SAANYS Meets with Commissioner Rosa and Senior Staff

Yesterday, March 10, 2022, SAANYS staff met with Commissioner Rosa for a monthly stakeholder meeting. Some of the topics on the agenda included:

Updates from the Office of Teaching Initiatives and Teacher Certification, APPR, and school leader professional development funding.

Updates from the Office of Teaching Initiatives and Teacher Certification – SED has been working on streamlining and removing barriers for obtaining certification. Some examples on which SED has been working include:

• adding flexibility in determining what is accepted for building leaders’ one year of experience,
• adjusting grade-level bands for teacher certification titles,
• decreasing the time needed to address application processes, and
• improving internal consistency in interpreting applications for certification.

SAANYS and NYSFSA (our colleagues from NYC, Yonkers, and Buffalo) added the following agenda items to the meeting:

APPR– SED did not have any additional information regarding the status of legislation proposed to suspend APPR for this school year. Currently, the senate has legislation proposing such, but the assembly does not have a corresponding bill.

School Leader Professional Development Funding– inquiries were made as to possible funding opportunities for building leader professional development through SED. Funding through federal title programs may be used for such purposes and SAANYS consistently encourages NYSED to consider initiatives focused on building-level administrators.