With New York City facing a chronic shortage of bilingual special education teachers, the UFT was able to negotiate a new incentive program to encourage tenured special education teachers with a bilingual extension to combine those two specialties.

The new incentive, which is outlined in a Department of Education and UFT agreement signed in August, includes a $5,000 annual bonus for special education teachers in a monolingual program who become teachers in a bilingual special education class or a mixed-group class or who provide bilingual special education teacher support services (SETSS). They will get the bonus each year as long as they remain in that title and role.

The educators, who must reach an agreement with their principal to make the switch, will receive a waiver so they do not sacrifice tenure or lose seniority and do not have a one-year probation period.

The DOE-UFT agreement expires on June 30, 2025, but it could be renewed.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the waiver corrects a disincentive for special education teachers to shift into bilingual special education, where there is a pressing need for more staff. “We need to be able to let them switch their certificates without any liability to themselves because they’ve already proven to be highly successful teachers,” he said.

A similar incentive program was in effect in the 2023–24 school year to boost the ranks of bilingual education and English as a new language teachers in general education due to the large influx of asylum-seeking children. Although that particular agreement expired in June 2024, teachers who agree to switch their license of appointment to ENL or bilingual education can still qualify for a shortened probation of one year but with no financial incentive.

In another measure to help support newcomer students, the state Education Department has renewed its temporary modification of the requirements for earning a supplementary ENL or bilingual education extension to make it easier to obtain these credentials. Educators who are interested can apply for the ENL certificate and/or the bilingual extension using the modified pathways until Aug. 31, 2025.

Certified teachers and pupil personnel services professionals (i.e., social workers, school counselors and psychologists) can now complete either the examination requirement or the enrollment and education requirements, instead of both. That means candidates can pass the Bilingual Education Assessment and/or the Content Specialty Test in ESOL, if available, in lieu of completing coursework and matriculating in a registered program leading to a bilingual education extension and/or an ENL certificate.

Because the Bilingual Education Assessment can be taken only on a limited number of dates, candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible for the test. You can find more information about these supplementary certification modifications on the state Education Department website.

There is a limited time for completing the requirements for full certification, and once a supplementary ENL certification is issued, it will be in effect for five years. Applicants may renew the supplementary bilingual education extension one time for three more years from the effective date of the renewal only if they obtained their first extension through this flexibility and meet the requirements for the extension.