News

There was a recent update to the notification system in the Teacher Information Management System (TIMS), going into effect at approximately 7:30 AM today, October 1st, 2024, which may result in you receiving an increase of Pending Criminal Charge Notifications in your TIMS queue.

All chief school administrators (CSAs) and certifying officers must complete the acknowledgments.

Please log into your TIMS dashboard to review and submit the acknowledgments to PDE, demonstrating your understanding of the law and your requirements. Please be advised that PDE will retain your acknowledgement. Please also be advised that for approximately 20 local education agencies (LEA), this update will require a re-acknowledgment of the information.

Pending Criminal Charge Notifications – General Information

A Pending Criminal Charge Notification alerts you to the fact that an educator has been criminally
charged with a misdemeanor or felony crime in Pennsylvania, including crimes pending the completion of a pre-trial diversionary program (i.e., Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD)).

The information reflected in TIMS is received by PDE from the statewide database otherwise known as the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET), which provides PDE with limited public information about criminal charges originating in the state of Pennsylvania. If an educator has pending criminal
charges in TIMS, the chief school administrator or certifying officer may contact the Office of
Chief Counsel, Department of Education, at 717-787-5500, for information regarding charge
information, the date of the charges, and the county where the charges were incurred. Verification
of the charges and more information regarding the charges can be obtained by accessing the
Pennsylvania Judiciary Web Portal, a free database of publicly available criminal information.
Access to the portal can be made at: UJS portal.

TIMS receives employment data from the Pennsylvania Information Management System (PIMS) and the information provided is not real time. PDE typically receives employer data from PIMS in the fall
for the previous school year. Therefore, for example, if an educator begins employment at a new
school entity in the middle of the school year and became the subject of criminal charges shortly
thereafter, notification to the new school entity will not be made until the start of the following
school year, assuming the criminal charges are still pending. Please also note that the
notification only regards charges pending in Pennsylvania; an employee could have pending federal
or out-of-state charges that do not trigger the notification. This new criminal charge notification
system is meant to be an additional tool for school entities, but it in no way replaces current
background check and employment review requirements, or any other employment requirements, under the Pennsylvania School Code or other applicable law(s).

Finally, the pending criminal charge information is only provided for educators. Information for
other school employees is not available in TIMS.

User Roles in the Teacher Information Management System – Chief School Administrators

There are multiple requirements that a school entity’s chief school administrator must fulfill
within TIMS, one of several PDE applications within the MyPDESuite web portal. As such, it is vital
that a CSAs have access to TIMS via the CSA user role, and not delegate their legal responsibility
to review and acknowledge notifications from PDE to another person(s).

User Role Resources

The following PDE webpages provide information about MyPDESuite, including how to appoint a new security administrator:
MyPDESuite.

Most notifications from PDE intended to be received by the chief school administrator will come
through TIMS. The PDE webpages dedicated to TIMS provide information about how these user roles use TIMS to acknowledge notifications from PDE. Learn more here: TIMS.

Resources to clarify the importance of making these changes are available on the PDE website. For
instance, the following short video – TIMS Provisioned User Dashboard Overview – is a short
10-minute presentation that provides provisioned users (including those with the CSA and Certifying
Officer user roles) information about the following:

• Basic functionality for provisioned users, including CSAs and Certifying Officers.
• The “Messages” function in TIMS and how to request an expedited non-emergency permit.
• “Emergency Permit Request” functionality.
• The “Pending Criminal Charge Acknowledgements” function; and
• The “Mandatory Reporting Information and Acknowledgments” function.

The TIMS Provisioned Users Dashboard Overview webinar also explains the functionality of the
“Certifying Officer Affirmations” and “Chief School Administrator Review” queues.

If you have questions about this email, the required acknowledgments, user roles in TIMS, the
subject of pending criminal charge notifications, or mandatory reporting requirements under the
Educator Discipline Act, please contact PDE’s Office of Chief Counsel at 717-787-5500. If you are
interested in receiving staff training about mandatory reporting, please call the
Professional Standards and Practices Commission at 717-787-6576.