The Assembly Education Committee passed a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants in Nevada with temporary legal status to obtain a teaching license.

According to The Associated Press this is just the first legislative test AB27 has to pass before being officially signed into a law that could affect students who have work permits through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Existing laws allow the state superintendent to give teaching licenses to undocumented immigrants with a work permit only if there is a teacher shortage in the subject that the immigrants can teach. The new bill would grant them teaching licenses if there is a teaching shortage of any kind.

The Assembly Education Committee started reviewing AB27 at the beginning of this month when the Nevada Department of Education requested the bill to create a path for DREAMers wanting to teach and to fill open teaching spots in Nevada.

"These are individuals that were basically raised and educated through our public education system and have paid for their college, and they're not able to fulfill that dream of becoming a teacher," said Assemblywoman Olivia Diaz, a Las Vegas Democrat who is also a teacher.

Only applicants with citizenship or legal residency are allowed to teach in any Nevada district under any circumstances.

AB27 would have some restrictions including banning the tranfer of the teaching license to another county. Plus, the county would have to notify the state if any teacher was fired under the bill's provisions.

The Clark County School District in southern Nevada has about 600 current teaching job openings and wants to hire 2,600 teachers by next school year to ease overcrowding.

Washoe County School District officials are currently short of 99 teachers while most schools and businesses said they were in favor of the bill because of the many teacher shortages.