Kid's teacher have DWI? Texas law may keep it a secret Bill would seal school workers’ criminal records

If a bill before the Texas House on Thursday passes, you will never be able to find out from your school district.

The legislation, pushed by the Association of Texas Professional Educators and other educator groups, is being sold as a means of protecting teachers from identity theft and to ensure their privacy. But the measure is being fought by Texas newspapers and broadcasters because it would specifically exempt a public school employee’s criminal history from being disclosed.

The bill also would make secret a school employee’s birth date, making it almost impossible to positively identify an individual against a check of criminal court records or the state’s sex offender database.

Jennifer Canaday, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said teachers have a right to worry about release of the information districts collect under a new state fingerprinting law because the criminal history information is based on a national crime database. Sometimes the information is wrong, she said.

In other instances, she said, the database also includes the names of people who were acquitted at trial or saw charges against them dropped. “Most people would treat everybody on that list as a criminal, and that would be really unfair,” Canaday said.

It was never the intent of the Legislature in 2007 that the information gathered by fingerprinting would be used by anyone other than school district personnel and the State Board of Educator Certification, she added.

Ken Whalen, executive vice president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association, said date of birth is important for citizens and journalists who want to compare the names of employees against other lists and verify identification.

The Dallas Morning News last year reported that the fingerprint checks had found more than 5,000 public school employees in Texas with criminal backgrounds — about 4,300 misdemeanors and more than 900 felonies.

Whalen said there is no known instance of someone having their identity stolen as a result of a Public Information Act request.

The battle over release of this information began last year when the Austin district reported that the new fingerprint checks had found 310 employees with criminal histories. The district fought public information requests from Austin reporters. Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office ruled that information on individuals was not public because the criminal background checks had been done using a federal crime computer exempt from disclosure.

r.g.ratcliffe@chron.com