Texas G/T 30-Hour Training Planning Guide for 2026-27

May through July is when Texas G/T coordinators plan their professional development calendar for the coming year. If your district has new G/T staff — or staff who still haven't cleared the 30-hour foundation requirement — this is the window to get organized. Miss it, and you're scrambling in October.

This guide gives you a concrete planning framework: who needs training, how to build a compliant 30-hour program, what to watch out for, and how to keep records that hold up under a TEA audit.

Step 1: Build Your Training Needs Roster

Before you can plan, you need to know who needs what. Pull your current staff list and flag every person who has instructional or administrative responsibility for identified G/T students. That includes:

• New G/T specialist and cluster teachers (hired since last year's training cycle)
• General education teachers newly assigned to G/T cluster sections
• Counselors and campus administrators at G/T campuses who haven't completed foundation training
• Anyone with a 30-hour record that predates your current documentation system and can't be verified

Step 2: Design a Compliant 30-Hour Program

The Texas State Plan specifies four content areas that foundation training must address. Your program must cover all four — you can't satisfy the requirement with 30 hours in just one area.

The 30 hours don't have to be delivered in one block. Many districts use a combination of summer institutes, online coursework completed before school starts, and campus-based PD during planning days. The key is that the full content coverage is documented before the educator works independently with G/T students.

Choosing a Delivery Format

Your main options for TEA GT training in 2026-27 are regional ESCs, online providers, and district-developed programs. For most districts with limited G/T coordinator bandwidth, online providers are the most practical path: educators can complete coursework on their own schedule before the school year begins, and completion records are generated automatically. See our ESC vs. private provider comparison for a detailed breakdown.

Step 3: Avoid the Most Common Pitfalls

These are the compliance failures we see most often when districts plan without a systematic approach:

• Incomplete enrollments. Staff are registered for a course but never finish it before the school year begins. Without a completion threshold enforced before the first day, you have educators working with G/T students who technically aren't trained.
• No centralized tracking. Completion records live in individual emails, a coordinator's personal folder, or a spreadsheet that only one person can update. When that person leaves, the records become unreliable. TEA auditors will ask for documentation by staff name — you need to be able to produce it.
• Expired or unverifiable credentials. Staff who completed training years ago through conferences or ESC workshops often don't have certificates on file. If you can't document it, TEA won't count it.
• Forgetting administrators. Principals and assistant principals at campuses with G/T programs are required to complete foundation training. They're frequently left off compliance rosters.
• Counting non-G/T PD hours. High-quality general professional development — even if it touches on differentiation — doesn't satisfy the G/T requirement unless it maps explicitly to State Plan content areas.

Step 4: Set Up Documentation Before Training Begins

Documentation is where districts lose compliance credit they've already earned. Before any training begins, establish:

1. A staff roster with a column for each of the four State Plan content areas
2. A standard for what counts as documentation (certificates, completion records, provider attestation)
3. A folder structure or system where records are stored by staff member, not by training event
4. A completion deadline — typically the week before school starts for new hires

Keep records for at least five years. TEA Program Monitoring and Interventions (PMI) cycles are long, and auditors frequently request documentation for staff who completed training in prior years.

How Academity Solves These Problems

Coordinating 30-hour foundation training across a district — especially during summer hiring — is operationally complex. Academity is built specifically for this workflow:

• Completion-based billing: You only pay for educators who actually finish training — not for enrollments that stall.
• Shared district dashboard: Every campus coordinator, curriculum director, and administrator sees the same real-time compliance view. No more emailing spreadsheets back and forth.
• Real-time tracking: As educators complete modules, their records update automatically. You know exactly where you stand before the first day of school — not after an audit finding.