Thousands of Illinois teachers were incorrectly told Monday that they were being audited.

The Illinois State Board of Education is required to audit teacher’s professional development, ensuring they stay up on continuing education credits by taking 120 hours every five years.

The emailed notice sent those teachers scrambling to pull their documentation together – but for a large portion of those educators, the email was sent in error, according to the agency’s social media.

“ISBE recently discovered that an audit notice was mistakenly emailed to all educators who renewed their licenses in 2025,” the post reads. It goes on to say that if the teacher received the notice in error, no action is required on their part and the correct group would receive their official audit notices soon.

The audit notice was sent to each teacher’s primary and secondary emails on Monday, according to the ISBE website. For those required to submit, the documentation must be uploaded by Feb. 15.

According to the Illinois school report card, Illinois has 140,000 teachers who must renew their licenses every five years.

Comments on the ISBE’s Facebook post included many upset that it was posted on social media instead of a new email going out to let them know some were an error.

“Those of us who spent hours working on this today should get [professional development] hours for the next cycle,” one teacher posted.

Others asked for apologies in writing, rather than via social media, as they needed to collect information that could be several years old “with a months’s time,” one comment noted.

A call to the ISBE was not immediately returned.

This story will be updated.