She is certified in earth science, and on the second day of classes she was handed two sections of chemistry. The district had posted the chemistry job in April, reposted it in June, and by late August had a single applicant who took a position elsewhere. So a superintendent did what New York law permits a superintendent to do, and a teacher who has never taught stoichiometry began teaching it to juniors who need the credit to graduate.

That assignment has a name in the regulations, a ceiling on it, and a paperwork trail most of the teachers living inside it have never seen. It is called incidental teaching, and on Tuesday the Board of Regents is expected to adopt an emergency rule that doubles how much of it a district can assign you.

Section 80-5.3 of the Commissioner's Regulations lets a superintendent assign a teacher to teach a subject not covered by that teacher's certificate or license "for a period not to exceed five classroom hours a week." The expanded figure, ten hours, was written in as a temporary overlay covering the 2020-21 through 2025-26 school years, and the proposed amendment simply moves the end of that window forward by one year. You can read the full text of Section 80-5.3 and check the ceiling yourself.

Before a superintendent may make the assignment, the district must document what the regulation calls extensive recruitment demonstrating that no certified or otherwise qualified teacher is available. The application goes to the Commissioner and must include the recruitment evidence, the assigned teacher's existing certification, the specific reason for the assignment and how long it is expected to last. The Commissioner has 20 business days to approve or disapprove.

If the application is disapproved, the superintendent has seven business days to end the assignment. If it is approved, the approval runs only through the end of that school year, which means a September assignment that stretches into a second year requires a fresh application rather than an extension by silence.

Here is the provision that most rarely reaches the teacher standing in front of the class. When a district seeks renewal of an incidental teaching assignment, the regulation requires that the teacher complete three semester hours of study toward the certificate covering the subject being taught, and it requires the district to reimburse the tuition.

That turns a staffing inconvenience into something closer to a paid pathway. A teacher assigned out of area for a second year is entitled to have the district fund three credits toward the certification that assignment implies, which is three credits of progress toward an additional extension, a broader resume and a stronger position in the next contract cycle. Teachers who never ask are simply teaching the second year for free.

Ask in writing, ask before the renewal application goes in, and ask for the reimbursement mechanism in the same email. Districts that have been through the process have a form. Districts that have not will have to build one, and the request lands better in September than in March.

What changes Tuesday, and what happens after

The Department is moving this as an emergency action rather than an ordinary rulemaking, which matters for the calendar. Adoption is set for the September meeting with an effective date of September 15, 2026. Notice publishes in the State Register on September 30, opening a 60-day public comment period. A further emergency action is anticipated at the November 2026 meeting to bridge the gap, with permanent adoption expected in January 2027 and a permanent effective date of January 27, 2027.

The reason offered in the item is short and unadorned. The proposal, the Department writes, "enables school districts to address their continuing staffing challenges by providing them with flexibility in making teaching assignments," and buys time "for the Department and Board of Regents to consider further reforms to the teacher and school leader certification process, one goal of which is to increase the supply of available and qualified educators." The full item, filed as HE (A) 1, is posted on the Regents site.

Seven school years into the doubled allowance, the memorandum to the Regents reports no figure for how many incidental teaching applications have been filed, how many were approved, which subjects they cluster in, or how many teachers are currently working under one. The Office of Teaching Initiatives has announced each extension as it happened, most recently in July 2025, without publishing usage data alongside it.

The shortage behind the ceiling

New York's teacher pipeline has been narrowing for most of two decades. NYSUT's January 2026 report on educator preparation put enrollment in teacher preparation programs down 42 percent since 2009 and completions down at least 35 percent over the same stretch, with federally designated shortage areas concentrated in secondary special education, career and technical education, science, English language arts, math and library media. Union president Melinda Person described the remedies in the report as ready to go.

"These are not theoretical ideas; they are shovel-ready solutions."

Some of those solutions have been funded and left on the table. Our reporting on the Comptroller's recent audit found that New York allocated $191.3 million to four teacher-shortage grant programs between July 2019 and August 2025 and spent $118.9 million of it, leaving $72.4 million unspent. Only 27 of 609 eligible districts applied to Teachers of Tomorrow, and of 692 districts surveyed outside New York City, 190 non-participants said they did not know the programs existed.

Money to grow the certified workforce goes unclaimed, the workforce does not grow, and the regulation that lets districts cover the gap with teachers they already employ gets extended for a seventh year. The state has also widened the front door, adding reciprocity for teachers trained in other states through the enhanced comparable program, which we covered in an earlier Playbook.

Your five questions before you accept the section

Has the application been approved, and when?

Incidental teaching is lawful once the Commissioner approves it, and the Commissioner has 20 business days to rule. A teacher who has been assigned since the first week of September should know whether the application is pending or granted, because a disapproval obligates the district to end the assignment within seven business days.

How many classroom hours a week is it, exactly?

The ceiling is a weekly hour count, not a section count. Two daily periods of 45 minutes is seven and a half hours a week, which sits above the five-hour baseline and inside the ten-hour allowance the Regents are restoring. Three daily periods will breach the ceiling in most schedules.

Which certificate does it run against?

The application names the subject being taught and the certificate the teacher holds. That pairing is what the renewal coursework attaches to, so the answer determines which three credits the district owes you if the assignment continues into 2027-28.

Is this the second year?

A second year is a renewal, and renewal carries both the coursework requirement and the tuition reimbursement obligation. It also requires the district to confirm that the previously assigned teacher was offered continuation, or to document why the prior year's instruction was unacceptable.

What is the plan to fill the job?

The regulation conditions the assignment on documented recruitment. A teacher entitled to nothing else is entitled to know what the district has already tried, because that record is what the state approved the assignment on.

What to watch

The comment window opens September 30 and runs 60 days, which puts the close in late November, and comments submitted then are the record the Board reads before permanent adoption in January. Teachers and local associations who want the usage data published, or who want the ten-hour ceiling paired with a reporting requirement, have that window and no other before the number becomes permanent regulation. The November meeting brings the bridging emergency action, and the January meeting brings the vote that stops calling this temporary.