Posted by
mrsbooks on Monday, August 11, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Yikes! On June 23, 2008, the Houston Chronicle reported that "A teacher's group filed a lawsuit ... in an effort to prevent the release to the media of personal information gleaned from teacher background checks." The lede is enough to scare the pants off of parents who send their kids to the Texas public school system. The immediate questions that comes to mind are, "What do these teachers have to hide that came out in their background checks? And would I want these teachers instructing or being alone with my children?" The answers would be I want to know what's in these reports, and I wouldn't want my kids to be alone with those teachers that had shady backgrounds.
Thank goodness I live in Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania parents aren't safe either. Ten years ago, there were reports that teachers, who were fired for misconduct with public school children, were the same teachers moving to another county and getting teaching jobs at a different school districts within the state.
So what should parents do? I suggest that parents form groups to fight teachers' unions and other teacher organizations that prohibit their background checks to be made public. As I've said before, public school teachers are paid by the taxpayers of their state, and we deserve to know what they've done that could potentially harm our children because we're ultimately responsible for our children's well-being and safety. If these teachers don't like it, well, I guess they should've thought about that before they did whatever they did in private to harm their reputations. Otherwise, it's time for them to find another vocation that won't harm another child.