This year, E4E-Minnesota members’ testimonies persuaded a bipartisan group of legislators to defend tiered licensure pathways for Minnesota educators. With a coalition of local organizations, E4E-Minnesota mobilized educators, parents, students, and other stakeholders to write constituent letters, speak at hearings, and sign petitions to protect these pathways. Tiered licensure changes were first implemented in 2017. These pathways ranged from obvious ones, like allowing licensed teachers to transfer from other states, to innovative measures like licensing for classroom-based staff under a principal-and-peer-evaluation system. Expanding these pathways diversifies the teaching profession; in a 2017 study, half of newly hired Black teachers were certified through an alternative pathway, compared to 22% of all other first-year teachers. In Minnesota schools people of color represent 5.9% of the workforce, but 36.7% of students. With a Democrat-controlled Governor’s office and State Legislature, E4E-MN members expected these pathways to be safe, but in a bid for tighter control on teacher preparation as their top legislative priority, the state teachers’ union lobbied democratic lawmakers to eliminate tiered licensure. In partnership with EdAllies, E4E-MN had a Republican Senator introduce legislation protecting these pathways, and convinced 3 Democratic lawmakers to cross party lines and vote in favor of the bill, which ultimately passed!