an insult.

"It looks like they're wanting us to contribute more of our time for free and it is addressing something that, it's a solution in search of a problem, it's not something that exists," Meredith said. "It's another slap in the face.”

Senator Ron Grooms said this training for teachers renewing their licenses came from the need to make high school students smarter about vocational and technical training programs in their communities that are options beyond high school.

Below is the requirement itself:

SECTION 20. IC 20-28-5-25 IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW SECTION TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2019]: Sec. 25. (a) This section applies to a professional growth plan that begins after July 1, 2019. (b) Fifteen (15) of the total number of professional growth experience points required to renew a practitioner license or an accomplished practitioner license must be obtained through the completion of one (1) or more of the following: (1) An externship with a company. (2) Professional development provided by the state, a local business, or a community partner that provides opportunities for schools and employers to partner in promoting career navigation. (3) Professional development provided by the state, a local business, or a community partner that outlines the: (A) current and future economic needs of the community, state, nation, and globe; and (B) ways in which the current and future economic needs described in clause (A) can be disseminated to students.

For more information regarding the requirements for the professional growth plan (PGP) experience points that were changed under the legislation, click here.

For a list of commonly asked questions and answers, click here.

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