Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Educator Licensure System topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Licensing unit seeks staff and replacement for aging teacher‑licensing system after past crash
Summary
The Nevada Department of Education asked the subcommittee for a program officer to help process educator licenses faster and said its current OPAL licensing platform is outdated, citing a multi‑day outage and manual reporting work that drives the need for a new vendor and likely future budget amendment.
Department witnesses told the Joint Subcommittee the licensing unit needs an additional program officer (Grama Officer 3) to supervise licensing staff and speed processing of educator applications.
Deputy Superintendent Megan Peterson said the licensure office is fee funded and supports background checks, the OPAL online portal and fingerprinting. The department told the subcommittee it would like to reduce current licensure review time from about 30 days toward a two‑week goal to avoid delaying school hiring.
Jeff Brisky, Director of Educator Licensure, described technical limits of the existing system: "we've had this since 2017...the queries when we run them, we're not getting the data that that we actually need out of it. And so we have to do manual downloads, transfer them to Excel, and then, of course, put those all together manually, in the format that's needed for those reports." He told lawmakers the system had previously stopped issuing licenses after a crash: "the system completely crashed. It was not recoverable for, I believe, 11 days. We were not able to issue any licenses."
The department said it is working on procurement options and indicated a budget amendment may be needed to acquire a new licensing platform. Peterson said the state joined a new interstate teacher mobility compact created by legislation (Senate Bill 442) and requested funding to maintain membership in that compact.
Committee members asked whether an existing management analyst position could be repurposed; department staff said some duties moved from the Midas platform to Canvas and that the work continues under a different system. The department also described one‑time and operating costs the licensing unit is carrying, including Smartsheet licenses and computer replacements on a five‑year schedule. Fiscal staff said a separate agreement with a vendor (ANLAR) will be used for the department's website and that some contracts will remain with other budget accounts.
The subcommittee took questions but did not vote on the licensing account during the hearing.
