The Senate has passed a bill that would impose a probationary period for new teachers.
The House sent the bill to the Senate that described a new teacher as any teacher who'd been teaching fewer than three years. The probationary period for teachers would therefore be three years. Democratic Senator Erin Oban said she thought a three year probationary period for teachers was too long - but that she was willing to compromise. Oban said she tried to offer an amendment in the Education committee to shorten the probationary period, but it was rejected, so she brought the amendment to the Senate floor.
"For the purposes of simplifying this, I am going to offer the floor amendment, if that has been distributed to everybody - a compromise with the exact language as it stands, changing it from three years to two."
Republican Senator Nicole Poolman agreed amending the bill was a good idea.
"From an administrator's point of view, I can absolutely see why they would need more than one year. I think it is reasonable for them to ask for more time to evaluate. They can put mentorship in place, we have high quality mentorship in the state of North Dakota, a high quality program that they should be using in that first year, and in the second year it gives us some time to look at the data. They can look at the first two quarters of data, and take a look at what's happening in that classroom."
The Senate voted 33 to 14 to approve the amendment.
Before the bill went up for a vote on the Senate floor, Democratic Senator JoNell Bakke said she didn't think probation was the right step. She spoke in favor of teacher mentorship.
"I don't like the idea of putting teachers in this position. I think it's going to encourage young teachers to look outside the state rather than staying in the state. And I can't support probation for teachers because I think they're already going through a lot of that when they go through their student teaching. And if the districts are doing what they're supposed to be doing, those teachers are supposed to be going through one year of mentoring with an experienced teacher."
The bill was passed on a vote of 42 to 5. It will return to the House for its consideration with its new amendment.