SAN ANTONIO – Texas leads the nation in teachers charged with having inappropriate relationships with students. A new proposal could change the way these kinds of cases are handled by the state.
What Texas Education Agency does now:
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Superintendents or principals must report an incident of an inappropriate relationship with a student to the state within seven days of the incident or face consequences.
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TEA flags any educator reported, listing on the website’s "virtual certificate look-up" that the person is under investigation.
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The state leaves hiring up to the district, which must do its own due diligence to see if teachers have been flagged.
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There is no online portal or generic online form for districts to report incidents.
READ MORE: More than 130 teacher-student relationship investigations opened since Sept. 1, TEA says
A proposed "do not hire" list would aim to keep convicted teachers from falling through the cracks and moving to other districts.
New proposals for the "do not hire" list:
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It would allow the State Board of Education to suspend the teaching certificate of anyone criminally charged with unlawful interactions with students/children.
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It would add those educators to a statewide list, preventing them from getting any jobs working with students.
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It would create an online portal for district leaders to report improper teacher-student relationships.
What an official from the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel is saying: