(Editor’s note: Doug Phillips, director of investigations and fingerprinting for the Texas Education Agency, sat down for a question-and-answer session regarding the years-long process of fingerprinting educators to talk about the outcome and what districts need to do in the future.)
Q: How much will the fingerprinting process for certified personnel cost?
A: At the end of the fiscal year we had done almost 336,000 certified educators so take that times $45 [$15,120,000]. That’s lots of money. The cost is really not something that concerns me a whole lot because the state set aside the money.
More than 216,000 noncertified school district employees have also been fingerprinted, with the district or the employee paying the cost.
Q: In your estimation, has the cost been worth it?
A: Absolutely. It has really been a great benefit to the districts, I think, having immediate notification when an employee gets arrested. The notice may not be anything that I’d investigate, but it still may be significant to the district.
Q: How many districts still have to complete the process?
A: We’re into the last year and doing the last 400 now. Those that are left are mostly small, rural districts, though there are a few bigger districts, too. We’ll complete almost all of them by December. Starting in January, the push will be to get charter school teachers fingerprinted.
Q: So you’re well ahead of the deadline date.
A: Yes. Aug. 31, 2011, is the deadline.
Q: Did fingerprinting effectively close the loopholes that criminals used to get access to students in our schools in the past?
A: Yes, absolutely. At least we have peace of mind.
There’s obviously still one big loophole. That is that an individual can go to Louisiana on vacation and do something awful and we don’t get subsequent arrest notification on out-of-state arrests. The other loophole is the noncertified people that were grandfathered in when this law was passed. Who knows what we have there. But the law certainly closed all the loopholes that we felt we could at the time.
Q: In the discussion stages, wasn’t the ability to get nationwide criminal history information a selling point?
A: I think everyone wanted to think that. The initial fingerprint does go through the FBI so everybody’s fingerprint is nationally available, but if they get arrested somewhere else subsequently, there’s no notification.
Q: Did a lot of districts fingerprint their noncertified employees?
A: So I’ve heard. We needed to focus on educators, but if districts are taking that on themselves, that’s great. It’s one less thing to worry about.
Q: How many school district employees have serious criminal histories?
A: The numbers fell in right in line with what other states have seen. We knew we were going to find that about 10 percent of the people would have some sort criminal history and one percent of those would have a significant criminal history. We also knew the numbers would be higher for noncertified employees. With 336,000 certified people fingerprinted, we had 23,000 hits.
Did we find a lot of, “Oh my God, look at what this person did, and now we’ve caught them,” cases? Some school districts learned that they employed people who were on felony probation and they had no idea. The numbers weren’t huge, but I would argue if we got one registered sex offender and rooted them out, it was worth the experience.
Another thing to consider is how many people got out of the business or went to another state rather than be fingerprinted? Maybe none. But my guess is there were several that knew that their check was coming and just went somewhere else.
Q: In terms of maintenance, what types of procedures will districts need to follow to keep the process going?
A: First, they can’t assume that we’re going to take care of their problems for them. They need to make sure they check all recent activity when DPS notifies them. As we all know, districts have different levels of tolerance. I don’t take action on DWI (driving while intoxicated) arrests, but a lot of districts won’t hire anybody with a DWI on their record in the last five years. As far as your certificate, I’m not going to mess with it unless it’s a felony DWI.
If you’ve got a certified new hire coming in, the first thing you do is check the clearinghouse database to see if the person is in there. If they are and there’s no criminal history that concerns you, problem solved. Otherwise, new hires will still need to go through the fingerprinting process. Once a person is fingerprinted, the district has to subscribe to their information to get updates on them.
We’ve had smaller districts that sent their employees in to get fingerprinted and never looked at their criminal history because they didn’t think it was possible that they employed someone with a record. Especially with the noncertified employees, they are not looking or are waiting for us to tell them that a person is not employable. If you don’t look at the DPS notifications, you could have felons right and left in your schools.
In addition to that, the district should check the new hire’s online certificate for flags to make sure there’s no ongoing investigation of them or sanctions against their certificate. A flag indicates that the person’s certificate is currently under review by our staff. It doesn’t indicate the person is guilty of anything, it just indicates that there is an issue.
When a person leaves, it’s important to unsubscribe from that person’s criminal history information. Once they are not employed by the district, you no longer have a right to see it. By law, the DPS could audit you and I assume if they were to find that you still subscribe to information for people who are no longer in your employ, they could limit or discontinue your ability to see criminal histories, so it’s important to unsubscribe.
Districts need to realize that at the end of this our FAST Pass issued through SB 9 will change and the cost will no longer be paid by the state after Aug. 31. When new teachers show up with a FAST Pass issued July 1 of this year, they need to get fingerprinted within this fiscal year. Employees hired later will still need to be fingerprinted but the state won’t pay the cost.
Q: Why do some districts use other background check services?
A: This was a great debate when the bill was being proposed. One vendor said their service was more accurate, correct, and thorough than the DPS and FBI check. I never agreed with that and I still don’t. You don’t know who you have unless you have a fingerprint.
They did background checks by name, social security number, and by looking up the person’s address to search county records. They do find stuff occasionally that we didn’t get from DPS. But as far as I know, in every instance, it was a minor arrest that went through municipal court or something that never rose to a significant level.
There are people who will argue with me, saying that the FBI check misses things it shouldn’t miss. I just know as a police officer, I didn’t call up the vendor to ask them for their criminal history information. I wouldn’t take their word for it. I went to state and national checks because that was the accurate information.
Q: Should districts continue using those services?
A: I think they should do whatever they need to do. If they feel like they need to go above and beyond, that’s fine.
Q: I understand that your office is busier than ever investigating educator arrests and criminal charges. Can you tell me about that?
A: Subsequent hit notifications (new arrests) are killing us. We went from 425 cases open two to three years ago to over 850 cases open now.
It’s the math. When you increase the pool of people in the clearinghouse to 400,000 people, if even a small percentage of them get arrested once in awhile, you’ll be busy. We’ve projected that it’s going to increase around 150 to 200 cases a year. We will hit a top load, but I don’t see the numbers falling back off again.
There’s this idea out there and in the agency that the caseload is high because of all the arrests we initially uncovered and that it will eventually tail off. That’s not the case.
Q: So the fingerprinting itself doesn’t do much to deter educators from committing crimes?
A: Literally, some people get fingerprinted and walk out and do something horrible the next day or next month.
Q: Did you anticipate such an increase in business?
A: I really didn’t. I never thought they’d go out and get arrested in these numbers. Plus, they’re charged with a lot of felonies. We’re getting 15 to 25 a week. We’re closing as many or more than we get in each week and we’re losing the battle.
Plus, understand that our cases also come from district reports where crimes may or may not have been committed. For example, the teacher who has a relationship with a student but never gets arrested. We have to investigate those.
Q: What types of charges have you stopped investigating due to a lack of time and manpower on the part of your office?
A: First-time misdemeanors, petty theft, DWI, the most minor charges. We stopped investigating domestic assaults because they were just overwhelming us by tying up our time and going nowhere because the cases usually get dropped. So SBEC (the State Board for Educator Certification) gave me the thumbs up to stop investigating those. If there’s a history with a particular person, we open it. We still look for patterns of behavior. For employment matters, those minor charges may be an issue, but the reason we’re investigating is to decide whether to sanction or revoke an educator’s certificate.
Q: How shocked are districts at the kind of action they’re seeing?
A: I think they’re more impressed than they are shocked. I think they’re relieved. The crimes run the full gamut from assaultive behaviors to incidents that directly involve a child, to felonies. There are a few cases of drug possession on school grounds.
Q: What have you learned as the process draws to a close?
A: I've learned that preparation is the key. My staff did a great job of going out and training districts to get them ready so they knew what was coming. We learned that no one would die a horrible death in this process as was anticipated and predicted by many people. And I learned that school districts, when they put their heads together, can do an excellent job of getting things done.
This was something brand new that we cobbled together and I’m really impressed with the outcome. The way it started and the stress with two state agencies, us and DPS; an independent contractor that was tied to DPS; and 1,100 school districts, the potential for bad things happening were all over the place. The success was due to a lot more cooperation than I thought would have been possible. State agencies are known for not necessarily playing well together and it went well.
