The State Education Department took action to eliminate the torturous edTPA that those in teacher training programs had been subjected to. “NYSUT and its SUNY and CUNY higher education affiliates, the United University Professions and the Professional Staff Congress, have been leading voices in pushing back against the edTPA requirements and working to reform the certification process, going back to when the requirements first were considered in New York nearly a decade ago”. Continuing advocacy by our union helped to make this happen.
On April 9th state legislators approved the 2022-2023 budget. This budget provided increased resources for education and is continuing to head towards fully funding Foundation Aid. There is also additional funding for mental health staff, professional development, and implicit bias training. A win for unions and specifically for our Tier 5 & 6 educators is that they now only have to work 5 years instead of 10 to be vested in the pension system. As a teacher shortage looms these two things will hopefully help attract more to teaching programs and allow our profession to flourish.
