Teacher shortage report requirements modification provision
SF 1670 updates Minnesota’s teacher shortage reporting laws. It revises the definition of a “shortage area” to include not only licensure fields and regions with unfilled licensed-teacher assignments, but also regions where the share of Indigenous teachers and teachers of color is lower than the share of Indigenous students and students of color. Under that definition, only educators who help close that representation gap count as filling a shortage for reporting purposes.
The bill also expands and clarifies the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board’s required biennial supply-and-demand report. The report must continue to cover retirement patterns, licensure, teacher diversity, shortage patterns, district and preparation-program survey data, and district progress in hiring, but it must now also include more detailed information about teacher hiring and vacancies by region and license tier. In addition, the bill requires a one-time report by February 1, 2026, listing teacher openings by school district in several hard-to-fill fields, including ESL, early childhood, special education, career and technical education, STEM, and world languages, along with hiring and vacancy data for each field.
The bill amends Minnesota Statutes sections 122A.06 and 122A.091 and creates a new reporting requirement for the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board. It does not directly change teacher licensure standards, hiring authority, or funding formulas, but it increases the amount and specificity of data the state must collect and publish about teacher shortages, workforce diversity, and district staffing needs. The changes take effect July 1, 2025, with the special field-by-field report due in 2026 and the new shortage-area definition applying after enactment.
Based on the bill’s content and committee action, the measure appears to have been treated as a policy and data-reporting update rather than a controversial substantive overhaul. It was introduced, heard in the Senate Education Policy Committee, and advanced as amended to Education Finance, suggesting general support for improving teacher workforce information. The available record does not include floor debate, recorded opposition, or votes that would indicate strong partisan division.
The main policy issue embedded in the bill is how Minnesota defines and measures teacher shortages. One point of emphasis is equity: the bill treats underrepresentation of Indigenous teachers and teachers of color relative to student demographics as part of the shortage picture, which may be viewed as an important diversity goal by supporters. A possible point of contention is the added reporting burden on the licensing board and school districts, as well as the use of demographic comparisons to define shortage areas, which could be debated by those who prefer a narrower, vacancy-based definition of shortage.