ATPE files suit to protect educator privacy
LAN Update - Archive 06/26/08
ATPE filed a lawsuit June 23 against the Austin Independent School District and the Office of the Texas Attorney General to prevent the release of educators' personal information to local media outlets. Since news of the lawsuit broke, ATPE has heard from many educators applauding the association for taking a stand on educators' rights:
- One blogger wrote: "I'm a member of one of the other teacher organizations here in Texas (we don't have unions per se, and are a right-to-work state), but I am thankful that the ATPE has filed this suit to keep the results of teacher background checks from becoming subject to release under the state's public records laws."
- One member reported cutting out an article about the lawsuit from The Dallas Morning News and saving it to share at her district's new-teacher orientation and with campus representatives. (Read the Associated Press article on the lawsuit at
www.chron.com/disp/
story.mpl/ap/tx/5852522.html.)
- Another member wrote: "I [was] aware that we educators will be fingerprinted sometime in the near future, but I did not consider that the background check could be public knowledge. I wholly support the [background check] process to protect all of us, but as your [op-ed at atpe.org] states, all of us deserve privacy. Thank you for your diligence!"
ATPE decided to file the lawsuit after Austin ISD was unsuccessful in its attempt to convince the attorney general's office to reverse a decision requiring the release of information from Austin ISD employees' recently completed criminal background checks. Austin ISD is the first district to complete the new criminal background check process mandated by Senate Bill (SB) 9, which was passed by the Legislature in 2007.
In filing the lawsuit, ATPE hopes to protect the privacy of all Texas educators. Although ATPE believes strongly in the use of background checks to identify school personnel whose past convictions indicate that their presence endangers the safety of students and faculty, we do not believe that releasing this personal data serves any public good. If released, the information would make no distinction between serious and minor offenses or distinguish between recent or long-past events. Nor would it discriminate between unfounded arrests and arrests that led to prosecution.
School districts across Texas will complete the SB 9-mandated background checks over the course of the next three years. Because the process raises many questions for educators-from questions of procedure to questions of privacy-ATPE has created a Fingerprinting Resource Center for Texas educators at
www.atpe.org/Resources/
educators/fingerprintingResources.asp. The resource center contains information about fingerprinting procedures, the history of SB 9 and privacy concerns, and ATPE will also post updates on the lawsuit there. Please share this link with your colleagues.
If you have any questions, please contact ATPE Governmental Relations at
(800) 777-ATPE or e-mail us at ATPE
Governmental Relations.
To find contact info for your legislators go to
http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us and enter your address.
Ask your colleagues to
sign up for the ATPE Legislative Alert Network.
This is legislative advertising
contracted for by Doug Rogers, Executive Director, Association of Texas
Professional Educators, 305 E. Huntland Dr., Suite 300, Austin, TX
78752-3792, representing ATPE.
|
