[T]he House Education Committee stripped language on the licensing of speech language pathologists out of a Senate bill Tuesday, leaving the law and process the same as it has been since 2015 despite back-and-forth efforts to change it.
Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, a committee member who is a speech language pathologist, or SLP, said she didn’t like how the Senate proposal would split the profession by assigning oversight of licensing to different agencies depending on where the applicant works. SLPs diagnose and treat communication and swallowing disorders and can work in private practice, hospitals or schools.
“I understand the Senate wanted to address the inconvenience of a second license required by SLPs working under a teachers contract,” Webb said, adding that the language in S.130 divided the profession and didn’t make sense with “national standards or certification.”
The Senate included language in its miscellaneous education bill this year saying SLPs who work in schools need just a license from the Education Agency. All others would continue to go through the Office of Professional Regulation, part of the secretary of state’s office.
The problem, according to Patricia Prelock, dean of the college that trains speech language pathologists at the University of Vermont, is that all SLPs have the same training and many work in more than one setting.
“Why are we creating a licensing process across settings when the core knowledge and skills are exactly the same? You are splitting our profession,” Prelock said.
Prelock said the bill is confusing and sets up artificial barriers for SLPs who practice in both schools and clinical settings because they would have to get more than one license.
Webb agreed and said it was important to keep the profession whole. “Similar to school nurses, SLPs hired by school districts will need an additional endorsement — in our state, this is a teacher’s license,” she said.
Colin Benjamin, the director of OPR, said lawmakers should view his agency as a licensing service embedded in the other government agencies. Benjamin was comfortable with the way licensing now stands for school-based SLPs, requiring them to get an additional license from the Education Agency, but he would prefer if all SLPs were licensed only once at OPR.
“This is not a turf war. We should all be on the same team,” Benjamin said, adding, “S.130 takes us backwards.”
There has been an ongoing debate — straddling two legislative sessions — over who should license SLPs.
The idea in 2015 was to move all licensing of the profession to OPR to make it more streamlined, but that didn’t turn out as planned for those who work in the schools.
Under the system put in place in 2015, speech language pathologists were expected to get their license from OPR and supplement it with an endorsement from the Education Agency. But the agency said it can’t provide an endorsement unless the applicant has a teaching license. That means school speech language pathologists pay two fees — one to each agency.
The fees at the Education Agency went up when the new process was implemented in September 2015 — from $105 for three years to $300 for five years. Continuing education requirements for speech language pathologists also increased.
Some SLPs wanted a fix and brought the issue to lawmakers last year.
A bill last year, S.217, would have moved not only school-based SLPs but also a number of other professions that currently get licensed at the Education Agency over to OPR.
They included nurses, social workers and psychologists who may work in a school setting or a clinic. It also would have captured some career and technical educators, such as architects, engineers and cosmetologists.
Last year’s bill would have moved the primary licensing of about 1,200 educators to OPR. They would no longer have had to get an endorsement from AOE — and therefore need a teaching license — or pay additional fees, according to Greg Glennon, then-legal counsel for the Education Agency.
Last year, Glennon told legislators the agency would lose about $100,000 a year in fees if S.217 went into effect. He said the agency would need more money from the general fund if the bill passed because the fees pay for positions in the AOE licensing office.
Lawmakers settled for having SLPs who work in the schools continue to get an additional license from the Education Agency and did the same with other professions that work in both settings.