News you can use
www.mea.org judged one of best in nation
Go to www.mea.org, and you’ll be visiting
one of the best education Web
sites in the nation.
The MEA Web site won first place in annual State Education Editors (SEE) competition. SEE is composed of communications professionals who work for state affiliates of the National Education Association.
www.mea.org won first place among Web sites of NEA affiliates with more than 75,000 members. The award was presented at the annual SEE conference in Philadelphia June 21-25.
SEE judges also honored the MEA Voice Today e-newsletter with an award of merit. The Voice Today is published every other week during the school year. Visit www.mea.org/voicetoday to subscribe.
A news story, “The Holland Experience,” published in the 2006 summer issue of the MEA Voice magazine, won an award of merit. That story was written by MEA creative communications consultant Karen Schulz.
Your job is at risk if you let your teaching certificate expire
Teachers who let their professional
education certificates expire could
lose their jobs.
That’s the warning from the Michigan Department of Education, which every spring fields questions from panicked teachers on the verge of letting their certification lapse.
“Those teachers are in jeopardy of losing their jobs,” said Frank Ciloski of the Department of Education.
A teacher with an expired certificate may be terminated because the school district is required to employ only teachers with valid teaching certificates, Ciloski said.
If a district terminates a teacher because of an expired certificate, the teacher has no recourse, he explained. School districts employing a teacher without a valid teaching certificate, even if just for one day, risk a state aid penalty equivalent to the salary paid to the teacher during the time that teacher is illegally employed.
Teachers must renew their professional education certificates every five years. It is the teacher’s responsibility to meet the renewal requirement and have a new certificate in hand when a certificate expires on June 30 of a given year.
To renew their professional education certificate, teachers must take six semester hours of appropriate credit or 18 State Board Continuing Education Units (SBCEUs), or a combination of those two.
The Department of Education has no authority to grant extensions to a professional education certificate once it expires.
Ciloski also said teachers with expired certificates lose tenure rights.