Building Safety Through Connection: A More Community‑Centered Approach to Mandated Reporting

In 2009, just as my career began, I was trained as a mandatory reporter for New York state. The requirement was one of many I needed to fulfill before becoming a licensed teacher. In the post-graduation rush and excitement of embarking on this new chapter, what resonated most was, “If you see something, say something.” 

I took note of what I needed to look for in terms of any maltreatment and abuse of my students. The “one-and-done” training was all we needed for state certification at the beginning of my career. Fast forward 10 years, and there have been countless shifts in education.

On April 16, 2021, then Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Senate Bill 2506 C/Assembly Bill 3006 C, establishing a budget and amending social services law to add, “Section 370-C. Supports and services for youth suffering from adverse childhood experiences.” It now reads:

The office of children and family services shall update training issued to persons and officials required to report cases of suspected child abuse or maltreatment to include protocols to reduce implicit bias in the decision-making processes, strategies for identifying adverse childhood experiences as defined in paragraph ( c ) of subdivision one of section twenty-d of this chapter, and guidelines to assist in recognizing signs of abuse or maltreatment while interacting virtually. Such persons and officials shall have three years from the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand twenty-one that added this subdivision to receive such updated mandated reported training.[1]

With this law, New York slightly changed the content of training for mandatory reporters. First, the state moved to incorporate an increasingly popular framework into its approach to child maltreatment: mandated support. The new training repeats the tagline: “You don’t have to report a family to support a family.” The new version also includes what to look for in virtual settings, which was not as pertinent when I took the initial training back in 2009. Updated content became available in February 2023 with the goal of reducing the number of calls,[2] because the overwhelming majority of them are unsubstantiated. Something had to change.

Then, New York had just over two years to develop and distribute new training to all the state’s mandated reporters by April 1, 2025, which is more than 255,000 teachers[3]—plus administrators, board members, bus drivers, counselors, nurses, occupational and physical therapists, psychologists, social workers and teacher aides.4 It became a huge effort to get the training completed in both a timely and effective manner. Questions immediately arose—the when, where and who would run the course all became immediate concerns. The list was seemingly endless, with the biggest question being: “Why do we need to retake a training sequence we were told was a ‘one and done’?”

In New York City, some 200,000 United Federation of Teachers members needed the update. Although retirees were not required to complete the update, many still felt it vital to keep their licenses up to date. 

As per the UFT contract, the city’s educators commit to at least 60 minutes of professional learning, weekly. During this time, teachers engage in topics relevant to their day-to-day lives in the classrooms, educating close to 1 million students. Schools that have Teacher Center sites consistently earn CTLE credits required toward their licenses. The block of time is meant to be purposeful and enhance teaching skills, always keeping students at the forefront. It is during this block that the New York City Public School mandatory trainings often take place.

In this case, educators were left on their own to complete the two-hour course. Additionally, they had to make sure it was uploaded into their TEACH account, the system used to monitor teacher licensure. Many hadn’t logged into their account in years, if ever. Certification was on the line; even retired substitutes would not be allowed into schools if they were not up to date by the deadline.

In October 2023, the UFT added the state’s training to its list of offerings. The union became an avenue by which educators could fulfill the state’s new mandate, free of charge and virtually, which was a huge factor. As a member of the Teacher Center team, I became one of the “faces” of the mandated reporter sessions. From November 2024 to April 1, 2025, I often co-facilitated between three and five sessions weekly, each one two hours, for thousands of educators at a time. Working closely with Kayla McCormack, the director of the UFT Teacher Center, we guided educators through nine objectives over 70 slides with information on topics such as:

• Available support helplines;
• Definitions of bias, and what that might look like;
• Disparities in the child welfare system;
• Basic liability and immunity guardrails for mandated reporters; and
• Ways maltreatment and abuse might present themselves in students.

Participants reviewed and engaged in scenarios to assess possible indicators of maltreatment. This aimed to increase engagement while checking understanding in a low-stakes way. We walked through how to make a report to the State Central Registry, and “what happens next” after the call is made. We closed every session with a post-assessment that helped gauge overall learning in the group.

Upon course completion, each member’s name was submitted to the state’s third-party system, so individual accounts would be updated. We ran sessions as Zoom webinars to accommodate more members, increasing offerings as the deadline loomed. Predictably, the script became rote to us as facilitators, while paperwork and emails became all consuming. April was in sight, and the mandate would be fulfilled. We would offer it once a month for new teachers, but basically we were done.

After the state announced a required 15-minute “addendum” session in September 2025, I helped roll out new content related to students with disabilities. Since November 2024, I have submitted data for over 150,000 UFT members who completed the state’s new requirements.

In October 2025, I joined a small cohort of AFT educators at the Kempe Center’s “Call to Change Child Welfare” conference. Unlike the state training, grounded in legislation, the conference is an open invitation to advocates, professionals and activists around the world who want to talk and think aloud about the well-being of families. While the state training mentions resources, it lacks real-life examples for “What happens next?” to families whose concerns are screened in and investigated.