Williamsville Central School District

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Certified Personnel

Adoption Date: 7/7/2009
6000 - Personnel

6212 CERTIFICATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

Certification

In accordance with applicable statutes, Rules of the Board of Regents, and Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, each employee of the District whose employment requires certification or other licensure shall inform the Superintendent of Schools immediately of any change in the status of his/her certification or licensure. The changes shall include, but not be limited to, the granting, revocation, upgrading, expiration, conversion and/or extension of these documents as to their periods of validity or their titles.

The original certificates and/or licenses must be presented for examination and copying in the office of Human Resources as soon as they are available to the employee. The copies will be maintained in the employee's personnel file in support of the legitimate employment of each affected employee. The failure of any such employee to possess the required certification or other licensure may result in the discharge of that employee.

Whether or not the District verifies an individual's certification or licensure does not waive the responsibility of the employee to maintain what is required for his/her assignment.

Qualifications of Teachers

  1. The District must ensure that all newly hired teachers in Title I programs who teach core academic subjects are highly qualified per Regulations of the Commissioner of Education. The term "core academic subjects" means English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography. A "highly qualified" teacher is one who has obtained full state certification as a teacher, or has passed the state teacher licensing examination, holds a license to teach in the state and has at least a bachelor's degree, and also must show subject matter competency in the subjects they teach.
  2. The District is also required to provide to teachers who are not new to the profession the opportunity to meet the NCLB requirement to be highly qualified, in part, through passing a High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE). The HOUSSE shall be an evaluation, prescribed by the New York State Education Department and conducted locally either during a pre-employment review or at the time of an Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), that enables a teacher who is beyond the first year of teaching to demonstrate subject matter competency in all core academic subjects that the teacher teaches. The evaluation shall be based upon objective, coherent information as prescribed by the department, and shall include, but not be limited to, information on the teacher's education, credentials, professional experience, and professional development.
  3. The District must ensure that on or after September 2, 2009, a candidate for a teaching certificate or license as a special education teacher shall, in addition to all the other certification or licensing requirements, have  completed enhanced  course  work  or  training  in  the  area  of children with autism. Such enhanced training shall also be completed by each certified school administrator or Supervisor assigned to serve as a special education administrator by September 2, 2009. The enhanced course work or training shall be obtained from an institution or provider approved by the Department except that a school district or a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) may provide such training as part of its professional development program.
Parent Notification

In accordance with the Federal No Child Left Behind Act, the District is required to provide parents, upon request, with specific information about the professional qualifications of their children's classroom teachers. The following shall be provided by the District upon such requests:

  1. If the teacher has met New York State qualifications and licensing criteria for the grade levels and subject areas he/she teaches;
  2. Whether the teacher is teaching under emergency or other provisional status through which the State qualification or licensing criteria have been waived;
  3. The teacher's college major; whether the teacher has any advanced degrees and, if so, the subject of the degrees; and
  4. If the child is provided services by any instructional aides or similar paraprofessionals and, if so, their qualifications.
 All requests shall be honored in a timely manner.

Education Law Sections 3001, 3001-a, 3004, 3006 and 3008
8 New York Code of Rules and Regulations (NYCRR) Subparts 80-1, 80-2, 80-3, 100.2(dd) and 100.2(o)
34 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Sections 200.55 and 200.56
20 United States Code (USC) Section 7801(23)

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