As a rule that requires a RFA, RAFA or JIS, this rule will be initially reviewed in the calendar year 2023, which is no later than the 3rd year after the year in which this rule is being adopted.

Since publication of the Notice of Proposed Rule Making in the State Register on October 23, 2019, the State Education Department (SED) received the following comment on the proposed amendments. Below is an assessment of the public comment received.

1. COMMENT: Two commenters are fully in support of adding General Science and Languages Other Than English to the subject areas for the statement of continued eligibility (SOCE) and limited extension. They point out that the Students with Disabilities (SWD) content extension exists for biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics, and the requirements for it are 18 credits in the content area and the Content Specialty Test (CST). Therefore, a special education teacher holding the SWD content extension in one of the sciences would be eligible to teach a self-contained Regents-level high school science special class with 18 credits in the content area. However, 48 credits are required to teach a middle school science special class; they would need 30 credits of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics in the base science certificate and then another 18 credits in two sciences other than the base science certificate for the General Science extension. Commenters state that this is disproportionate and not reasonable. There is already a shortage of special education science teachers, and this would only exacerbate the problem.

Commenters suggest creating a SWD subject area extension for general science where the valid base certificate would be either the Permanent Special Education certificate or the Initial/Professional SWD Grades 5-9/7-12 Generalist/Content Specialist certificates. The content requirements could be 18 credits in either two or three areas of science and perhaps even a passing score on any one of the four available science CSTs.

DEPARTMENT RESPONSE: The commenters are supportive of the proposed regulatory amendment to add general science and languages other than English to the list of subject areas for the limited extension and SOCE. They suggest adding general science to the list of subject areas for the subject area extension for special education teachers in grades 5-9 and 7-12, allowing these teachers to teach general science by completing 18 semester hours of specified science college coursework instead of 48 semester hours of specified science college coursework as required for the General Science extension. Although the suggestion is beyond the scope of the proposal, the Department will take it under consideration. No change is necessary.