Legislators target teacher misconduct
Bills would order districts and administrators to report improper relationships with students
AUSTIN — Fed up with headlines about teachers having sex with students, Texas lawmakers plan to crack down on schools, districts and administrators who protect them.
Legislators’ plans include building a $3 million registry of educators who are banned from employment, imposing stiff penalties for school and district leaders who hide teacher misconduct and mandatory training about what constitutes an improper student relationship.
“With these kinds of criminal penalties, I think everybody’s going to volunteer themselves to actually get engaged and get these issues reported. We can’t just keep covering this stuff up,” said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, RHouston, who is championing one of three bills introduced this session to address teacher misconduct.
Such legislation will “put everyone on notice that this behavior is no longer acceptable in the public school system,” he said following a public hearing on two such bills Thursday. “We just can’t look the other way anymore, and we’re not.”
The legislation comes as the number of educators accused of having sex or inappropriate relationships with students has increased by 42 percent over the last five years. Since the 2011-12 fiscal year, the Texas Education Agency has opened 908 cases of improper relationships between an educator and a student or minor. The TEA opened 222 investigations in the 2015-16 fiscal year, up from 156 investigations in 2011-12, according to TEA spokeswoman Lauren Callahan.
Through the end of January, the TEA has opened 97 new cases in the fiscal year that began last Sept. 1.
While not all cases result in a finding of guilt, some teachers with a history of improper relations with students have been found to have resigned from their positions and later hired elsewhere in the state, according to Bettencourt, citing a recent investigation by a Dallas television news program.
The growing number of cases led Gov. Greg Abbott to highlight teacher sex scandals in his State of the State address last month.
“Texas reportedly leads the nation in teacher-student sexual assaults. Some of those teachers are not prosecuted, and worse, some are shuffled off to other schools. We are the ones with the duty to do something about
it,” he said, adding he wants to see legislation impose “real consequences for those teachers” and “penalize administrators who turn a blind eye to such abuse.”
It already is against the law for teachers to have sex or inappropriate relationships with students. Subpoena power
Lawmakers’ main approach this session is to crack down on schools and districts in a bid to reverse this trend.
In Senate Bill 7, Bettencourt wants principals and superintendents to report revelations about improper conduct within seven days after learning, or after they “should have known,” about an incident or a history of improper behavior. Officials would face a Class A felony for filing such notice late, or face a state jail felony; a principal or superintendent who is found to have tried to conceal misconduct could face up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.
That proposal drew concern from Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who worried superintendents who accidentally file late could face harsh penalties.
Bettencourt also wants to give the state’s education commissioner power to subpoena relevant witnesses, retrieve internal investigation documents for disciplinary proceedings from the district and launch a special accreditation investigation if a school system fails to produce requested evidence on an educator.
In a lengthy 43-page bill, Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, is proposing many of the same changes in Senate Bill 653, but also wants the state to develop a registry of persons barred from employment. He said the state needs to track people with a history of inappropriate student relationships, regardless of whether they have an educators license or are non-certified staff.
The registry, which state officials estimated would cost $3 million, could be a tough sell this session as lawmakers are poised to cut spending among various agencies to make up for lowerthan-expected tax growth, due in part to a lull in the oil industry.
“You can’t just solve one piece and say we’re done,” Taylor said. He also wants to give the education department’s investigative arm the authority to suspend teachers it believes could be dangerous and revoke pensions for educators convicted of having an improper relationship with a student. Training needed
Several state organizations representing teachers say they support two bills heard in the Senate Education Committee Thursday, and say they look forward to requiring robust training on how to navigate student contact amid today’s social media culture.
“Knowing that this makes up a very small portion of all teachers, one is certainly too many,” said Kate Kuhlmann, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Pro- fessional Educators. She said ATPE often talks to teacherhopefuls in training programs and said many have had little instruction in how to maintain proper student relationships.
State District Judge Michael McSpadden echoed that concern in a letter to the Houston Independent School District this week. McSpadden, who sentenced teacher Alexandria Vera to 10 years in prison for her relationship with a 13-year-old student this year, sent a four-page transcript of suggestions from an expert on student-teacher relations to Superintendent Richard Carranza this week, calling for training teachers about setting boundaries with their students.