The Law and Licensing Committee amended R277‑301 (educator licensing) to permit accredited Utah‑based private schools to request extensions of associate licenses, a change staff said will help a small number of educators without creating significant administrative burden.

Malia Hite, executive coordinator of educator licensing, told the committee staff analyzed the data and identified about eight educators who would fit the scenario where a private, accredited Utah school would seek an extension: "We did a data we ran the data and found that there were, in total, 8 educators who would fit in a scenario where they would wanna extend an an associate license and were employed at an accredited private school in Utah. And so, the lift is minimal, almost nonexistent, really," Hite said.

Committee members discussed whether to limit the change to Utah‑based private schools and ultimately proposed adding the modifier "Utah‑based" before "accredited private school" on line 98 to avoid broad out‑of‑state requests for Utah associate‑license extensions. Deputy Stallings and other staff confirmed the amendment addresses earlier concerns about out‑of‑state applicants seeking Utah licensing without intending to work in Utah.

The amendment passed unanimously; the committee then approved the underlying draft as amended on first reading and will forward it to the full board for final approval.