Two regulators, two renewal clocks

Michigan school social workers carry two credentials from two regulators that don't talk to each other: a social work license from LARA, and a school social worker certificate from MDE. Neither one substitutes for the other, and — this is the part that trips people up — they don't renew on the same clock. Each has its own cycle length, its own hour total, and its own idea of what counts.

LARA: the license clock

Your LARA social work license runs on a 3-year cycle and requires 45 continuing education hours per cycle. That total isn't just a bucket you fill however you like — four minimums live inside it, not on top of it:

• Ethics: at least 5 hours
• Pain & symptom management: at least 2 hours
• Human trafficking: at least 2 hours
• Implicit bias: at least 3 hours — one hour for each year of the cycle, satisfiable by a single class, not spread one hour per year

LARA also caps non-interactive online self-study: at least 50% of your hours have to be in person, or online in a format that allows live, synchronous contact with the instructor. A recorded webinar you watch alone counts against that cap; a live Zoom session where you can ask questions does not.

MDE: the certificate clock

Your MDE Professional School Social Worker Certificate runs on its own 5-year cycle and requires 75 professional-learning hours, earned as State Continuing Education Clock Hours (SCECHs) and tracked in MOECS — MDE's system of record, not LARA's. There's no ethics or pain-management carve-out here; MDE's requirement is a single professional-learning total. A session you attend often earns both a SCECH for MDE and a CE hour for LARA at once, but they're still two separate credits being counted against two separate totals.

Why the hours don't just carry over

Because the cycles are different lengths and end on different dates, "I'm caught up" for one credential says nothing about the other. Hours earned outside a cycle's own window don't roll forward for either regulator — LARA and MDE both want the work done within the years they're asking about, not banked ahead of time. And MOECS confirming a SCECH is a separate step from LARA accepting a CE hour, on its own timeline; a session can be "pending" in one place and already logged in the other.

Logging it once

None of this means keeping two spreadsheets. A session that qualifies for both credentials is still one thing that happened once — one date, one provider, one certificate of attendance. Social Work Hours lets you log it once and allocate the hours to both clocks, with the LARA buckets and the MDE total tracked against the same record, so the audit trail matches what LARA and MDE would each ask to see on their own.

Requirements verified 14 September 2026 against LARA's social work licensing guide and MDE's school social worker certification guidance. Rules change — always confirm your own requirements with LARA and MDE, and confirm your SCECHs in MOECS.