SBEC Recap: HB 2 and disciplinary changes

May 8
3 min read

The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) met in Austin Friday, Apr. 24 for it’s second regular meeting of the year. While the agenda was not particularly long, the actions of the board will have broad impacts and consequences for educator preparation and discipline in the coming months and years.

This was the first meeting for new board member JoMeka Gray, a kindergarten teacher at Kennedy-Powell Elementary School in Temple ISD. Ms. Gray has received numerous accolades as an educator, including being a 2025 Texas Teacher of the Year finalist and 2026 Horace Mann Awardee. Statue requires the SBEC to have four teachers as voting members of the body. There are currently two.

Associate Commissioner Jessica McLaughlin also briefly presented on the state of the educator workforce. Though some of the more perilous trends Texas has been seeing, such as the majority of new hires not having a teaching certificate, are ebbing slightly, the state is by no means out of the woods when it comes to having an fully and appropriately trained educator workforce. These trends were the impetus behind much of the legislative directive in House Bill 2, inclusive of the preparing and retaining educators through the partnership (PREP) program and allotment.

At this meeting, the SBEC adopted the first suite of rulemaking required by the passage of HB 2. The following chapters were adopted by the board with minimal changes since proposal.

Chapter 228, Requirements for Educator Preparation Programs
Chapter 227, Provisions for Educator Preparation Candidates; and
Chapter 230, Professional Educator Preparation and Certification

These rules will govern the newly funded pathways for the allotment: Grow Your Own (GYO), teacher residency, and teacher mentorship in 2026-2027 and the PREP clinical and alternative certifications effective the following year. Texas AFT members will be most aware of the changes related to the supervising or mentoring of new teacher candidates beginning with 2026-2027 school year, and we will be sure to inform members of details related to mentor training as they become available from the agency.

Additionally, the board adopted changes to educator disciplinary rules (Chapter 249) and the Educator Code of Ethics (Chapter 247); the proposed changes are required by statute (SB 12 and SB 571) but the board has some discretionary authority regarding many of these definitions, such as what constitutes a continuing and imminent threat. We were disappointed that the agency chose not to incorporate its public comments nor those of other commenters that would have further clarified the language in these rules and further protected teachers from unwarranted investigations.

The SBEC Temporary Suspension subcommittee has been meeting regularly (approximately every two weeks) to suspend the certifications of teachers who have been arrested for certain offenses named in SB 571; at the board’s February meeting that number was up to 810. These newly adopted discipline rules will now cast a wider net for educators to be suspended.

As a reminder, superintendents and principals are now required to report within 48 hours of learning of incident involving direct harm to students (regardless of separation from the district). There is also a duty to report child abuse to DFPS/law enforcement within 24 hours (down from 48 hours, which allowed for brief investigations). This report-now-ask-questions-later is pulling many teachers into a legal limbo without evidence and can have long-term negative consequences for certification and employment.

The results of the meeting were unsurprising, yet consequential. All adopted rules now head to the State Board of Education (SBOE) for ratification at their June meeting. There will be multiple opportunities for Texas AFT to monitor the impacts of the decisions made in the board room and to advocate for change as needed.