On Board Online • June 30, 2025
By Sara Foss
Special Correspondent
The State Education Department plans to create four new special subject tenure areas, rename certain tenure areas to match current certificate titles and update outdated language to reflect contemporary terminology.
"These regulations go back to 1975, so they're really quite old," said Alex Trikalinos, assistant commissioner for the New York State Education Department's Office of Teacher and Leader Development.
The changes approved by the Board of Regents include:
- Establishing new tenure areas in dance, theater and visual arts, accompanied by a phasing out of the more general "art" tenure area. Music would be maintained as a tenure area.
- Creating a tenure area in agriculture.
- Renaming certain tenure areas to match current certification titles. Business would become business and marketing, home economics would become family and consumer science, industrial arts would become technology education and school media specialist would become school library media specialist. There would also be changes in the names of certain tenure areas in special education.
Also, regulations need to be updated to remove outdated language regarding students with disabilities, Trikalinos said in a presentation to the Regents at their June meeting. He said regulations ought to reflect "current terminology in the field around how we talk about that student population."
New terms include blind and visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing and speech and language disabilities. Similarly, the term vocational education would be replaced with career and technical education.
A few tenure areas, such as driver education, would be phased out by Sept. 30, 2025.
Trikalinos said the changes will only impact new probationary appointments from the date when the new rules go into effect. "This is only for new appointments," he said. "It doesn't impact anyone's tenure status."
In New York, newly appointed teachers in public school districts and BOCES serve a probationary period of four years. Upon their initial appointment to a probationary period, classroom teachers are assigned to one or more tenure areas in which they devote a substantial portion of their time. They must hold the appropriate certification for any tenure area to which they are appointed.
The proposed amendment was published in the state register on June 25 for a 60-day comment period.