Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has signed a bill that requires substitute teachers to just have a high school diploma to be hired, scrapping the requirement that every teacher have a bachelor’s degree.
“We’ve heard from a lot of districts [the requirement is] causing a burden on them,” Rep. Andy Fleischmann, D-West Hartford and co-chairman of the Education Committee said when the bill almost unanimously passed the House of Representatives.
The law allows the state’s education commissioner to waive the college requirement. Leaders of the state superintendents and school board associations have both said there is not a shortage of substitute teachers. They also have said when the commissioner’s ability to waive the college requirement was rescinded a few years ago, it resulted in very few substitute teachers being disqualified.
The law will go into effect July 1.
Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.
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