Texas Teacher Law

Fundamental Friday - Erasing An Old Criminal Charge

You got arrested. You accepted a deferred adjudication and successfully completed it. And now you’re either about to apply for a job in a new school district, or you’re about to apply for your teaching certificate for the first time, and you want to make sure your record is clean. 

A deferred adjudication is a form of probation.  If successfully completed, no final conviction appears on your record.  If asked if you’ve ever been convicted of a crime, you can say no and you will be telling the truth.  However, a criminal background check will show the arrest and deferred adjudication, so the school district and Texas Education Agency will see this.   And you will have to explain what happened and why you are still fit to teach the youth of our state.

Deferred adjudication is possibly the most misunderstood provision in our criminal justice system.  Accepting a deferred adjudication does NOT mean that you have no record.  And there is no way to remove the deferred adjudication from your record, short of a pardon from the governor.

Expunction is a proceeding that allows a court to remove criminal history from your record.  But the circumstances that qualify for expunction are extremely narrow, and deferred adjudication will never, ever qualify for expunction. 

Expunction can be obtained if:

1.       You were arrested but released without a final conviction or deferred adjudication, and

2.       You do not have a felony conviction within five years prior to the arrest

Expunction is appropriate for persons who were never indicted, indicted but not prosecuted, or who were acquitted at a trial. That’s pretty much it.

 

Tuesday Tasks – Responding to Student Fights

We have fire drills and bus drills and tornado drills for a reason – in an emergency situation, quick, proper response is the key to safety. But emergencies often cause us to panic, which is the enemy of a calm response. So we drill these situations until the response is so automatic we will do it even if we are panicked and scared. 

Student fights can sometimes cause the same panicked reactions.  Quick action is called for, but our stress level is so high that clear thinking is often difficult. So today we’ll drill a little bit for this situation.

 

What should you do if you are the nearest adult when a student fight breaks out?

First – follow your policy.  Which means that today you will go look up your policy on breaking up fights and read it?  Although no written policy can ever give you the exact method to handle every fight, you will find general guidelines concerning how to contact help, what to do with other nearby students, emergency calls, etc. 

Second, assess whether you should go for help or send another nearby person. You will want to have at least two adults present as quickly as possible in any fight situation. 

Third, assess whether you can try to break up the fight or whether you should wait for someone else. (Consider any guidance your district policy gives on this.) You are not obligated to put yourself in harm’s way.  On the other hand, if you choose to try to break the fight up yourself, you may use only the force that is reasonable necessary to do so.  In other words, there may physical contact and possibly even injury to a student caused by your attempt to break up the fight.  You will not be in trouble if the injury or force was incidental to and reasonably necessary to end the fight and protect the students from each other.

Fourth, write a report on the incident as soon afterwards as possible.  It should include facts concerning time and place, witnesses, and anything you observed leading up to the fight.  It should also include a description of your own actions.  Stick with facts that you are personally aware of, or clearly identify the source of additional information.

If you are ever injured during a fight, be sure to file an injury report with the school for worker’s compensation purposes. 

 

Arrests and Your Future in Teaching

An arrest or criminal conviction does not automatically knock you out of the teaching field. Although each decision is made individually, if your conviction was many years ago, you’ve been a model citizen since then, you have people who think you’d make a great teacher (or are a great teacher already), and your conviction was not of a sexual nature or involving a minor, there’s a good chance you will still be able to teach somewhere.

If you’ve been arrested and convicted, or plea bargained and accepted a deferred adjudication, you will have to discuss this with the Texas Education Agency and any school districts to which you apply for a job.  Criminal history background checks are now required at so many stages of your career, it is unavoidable that old arrests will come to light at some point.  Even arrests and convictions in other states must be revealed, because even though they may not always show up on the official background check, you will be much worse off getting caught in a lie than you will be otherwise.  

 

My Friday post this week will be about expunction of criminal convictions.

 

Fundamental Friday - Sick Leave

I've been sick with flu most of the last two weeks, and the days I wasn't sick one or more of my kids were sick.  So I figured the only possible topic for today is sick leave.

Texas teachers are entitled to five days of paid leave each year, usable for any reason the teacher chooses - personal illness, family illness, travel, family business, mental health day, or any other reason the teacher wants, no questions asked. 

Some districts give teachers more than five days. If a district gives extra days, those extra days can be limited to specific uses, such as personal or family illness. 

Each district develops its own implementation rules for the leave days.  This means your district will tell you how to notify the district you are taking leave, how much notice you must give before an absence (advance notice obviously not required if you are ill and contagious), if there are limits on which you days you can use (many districts prohibit personal leave on TAKS days, or the day before a school holiday, etc). 

Each district that provides more than five leave days also determines whether the local or state days are used first.  This is important because state granted leave days  accumulate from year to year if they are not used, and can be taken to any Texas public school district if you change jobs.

Tuesday Task - Participate in a Meeting

Have you ever stood in front of your classroom and found that not only were the students not responding to you in any way, but they weren't even acting up - just acting bored?  It's very disheartening to try and give a presentation when it feels like everything you do just bores the audience. And how did you feel toward the one or two students who showed some interested and may have even raised their hand to ask a question?  Friendly?  Pleased? Maybe even grateful?

Faculty meetings can be like that for administrators. Just as you remember the students who pay attention and participate in class with more fondness than others, so an administrator is going to be more kindly disposed towards the teachers who seem to appreciate the administrator's efforts.  So your task for today is to make a note on your calendar next to the next scheduled faculty meeting that you will listen actively to the speaker, and you will ask at least one question during the meeting.

Scary Saturday - Running Teacher Out of Town

If you haven't seen it yet, here's a story in the Beaumont Enterprise.

The gist of the story is this: a high school history teacher with six years in the district and a second year principal was having a classroom discussion where the students were encouraged to express opinions and debate positions.  One girl became upset about something that was said, walked out and complained to the principal.  The girl's other came in later and also complained that the teacher allowed the students to talk about things too freely.  Then several more parents met together with the principal and said the same thing, and by the way, one of the parents thought the teacher was an atheist and just too liberal.

Th parents then went to a school board meeting and said the same thing in the open comments period, after which the teacher was put on administrative leave.  While on leave, teacher responded to a text message from a student and district then proposed to terminate him for having contact with a student while on adminstrative leave.

Teacher resigned.

It's a scary situation for a teacher, and he is not the first one to find himself in this landslide of riot mentality.  Teacher says the principal he was being suspended because he was suspected of being an atheist.  Later written suspension blamed it on texting with a student while he was suspended - which of course happened after the original suspension, and anyway teacher said he was never told not to talk to students.

The whole thing smells, of course.  I always caution that there may be more to the story than we're hearing, but the things I have heard about this one - from a variety of sources - make me suspect that what happened was a teacher who some parents were uncomfortable with because he encouraged the kids to think outside the box of their small town got swept away in a moment of opportunity seized by the principal and school board - all of whom failed to put their thinking caps on and realize this was wrong.

If the teacher had chosen to fight, I believe he would have had a strong defense and likely be put back in the classroom.  

TJ Evans

I am one of the few people who do not have any teachers in my family.  But I discovered the other day that I do have an education link in my background – my great-grandfather was a school board member in the Henry Ford School District in Dearborn, Michigan.  I have never known very much about my great-grandfather because he died in a car crash in 1932, when my grandmother was only nine.  Her mother was seriously injured in the same accident, and in the heart of the depression there was no safety net for the family of five kids.

My grandmother was sent off to live with relatives in Kentucky, and so most of what she has ever talked about regarding that time was the pain of losing her family along with her father.  My great-grandmother lived until I was in college, but with her we kids always talked about the fascinating two-fingered hand that the crash left her with.

So I never really heard about my great-grandfather, TJ Evans.  Until last night, when my grandmother discovered some old papers that included two newspaper clippings about the death of her father.  His death made the front page, with a good sized photo of him, above the fold, as they say. 

While I clearly do not have teaching in my blood, my school board member great-grandfather was like me in playing a support role for education, and I am glad to know it.

Fundamental Friday - When your contract may be non-renewed

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot it was Friday!  I can't believe I could do such a thing.

The last few Fridays have been about contract renewals.  This week, let's consider the possibility of non-renewal.

There are several different ways you can find out about non-renewal.  Your options depend on how and when you find out.

If you have a probationary contract, and are told early that you are being considered for non-renewal, that means you may have a shot at avoiding it.  Ask for very frank information about what it would take for the principal to change his/her mind, and then try to do it.

If you have a probationary contract and are not given an advance warning but are simply notified that the board has voted to non-renew your contract, you have no realistic recourse UNLESS there is evidence that the non-renewal was for an illegal reason, like the fact that you were pregnant.

If you have a non-probationary contract and are told that you may be recommended for non-renewal, ask the principal what might change his/her mind, and then do it.

If you have a non-probationary contract and are told there is nothing that will change the principal's mind, or if you the board has already proposed your non-renewal, you have three options:

1. Do nothing, let the non-renewal become final, and go look for another job.
2. Submit a resignation before the board acts, and then go look for another job.
3. File a request for a hearing on the non-renewal, where the district will have to show proof of the reason they are citing for the non-renewal, and you will have the opportunity to defend yourself. The hearing examiner(essentially, the judge) will write an opinion on who made their case and on whether the board shoul non-renew the contract or not, and then the board will consider that opinion before taking a vote on your contract renewal.

If you go the hearing route, the final vote on your contract will usually not come before the end of May at the earliest, and may not happen until close to the end of summer, so you will need to be looking for another job at the same time you are contesting the non-renewal.

Internet Teaching Resources

The Texas Computer Education Association is having it's convention right now in Austin. They are hosting a blog that reviews many (all?) of the presentations, complete with lots of links to resources for classroom teachers like organizational tools, project tools for kids, communication tools, and lots of other wonderful stuff.    Check it out.  http://magnoliaisdcommunities.org/communities/tcea/default.aspx

Last Minute Contract Non-Renewal

You may be in danger of non-renewal if:

• Your PDAS was just scheduled even though no one else's is scheduled
• You have a flurry of recent write-ups from your campus administrator

Although there are many things that provide warning of impending non-renewal, a frequent occurrence at this time of year is a frantic attempt by campus administrators to create sufficient documentation to suuport a non-renewal of teachers that they wish to get rid of. 

School districts generally require legal review, or at least review by the Human Resources department, of the file of any teacher that a principal would like to propose for non-renewal.  If there is not sufficient documentation of deficiencies, the principal will be told no - at which point many principals suddenly become very diligent in documenting every single little thing they can find, in an attempt to get their non-renewal recommendation to meet legal and district criteria. 

So if you know your principal has been a bit unhappy with you, and you suddenly find yourself bombarded with paper, prepare yourself for the possibility of non-renewal.  This is the time to respond to each and every memo, to improve every single deficiency you are told of, and to have a frank conversation with your principal about your status and how you can improve it.