New Jersey like elsewhere in the country is in the midst of an ongoing teacher shortage well this morning lawmakers considered a new package of bills aimed at addressing the issue and breaking down the employment barriers they say are preventing potential Educators from entering the profession senior correspondent Joanna gagas has the story this is not just an approaching crisis this is a crisis that is here a crisis that will take years to resolve completely but at least now with these bills we are on the path that crisis being a teacher shortage that's affecting nearly every school district in New Jersey Educators and experts turned out in overwhelming support for a package of bills that cleared the assembly education committee today aimed at reversing that shortage the bills that we're introducing here today will seek to address individual issues by removing barriers addressing costs and adding resources assembly education committee chair Pamela lampet explained that many of the bills came from recommendations offered by a task force recently convened by Governor Murphy to attract and keep more teachers in the classroom number one barrier is the cost of Education so we're removing some of the restrictions on the transfer of credits for students and establishing a tuition remission program for student educators and when we look at the High Cost of student teaching our student teachers you know go off to to the the classrooms and uh and they don't get paid um and they still have to pay tuition so it's another issue that we need to continue to address some testifying in support of a new teacher certification reimbursement fund saying it can cost up to four thousand dollars to get certified and some end up paying more when they have to retake the test which happens all too often over and over we hear that people are struggling to pass the Praxis core academic skills exam most struggle with the math section which includes questions related to statistics and other advanced math concepts many of these individuals are seeking Elementary School certification and cannot understand why they need to pass an exam with middle to high school level math concepts one bill would change the requirements around passing that exam another bill would allow teachers who've already retired to come back to the classroom for two years without affecting their pensions yet another would allow tax write-offs for the expense of classroom supplies teachers make on their own that one raised some concern of who might not be included we don't believe that the definition right now of educator or paraprofessional would include those related Services providers that speech language Specialists are so I'm hopeful that we could see an amendment to the definition there others asked for broader efforts to attract and retain education professionals beyond classroom teachers this bill packages largely focused on teachers but there are many other positions within our school school counselors and other roles that we hope will start looking at as well a similar concern raised over a bill introduced by assembly speaker Craig Coughlin that would increase education time for students students can't fully learn until they're whole so you can throw remediation and tutoring at them all you want but if we don't focus on that social emotional piece in concert with the learning piece it doesn't work well this package of bills now moves to the full assembly for a vote and this committee is hopeful these bills can be signed into law before the end of the legislative session in just a few weeks in Trenton I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News