It's 09:33AM, and this meeting will be in order. I'm gonna conduct a roll call, and I ask when I call your name to please respond that you are present. Kelvie Oser? Present. Thank you. Alma Rodriguez? Rex Gore? Present. Thank you. Julia DeBoric, present. Michael McFarland? Courtney McDonald? Oh, he's here. He's here. Great. Thank you, Doctor. Brown. Courtney McDonald? Okay. Bobby Weir? Present. Thank you. Jameka Gray? Yes. Thank you. Bena Glasscock? Present. Thank you. Veronica Galvan? Present.
Thank you. Emma Gelsinger? Tara Turk Safran? Present. Thank you. Leticia Andrews? Present. Thank you. And I see we have Chair McDonald here now. So Courtney McDonald? I think we can just say she's here. Okay. For the record. She was here. She was here. She'll be back. Okay. Since we are in an off cycle meeting, I'm chairing this because I'm in person. But we do have Chair McDonald on the Zoom. All right. Then we're gonna start with our Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the
Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And then if you would, please join me in a moment of silence to ground us in our work here today. Thank you. Okay, a few meeting reminders for us. This is being live streamed. And make sure we wait until a previous speaker finishes completely so the audio will pick up, especially because most of us are on Zoom. And if you guys needs me to call on you,
you can use the raise your hand button or put your hand in the screen and I'll do my best to recognize everyone as we need to. And then if we're doing a second, let's do them orally so that we can record them for the meeting minutes. Also, board members, if y'all would remain on screen at all times for the purposes of a quorum, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you all. Okay, well then that takes us to our next item, which is public comments. So Ms. McCain, I'll turn it to you. We don't have any general public comments. All right. That takes us into our next agenda item,
item three. I'll turn it over to staff. So this is an approval of a residency route. The board approved, Texas A and M Kingsville in April, but there was a superintendent certificate listed on their approval list. There is no superintendent route via residency, so y'all are just approving the list, with a small technical correction. Sorry, there's a motion on the screen. Members, do you have any questions? Okay, members, do I have a motion? I move to approve. Go ahead. Hold on. I move to approve the recommended EPP to offer the Texas teacher residency preparation route
as presented. Thank you, miss Glasscock. Do I have a second? Tamika Gray, I second. Thank you, Ms. Gray. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. And that takes us to our next item with temporary suspension committee. Good evening. Well, guys, y'all know that I am due to have a baby soon. And so we have these meetings every couple of weeks. And so I wanted to make sure that we could have a vice chair put
in place for when I'm out on maternity leave. And just give everyone kind of a general opportunity to, if you wanna join the board or get off the board, now is the time to do it. Am I missing anything? No, ma'am. Okay. Well, board members, if you're currently on our temporary suspension committee, and you would like to remove yourself, go ahead and let me know now. And then I'll ask if there's anyone that would wanna join. Okay. Well, good. Now is there anyone that would that is not currently on it that would like to join?
Okay. Most of you guys are on it. So now the question is, while I'm out on maternity leave, who would like to lead these meetings or just become the general vice chair for in any event that I'm not able to make the meetings? I don't mind being the vice chair. Perfect. Then I nominate Chair Tarrasoffran as the vice chair of the temporary suspension committee. Do we need to do a vote? He just appoints. Okay. But miss Joister Oh. Chair DeBrucke, I think, Chair McDonald has, just joined us again.
I wonder if you can, I know she may have a thought on the temporary suspension committee? Yes. Absolutely. Thank you, chair McDonald. If you could hear us and everything now, I hope so. Yes. Sorry. It wasn't working. My apologies. One, thank you all for being here. Thank you, Julia, for being in person and being able to to this meeting. I'm excited about our new vice chair, and I would also, at this time, like to, I think, remove myself from the committee, because with my chair duties, I feel like I have a lot going on. And so I would love for somebody else to have the opportunity to be involved.
So, I guess at this time, if you would if I'm guessing would this be the right time to to chime in? Or if you anybody you wanna add to the committee, I that would be great. I just I feel like I'm spread a little thin right now. So, I would like to not be on the committee anymore. Absolutely. Yes. You still have time. That is perfect. And we do still have enough even with you not on the subcommittee. But, Jamika, if you want to join, we'd love to have you. You tell me. Yes. I think, I do not have any subcommittees at the moment. So, I think there would be one considering that we had,
like, a lot of, experience doing it the last time. Yeah. Perfect. So I can definitely join that subcommittee. Great. Thank you so much. We'll get you added. And we'll remove Chair McDonald. You have plenty to do as Chair. Do not need to do that at all. And then, we will appoint Terry Turret Safran as the Vice Chair. That's me. Any further discussion? Great. Okay, we don't have to do any motions for that. Okay? Wonderful. Okay, so that takes us to our next item. We do have a public comment. We do have a public comment on this item. So I'll turn it over to you guys. Okay? Mr.
Hanner, did you want to take your three minutes for public comment? Or are you okay? I think we're okay. Alright. Yeah. I think, mister Harold was able to speak last time, and I don't know if we have anything more to add. We just wanna be here this morning. Just Alright. Thank you, mister Andrew. Thank you for being here. Sure. Okay. Okay. Alright. So let's take this to item five. Just do we need staff to present anything before we No. Yeah. Okay. Do do you want me to do a quick Yeah. Let's talk about that. So, everybody, what we're, Sherry Devork is about to lay out is a parliamentary motion,
and she'll explain the rationale for it. But what's gonna be asked to be done is to parliamentarily undo the vote on this case so that you can go back to the moment of the, PFD being laid out. So it'll be as if the case has been presented, as if the response has been presented, and then you're gonna go back to that phone and take up the discussion again, and then chair devore will lay everything out. But that's procedurally what's about to happen. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. So next we're gonna take up docket number 701Dash24Dash22879EC,
Texas Education Agency, educator preparation, certification and enforcement division versus John Harrell. On April 24, we considered the proposal for decision from SOA and voted to modify the PFD. In modifying the PFD, we changed the findings to reflect that we did not believe that reckless behavior had been established. However, after our vote, it was brought to my attention that the legal standard we used in deciding this matter was incorrect. So, as a result, we held TEA staff to a higher burden of proof than required by statute and
rule. So before I make my motion, I wanna let everyone know that we have counsel here from the Office of the Attorney General and TA. And they are available to answer any legal questions you may have in Executive Session. And if you have any parliamentarian questions, they are available to answer those in open session. Or do y'all have any questions at this time? I do have some questions that I would like to ask our legal counsel in executive session, if you guys are okay with us moving to executive session.
Okay. I also had a question also. So is this whole case is gonna go That's what the part I didn't quite get. Are we gonna reevaluate this whole case or is it, Mister Jackson. And revote on it again? I think we we will have the OAG answer those questions in executive session. And then when y'all come back from executive session, you can answer you can ask some more questions in open session if that's okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. So this is what I need to re Mhmm. It's in open session.
Okay. And there is form. Okay. Both. So It is Just a quick question. Sorry. Go ahead. Miss Couch Ware. I mean, miss Ware. So are we gonna in order to go into closed session, will we need to exit out of this meeting and then to go click on the other link for executive session? Yes, ma'am. I will open up that meeting in a separate room for y'all. So as soon as you close this, and it'll appear the waiting room, I'll be right there in a few minutes to let everyone in. Thank you. Good question. Yeah, great question. Okay. It is 09:45AM,
and the board will now go into closed session pursuant to Government Code section 551.071 to obtain the advice of legal counsel under agenda item five. Also this one? No, just the one. Okay. At this time, the board members will exit this public video conference and will join a separate closed session conference. Okay? Just making sure that you all can hear us in the room. Okay. Great. Alright. It is 10:33AM on Tuesday,
05/19/2026. And the Board is now in open session. No action was taken in closed session. Okay. So, that takes us back to item number five. And with that, I move that we reconsider the vote by which the modified PFD was adopted. Or do I have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Ms. Andrews. Okay. Now, the motion in front of us is on the reconsideration. So that would take us back into the moment. Yes. Of our previous meeting. So, any discussions or questions?
Okay. I'll Sorry. No, please. Just wanna make sure we understand. This is a parliamentary vote. This is not on the substance of the PFD. Just undoing the vote so we can address procedural error from before. Yes. Any questions? Okay. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and hold it in the screen for me. And those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Okay. So now we are back into that moment. And now that we have the original PFD before us, I I would like to make a motion that we remand this PFD back to
SOA for reconsideration as to the finding of recklessness with an instruction to either fully articulate what conduct constituted recklessness or to amend the PFD to reflect what standard of misconduct the underlying conduct constitutes. Or do I have a second? Thank you, Ms. Weir. Let's let the record show, Ms. Weir a second. Okay. Now questions or discussion from the Board? And I just want to remind everyone that the concern here is this idea of
intentionally wreck reckless. And there that is not the standard. It's not intentionally reckless. And the request is that SOA either fix their mistake or you we read up we we go back to this with the error in it, but so has made a mistake. And we we want someone to readdress it. So that is the motion before you. Thank you. And then can you clarify for us what it means or what the process will be like once we send it back to SOA? What does that mean? So what is gonna happen is if you adopt us Right.
The case will be sent back to SOA, and we're gonna ask them to open up that, 50 and fix the mistakes they made. Now, of course, that's up to SOA. Right. If SOA sends it back with those mistakes baked in, then you know what decision you were to reach. That's very easy. If SOWA says, we recognize the mistakes, we're gonna fix it, then the board addresses it. Do we find that the explanation that someone gave fixes the mistake? If it does, how do you wanna vote? That's completely up to you at that moment. But right now,
with the defect in it, it needs to be fixed. Thank you. Board members, any other questions or discussion? Can you speak to timeline for the board? I can speak to the timeline that I will be fast and diligent in getting it over there and asking them for their attention. I have no control over someone's actual internal mechanism. That is beyond me. Right. Board members, any questions? And then to clarify, because our The board can only review the PFD that we received. And so the PFD that we did receive had an error in it.
Now we're sending it back to SOA. If we choose, that's what this motion in front of us is. If we vote in favor, we send it back to SOA. And then they would get back to us. Any further discussion? Any other clarifications to make at this point? Not at this point. But when it does come back, there will be a robust discussion over what recklessness is and the conduct that so alleges is recklessness. Thank you. Okay. Board members. Do you have a second? You have a second? Yep. All those in favor, please raise your right hand.
Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you all. So that concludes item number five. And next on our agenda for today is item number six. I've already lost you. Yeah. I'm handing it over to mister Fuller to present. Who are you taking to? On the link? Mhmm. I can do it if you just Sweet. Show me when. Okay. Go ahead and click on it. So board members, this next item is gonna be item six. We're gonna give you an update on the educator misconduct, and we're gonna show showcase a new product that, David and the IT team's been working on for a long time.
This is the public facing dashboard. I wanna move well, I guess, Cameron's on me back here, so that's fine. Okay. So, Cameron, if you can go ahead and click on that link, please. And we're getting it's well, I mean, it does. Unless I see. It's not giving us permission to see it. Yeah. Can you go to the if I wanna go to the. I'm gonna stop sharing just for a quick second. So this is live right now? It's live right now. And, Leila, it's it's public. So what we're gonna show you, board members, is gonna be it's it's actually been showcased to the public. We've already had some feedback on it.
We are incorporating some of the changes. There's gonna be a lot of stuff, so we'll we will get you the, the link for it. We really encourage you guys to play with it, you know, on your own time as well. We'll give you kind of a brief showcase. And then after that, I'll hand it over to David to kinda show you the overall numbers so you guys get the status update. But this it'll obviously work out some of the technical difficulties. You know, maybe next time I'll bring my own mouse so I can kinda click around because it is very interactive. We've had a lot of really good feedback on it. David and his team and the IT team have put in a lot of a
lot of time and effort on getting this operationalized. And this is one of the things that stakeholders have very much hammered on. Not just, you know, obviously, the board's interested in their actions, but also the, you know, parents, teachers, educators. So yeah. Perfect. Alright. So here's what we got. Okay. So this this is what this basically looks like. This is the first is I know it's a little bit small. Let me see if I can't. Well, I'm trying to zoom in a scotch a little bit. It's hard to it's hard to do that without losing the whole thing. So I'll keep it broad,
And then my deepest apologies for those of you with, failing eyesight. But, essentially, what I'm gonna do is walk through the four basic tabs and then kinda show you the interactivity of this. And after that, I'll give it over to David, and David will be able to, walk you through the education numbers. And so, the four basic tabs, we have all of our misconduct reports. As you can see, this year we've received 13,390 reports. Our monthly average is 1,674. We have 17,060 criminal history alerts, and our average monthly average is 2,133.
I do while I go into this, I do wanna showcase some of the the brilliant work that the teams have put into this. So you can click by month and you can get a breakdown of fiscal year alerts by certification status, reports by referral type. So as we can see for April, we have superintendent reports. We have 2,037 superintendents reports for April alone. And so we have the DBS reports to be two seventy eight, and this is just for one month. So you can see it's very interactive, it's very responsive, and it's updated very quickly. Educator investigate patients are next tab,
and we have these disclaimers that you're able to see. We kind of give you an overview. And this keep in mind, what you're looking at, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, is available to everybody. This isn't a special product we made for you. It's a special it's a product that is for everybody. Public basing can go to it and it immediately and it ties into our SharePoint. So here, what we have is the educator investigations. As you can see, we have 9,724 investigations for this year. Our average open each month is 1,216. And we have 5,162 confirmed reports to law enforcement,
DFPS. And David will be able to go into some detail on that with a 645 monthly average. Violence in school is at five we have 5,173 reports. So that's our vast majority followed by inappropriate relationships at 1,465. Two more tabs and then I'll and, actually, from there, I I think I would be best is if I'll hand it over to David. He'll give you kind of a breakdown of some of our metrics, and then I'll go and I'll take back over at SFEC sanctions and the did not hire registry tab portions of this. Great. Thank you, sir. More good morning.
Good, good talk to you again. David Rodriguez, executive director of investigations. I I'm gonna back up one tab just a little bit. We can talk just a little bit about, this dashboard and and how it, the interplay with s p five seventy one. As we've talked about many times, or several times within this with this board over the last year or so, SB five seventy one gave us, a lot of abilities, gave the agency, more abilities to keep students safe. And when I talk a little bit about, some overview of that, I'm gonna try to tie it back to the dashboard. But just in summary, SB five seventy one gave accelerated timelines for reporting,
expanded reporting requirements, the defined stage for preliminary review process, and then the dashboard itself, among a number of other abilities for the agency that Levi will go into shortly. Each of those I'm gonna touch in, touch on this dashboard. So the dash board itself is kind of comes from us from our source data, which is from our case management system. We've made some improvements to the case management system right out the gate with SB five seventy one passed. The primary reason is so that we can start including,
more data elements for this dashboard. And of course, you know, with dedication to continuous improvement, we will continue to take feedback and incorporate more information in here, as time goes on just to make sure that we're providing as Levi said, information to everybody for the work that we do. So looking at this first screen for educator misconduct reporting, you'll note that this is for all reports. And as Levi said, Inspector General Fuller said, that, we have a culmination of superintendent reports, DFPS reports, and general complaints. And,
this is you'll see a side by side from 2026, and I'm gonna click on this other section over here for 2025. And you'll note that there's a significant increase from 2025 to 2026. The second thing that you'll wanna consider is that this is actually eight months of 2026, all the way through the month of April. So, obviously, we've we've surpassed where we were in 2025, and this trend will carry forward and will be represented in also the investigations piece as well. So, I'm gonna go ahead and click to the investigations piece and start with twenty twenty
twenty six. And within this piece, you'll see that there's, also interactivity to tell what types of allegations, we've seen we've received by volume. And as inspector general Fuller said, the dashboard itself will have a level of responsiveness to, the type of the allegation itself. So when I click on inappropriate relationships, which by the way, as you roll over, we'll show note that it includes boundaries, communications, and obviously solicitation of improper relationships. So that in itself is a broad category. But you'll also see that there's the relative distribution of preliminary reviews,
matters that are closed after preliminary review, formal investigations and investigations. So this represents effectively what within this particular allegation code, what we've done, the stages of those reviews, and where they are along the process. This screen does not indicate, sanctions or potential referrals to the office of inspector general. But you can click through each category and you can see sort of the relative stages of investigation for each categories. There's a couple of trends that I will note here if we're looking at trends.
One you'll see, we just reset this briefly. Looking at 2025 and 2026, there is an increase from, overall investigations from 5000 to, almost 10/2024. And again, this is eight months of fiscal year 2026. So there's the remaining four months that would be posted after we've seen gather data for those months as well. And then you'll also see certain trends in classification codes sort of more, that sort of come up a little bit more to,
for instance, violence. When we look at my screen, a total of 2,100 cases in violence approximately in 2025. And then in 2026, there are, over 5,000 cases in violence. Oh, I I point this out because I wanna go back to, what the initial sort of statement that, SB five seventy one did expand and accelerate reporting requirements. So now, we received reports of violence in schools forty eight hours after the day, after the incident has occurred versus the pre SB five seventy one seven days after
termination. So, it not only accelerates the timeline, but it also provides that information to us in much more real time and also provides information to us sometimes before facts are gathered. So, we during our preliminary review process, we'll look at any supplemental reports. We'll look at any other factors that have been gathered since the time of the incident was reported. So, that is one of the causes for increase in violence. In inappropriate relationships, you will also see an increase. SB five seventy one, as I mentioned, expanded, accelerated and expanded,
expanded reporting requirements. So now as inappropriate relationships, now school districts are required to report boundaries and communications to us as well. And as this board knows, you've just adopted a rule around the definition of boundaries. And so we believe that will actually help school districts gain sort of narrow in on what it is or being specific on what it is they should be reporting to us under that subcategory of boundaries as it fits in inappropriate relationships. I'll talk just a little bit more about the preliminary review stages that you see
on the bottom left hand side of the screen. Our preliminary review stages was also defined in law by SB five seventy one. Law requires us to make a preliminary review on every report that we, case we open so that we can determine whether or not there should be an investigative warning placed under, on the person's certificate under your rules and whether or not the person should be placed on the do not hire registry as under investigation. No final determinations are made at that point, but just whether or not those initial investigative notices are placed online.
So, this preliminary review stage you see is, these are all cases that, are still pending preliminary reviews to determine whether or not they're gonna go through the process. I will let you I will sort of highlight that there are certain types of cases such as inappropriate relationships and sexual misconduct cases that we prioritize in preliminary reviews and therefore that's why you see that preliminary review ratio, down there for sexual, for inappropriate relationships and also sexual misconduct we keep very low. We address those first. We address those with priority.
The same goes for any of the arrests that we receive that would qualify for temp suspension and go in front of the temp suspension committees. And then the other categories, we also address with sort of the second level of priority as soon as we can make sure that we address inappropriate relationships and sexual misconduct. Those allegations directly impacted students, we then move on to our violence cases to try to treat the option and put those in the preliminary review process. Just a quick note on what the stages have looked like. I've talked to the board before about our investigative process where our preliminary review stages
is really just the initial gathering of facts, contacting with complainant considering of other disciplinary, other justifications for force such as trying to control the student, trying to protect other students. And then, you know, during that process, like I said, we would take in any supplemental reports or supplemental information into consideration. And then when we move on to the formal investigation stage, this will consist of, as noted here, will consist of contacting additional witnesses, contacting the students and victims, subpoenaed records. We will monitor a certain criminal matter and,
send notifications to the respondent including an opportunity for the educator to provide their side of the story, during an informal conference. That stage or that step is required by the government. And so we also make recommendations for resolutions for informal resolutions within investigations. And many of the cases that and outcomes that you'll see in the tabs that Inspector General is going to present, are a result of those informal resolutions that we do investigations. Happy to pause there before I hand it over to take any questions.
Any questions for? Yes, Ms. Weir. So is David about to go over some additional information before I make my questions? Or should I just go ahead and do my questions now? You could feel free to ask us a question now, ma'am. I mean, we are gonna go over some more information. We're not done. But, you know, if you want to, you can go and ask and we might Well, first of all, I really wanna compliment the team. This really is very simplistic and where when I mean simplistic, easy for anyone to read and to understand. And I think it's beautiful that we now,
from a standpoint to have a report to look at and to kind of see where we are. Here are my and and maybe David's gonna be able to share that, with us some comments I have, and maybe we don't have to go back in 2025, but maybe moving forward. Just, where you have the physical year, 2026 direct versus oh, no. You had up there earlier, like certified and noncertified teachers. One of my questions was, does that include district the DUI teachers,
the district of innovation teachers? Do they fall under uncertified or do they fall under certified or are they not accounted in this dashboard? So that they are counted. So the certification would apply to the actual teacher themselves, not the school district. So, BOI, even though there are a lot of, they may waive certain certification requirements, we would just consider whether or not that person is certified or whether the person holds an SSA credential. So, if they're a DOI teacher, you would put them under a certified teacher or a non certified teacher?
We would consider them, I mean, just like the investigation itself, if they are coming from a DOI, we would consider them certified and they do have certified credentials. So it's not what school system they're coming from. It's whether or not that, like, that particular individual has a credential. Okay. And then, the additional items I think we previously have talked about on the board that I think would be extremely helpful from an HR standpoint. So to help with, training purposes would be maybe, and again, I think this is gold in what we have,
but something for us to work towards is, having a breakout between elementary teachers and secondary teachers is one recommendation I have. The second one would be teaching years. Third one would be age. And then number four would be the certification type. Let me know if you need me to repeat those for future. Yeah. On teaching years, it just the That the teacher has taught because, I'm just curious. Some teachers who are maybe 28 years old,
but they've been only a teacher for one year might be different than someone who's maybe 50 versus they've been teaching for maybe twenty years or maybe two years. I think that would be valuable information from an HR perspective. So that way we can evaluate our training needs. Makes complete sense. Okay. I think I have these down, and I'll certainly take those back, as we start planning for our next 300 changes. Okay. Do you need me to review the list again just so you have it?
Let me repeat back what I thought I heard was a distinction between elementary and secondary teachers, the number of years of teaching, the age of the teacher, and then the certification type. Thank you. Thank you. You're amazing. Thank you. Thanks. Hey. Jess, do you have your hand up? Thank you. Just to to, put a finer point on it, coach Weir, the anyone who's represented on this dashboard as uncertified is someone who does not hold one of your certificates. So that would be inclusive of and anyone who's serving as a teacher of record
under district of innovation who does not hold the certificate. So no certificate equals uncertified, certified, and you'll see that represented on some of the following screens that, David and Levi will walk through. Thank you. Doctor. Galvan? Thank you. Does this also include paraprofessionals? Yes, ma'am. It does, doctor. Since the paraprofessional certificate is is an aspect traditional, we can click that here. And and you'll see some of the those, distinctions on the sanctioning pages. Thank you. So so what what we're gonna go through next is we're gonna go to The
US spec sanctions, this next tab. And so these would be the sanctions that the board has, delivered this year. So this could be, through settlement delegations that you've given to me that I've sub delegated to my managing attorneys and to David's team. This could be through the formal meetings, and this also could be through the temporary, to the temporary suspensions. Now one thing I wanna note is you'll notice here right here, and I I'm gonna give this over to vice chair de Borak in a second. So you'll notice we call these indefinite suspensions. The statute calls them temporary suspensions. We are working on that. We're working on the terminology.
And the reason why is so you'll have you have suspensions and all suspensions are essentially temporary by nature. But with the difference between the five seven one suspensions are that they are in place until the conclusion of the criminal health investing or the criminal aspect of it. So whether that be adjudication of guilt, dismissal, innocence, no bill, whatever the case may be. So we just didn't feel you know, for the for our purposes, we refer to them internally as indefinite suspensions, and that'll be something that we'll seek to change,
you know, statutorily moving forward because it just kind of causes confusion. Now I could before we go, chair vice chair to work, do you wanna go ahead and talk about the indefinite suspension? Would you like me to lay out a little bit more of this before? Like later. Okay. So so alright. So a couple of things that you guys will notice here. Again, we have fiscal year 2025 and we have 2026. So last year, 2025, November total sanctions and monthly average of 98. And so and this also includes sanctions since 09/01/2024.
So 1768 since that time with an overall monthly average over time of '22. Now we go to 2026. And so one thing that you'll see here, one thing that I anticipate by the end of the year is that this number, this five ninety five will exceed last year's, and that's because the added authority that we've gotten through May. Now what we have is five ninety five total sanctions. We have a monthly average of 74 and, you know, but this this number doesn't change. Now what you can see here is, you know, we have a month by month breakdown.
So we've got 91 for last September all the way up till April of 80 now. One thing I wanna make a point of is this number will go up to about 98, the April number only will. And that's because those cases are still in the reconsideration phase. So under the admin code or under the code, the government code, those are not final determinations. So this this number will get updated. But for February and March, we're looking at a hundred nineteen total and then a hundred and five. Now down here in this is to doctor Galvan's point,
paraprofessionals. So I can go to, I can go to March, a 105. I can click on paraprofessionals. You know, or actually, excuse me. For the so for the entire year, 17.1% have been paraprofessionals. For March, 3.7% for that month were March. Out of a 102 sanctions, 22 were paraprofessionals. To, remember Weer's point, you know, the these these sanctions are not related. They're not sent tied to the actual type of district to the school district or whatever the school is. They're tied to the certification status of each individual. And the reason why I bring that up is so whenever we go to the
do not hire registry, you'll see an even bigger breakdown and kind of a different number set. But here, the SBEC sanctions are gonna be centered around the actual teaching certificate. And so as you can see, you have you have revocation, you have voluntary surrender, suspension, reprimand, and then what we call the indefinite suspension, which would come from the subcommittee. And we can break those down each by month. So you could see the indefinite suspension started being operationalized last September, and now it's kind of picking up steam, to '48 in April. I we anticipate this number may go down as,
you know, as we are are starting to clear this backlog of 571 cases, and it may go up if the legislature decides to make the terms of five seven one retroactive. So we'll just kind of watch that and see how this goes. And then we can again break down reprimands. You know, I know and I know we're shooting through this very quickly. I would really love for you guys to, to to, you know, spend some time with this yourself, and I'll I'll give a whole speech about how I think earth shattering this whole thing is, but I'll save it towards the end. That being said, I I'd like to hand it over to vice chair, and and I'll go and hit the indefinite suspensions app piece of it.
Oh, great. This is incredible. This is, we as a board always ask about these numbers and you guys always tell us what they are. But to be able to see them in this format and be able to look through the different ones, I've never seen this level of transparency. And it's, exactly what we need. So thank you guys for all of your work putting this together because I know it's not easy and there's so many numbers. But it's really, helpful for us because a lot of times our questions, we will wonder about something very specific and here we can dive in and look at it. And then of course,
with our temporary suspension, that is new as of when we started operating in September. And then it's go I Right now, we're still, we've only done arrest cases. And soon, we're going to have imminent threat cases. And so those numbers will be interesting to see what that looks like. And as you mentioned, and just for the board to know, we had a backlog of arrest cases, which were now pretty close to caught up, if not all the way caught up to, on those. So that's what Levi was saying about.
The number might go down a little bit because we've cleared the backlog. But board members, do you guys have questions or thoughts that you wanna share? Yes, Ms. Weir. This is just fabulous. I just wanna make sure everybody knows. This is fabulous. And I know it's been a lot of hard work and a lot of time has been spent and a lot of thought. And I guess I wanna mention from a CTE teacher who, we have to be familiar with technology, this is beautiful. So something, in Yeah.
Okay. So something I wanna highlight here on some of the indefinite suspensions is, because it may it is it is good knowledge. It's good information to have is with the way that five seven one is drafted, which is phenomenal bill in my opinion. So, again, we have the we have the imminent threats. We have not operationalized yet. We haven't seen anything that I think fits that bill that doesn't fall into the arrest category yet. I anticipate those will come through. But all 171 of these indefinite suspensions or temporary suspensions under the statute, they're all pursuant to a qualifying arrest.
And so that's something that should be taken into consideration. Now and this these are just for the certified educators. These are not for Mhmm. The non certified personnel. So that's just something to that's something to consider. And as you guys so something that's interesting about this is that this number isn't the total potential population out there. There are some individuals who are arrested prior to 06/20/2025. They're not gonna be subject to five seven one until the conclusion of their court proceedings. So this number may grow if the legislature decides to go back and and apply
five seven in terms of five seven one retroactive. There are people out there that unfortunately, five seven one doesn't apply to because they were arrested prior to it taking into effect. So this is still a large number. It it may like I said, it may grow. As we clear the backlog, we expect it to go down. And I will speak on the reporting thing, but I wanna get to the the other thing with the do not hire registry because this is kind of the thing that grabs a lot of people's attentions. And, and I've got all y'all's faces in front of my mouth, but I'm gonna I'm gonna do my best here. But as you can see so this is the do not hire registry. Now the there's something to note on this is that the with this one include,
we actually have two processes, in regards to the D and HR. We have the aspect process for certified educators. So the certified educators will always go through y'all, and and, you know, your sanctions will determine who ends up on the do not hire registry. We also have noncertified staff, noncertified personnel. This could be included broad swath. In fact, one of them, was even a school resource officer. We expect to have probably a couple more of those before the end of the year. So these numbers now so while your rules are working through,
and going to the SVOE upcoming, we have a commissioner role that's on a separate track that is kind of, you know, following, you know, a similar sort of process. But these numbers will be the combinations of your numbers and ours, but we can or your numbers and the commissioner's numbers. But we can again, we can break these down, to permanent and temporarily not eligible for hire. So these would be, you know, punishments meted out by, SBEC or the commissioner. And then these would be, you know, like like, indefinite permits, and and you could see the trend go over time.
And again, we have, you know, the month by month, breakdown of actually, I had that backwards. Okay. So these the temporary and not eligible for hires would be, the the work through the work that, you know, those subcommittees done, and then through the work that the commissioner's done. Now we just operationalized the non certifications. So our numbers there would be 20 to 30, but I expect this this number is gonna start ticking up over time. And so as you can see the last three months, we've had, you know, a gradual increase, 87, 97, and one zero two in these numbers. And so about 61 monthly average.
Now that the non search, the rules in place for emergency rule, I anticipate this number go up. But this is the DHR. And I and I think that's about let me see. Let me just double check my notes. If there's anything I wanted to point out on these oh, yeah. Right. Oh, it's one of yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. Oh, thank you. So what David pointed out is so if we hover over the time for the year, we can actually have a break we actually have a breakdown of how many were based on aspect, sanction number, and this the the percentage and then the non certified employee contractors. And now one thing to point out was miss member Osher,
this was a previous authority that she, you know, that you guys have since delegated to me. And so we have you know, the commissioner has the authority to, you know, to to, DNIHR noncertified. And, yeah. Okay. So I think we've covered those big notes. Now and the only other thing I I'd point out here is that you'll you'll notice that we had a spike spike in '1 1874 in 2020. You know, you guys were here, you know, obviously, a lot of work. You guys put in a lot of work, but this was this was sort of the creation where Mhmm. The genesis of all of this. So you're gonna have this spike, and then that's basically, you know, even though the the graph's higher,
that's the baseline. And then each one of these are additions too. Obviously, if it's permanent, then it's permanent and they stay on there forever. So this number gradually has gone up until, you know, to where it is in four thousands. Anything else, please? I think it's not oh, it's closed. So so so, really, what I wanna tell you all is, you know, this is sort of my chance to kind of free base on this one. I have a background in criminal prosecutions and I have a background, you know, somewhat in army analytics. And so, you know, this is something that I have never seen before in any prosecutor's office, not with the attorney general's office,
not with the army's office. I've never seen a tracking mechanism like this. This was well on its way long before I got here, and I've seen David, I you know, I'll give him, like, a suggestion that he probably doesn't need to hear, and he'll go and tweak it, like, immediately. And then our IT staff are some of the best. So this this really is a it's a unique product. I suspect that as it becomes more public, it will probably not stay with inside the TEA. I anticipate, other entities reaching out to have something like this, especially what I really enjoy about this is that all this information,
it's all public. As you know, your board meetings are public, the sanctions are public. So what's awesome about this from a state government standpoint is that we don't have to burden the the the public, the community, our our, our public information officers. We we're not forcing people to file PIAs just to have us consolidate details. They can just go to this and see it. And likewise with y'all, you know, you don't have to wait for every meeting to get an update. You can log on at any time, and you can kind of see, what you've done. So I really cannot commend,
David's team and RIT team enough for this product because I'm blown away by every time I look at it. So I Yeah. And and I wanna get to Jess too, if you wanna say it. Sure. And and I really appreciate the coordination and cooperation with Becker general Fuller on this. And I'll I'll give credit, to our office of governance, operations team who has taken a lot of just investment and ownership of this too to help put this together and stand up, work with our IT team. I think this has been sort of full agency collaboration.
Last thing I'll say is sort of one of the first points is that this is a project that's, kind of fueled by continuous improvement. So I appreciate the questions and the suggestions. If there is more feedback for us, we're happy to take that and incorporate as we move forward. So I'll I'll give it back, and, I believe there's a couple of questions. Go ahead, Jess. Thank you, vice chair Dvorak. I think one other thing I just wanted to name around the do not hire registry that I think it's important for the board's context. I think if you all recall prior to the eighty ninth legislative session,
the board had a number of conversations around frustrations that you all had around the rise of uncertified individuals and sort of this inequity between the, very which again came came on live in 2020. And so I think two exciting components just to reinforce here is that senate bill five seventy one expanded both the sets of behaviors, that would now find an uncertified individual on the do not hire registry, and expanded the the kind of universe of individuals out to things like contractors,
etcetera. So significantly expanding sort of the overall regulation of uncertified individuals who work in schools. And then one other thing just to name is that you all also often felt this challenge of folks who had the sanctions issued by your board were not did not also reflect on the do not hire registry. So senate bill five seventy one also now requires concurrent placement of individuals sanctioned by the SBEC on the do not hire registry.
So there's maximum visibility and clarity that someone who has been either suspended or revoked by this board, now also is reflected on the do not hire registry. And they would be for suspension. So if you give someone a three year suspension, they would be reflected on the do not hire registry for the period of their suspension. So just reinforcing that that balance, I know that we feel in our that you all feel in your work around regulation of certified individual. That there's now more analogous processes, for uncertified individuals,
and and all of that's reflected, here on this dashboard. Thank you so much. And that's really important too because the do not hire registry is available not just to our public schools, but to our private schools and different entities across the board. So now, they can have that transparency to know when we've done some sanction. Okay, I see we're gonna go Doctor. Galvan, and we're gonna go Mr. Gore, and then we'll do Ms. Tripp Saffron. So go ahead, Doctor. Galvan. Thank you. My question is the previous slide. Can you please go back to the previous slide?
My question is if you because we're not able to click. If you click, for example, reprimand suspension, does it define what, indefinite or temporary suspension means, what a reprimand means? Is there a definition? Because it was an outstanding job in the other slides. But I'm not sure if that occurs in this slide. Thank you. Doctor. Galvan, no, I don't think it, I I don't think there's a hover over definition, but I think it's a great idea. And I'm confident we can,
that's a change we can make, sooner, at the next few weeks, if not the following year. Thank you. Mister Gore. Thanks. I just wanted to reiterate that, yeah, great resource. Great great work. Thank you very much. One thought might be some form of an FAQ or definition both an FAQ and a definitions tab or page, where some of the kinds of things that that have come up here in your presentation and then, some of these other comments. And you and we may have that answered already. Okay. Well, we we can definitely we'll we'll we'll go through and we'll we can refine it.
But one thing that I was gonna point out, and this is, so this is gonna be the new website or this is gonna be our new migration. So educator investigations in Texas. And so the portal that we're showing you on a separate screen is actually embedded in the website. And so some of that information is gonna be contained on this page. Purpose of S FACT discipline, conduct that may lead to discipline, crimes who may be. So we we do have, some of these. And then there's two links to SPSEC certificate lookup and do not hire registry, with the, with the, type of, disciplinary actions they may be imposed.
So so we're we're we're showing you, and I apologize. So we're showing you the actual dashboard, the the, you know, the, the the dashboard itself. But for the public, this little this little menu has come down. So there we go. Okay. But for the public, whenever you go to the public website, you'll see all this information, and then the dashboard itself will be embedded in the web page. And it it's the same it's got the same function, Hadi. So I can go here, and see it. And then if, you know, for indefinite suspension, if I and we we'll work on the hover,
as well. We can we can incorporate an FAQ for sure, number four. But just kind of, you know, those are good refinement processes and we will in the interim, until we get those operational, I can go click on a definite suspension and I can go all the way down here and, and see suspension, stamper, removal, certification privileges, whatever the case may be. So we are we it is a work in progress, but but that is a very good idea. Specifically, this is, again, a fantastic tool, open to the public. Like, go back to the all misconduct reports. What is I'm sorry. What was that? All misconduct reports.
All misconduct reports. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. The educator investigations. Which one of the first ones you covered? One wanna say, let me go back to the main page. Yeah. Can you without, taking in due time here, for example, when when you were looking at, you know, comparing '26 to '25, and then you noted in and I don't know what it was, inappropriate contact or or whatever. Maybe was it this one then? Yes. Inappropriate relationship. And then you said, oh, by the way, just to clarify, pairing 25 to 26, there's many you know,
there's a big rise in reporting of inappropriate relationships, clarification. By the way, there was an expansion of, a clarification and expansion of the definition of what qualified as an inappropriate relationship. Long story short, where I'm going with this is I I see reporting in social media, particularly reporting where it's like, oh my god. Look what's happened. Our teachers, you know, you know, look at this dramatic increase in the number of inappropriate relationships. And there's going to be mischaracterizations no matter what's done. But in my mind, if we're anticipating,
you if if you're thinking about a reporter who's on a really tight deadline that's been tasked with, hey. You know, this is the news a lot. Please go look at this and do, you know, do some reporting on what you're seeing. Some of those things where when you're explaining to us, hey. By the way, part of what would constitute or largely what would constitute this, you know, this big increase in appropriate relationships is an expansion of the definition of what needs to be reported. And and anticipating, for lack of a better term, anticipating the kinds of things that someone who doesn't have those clarifications is likely to
Thank you for that comment, and I appreciate that. And we'll, we'll make these notes. I I do wanna that's something I you actually reminded me. There's something I really wanted to talk about because it is important. This is not necessarily related to the dashboard, but rather to the overall sort of mission set that David and I have. And so one thing we'll we'll go back to all misconduct reports. And so as you guys know, between 2025 and 2026, we have an increase in reports. Now there's two possible reasons for this. Number one, because we could have much more incidents occurring.
Based on my previous experience dealing with this with the army, there may be more incidents. I can't discount that. But I think what's most likely going on here is that there is tighter timelines. There are expanded reporting requirements. There's simplified reporting requirements. And you have the population, for lack of a better term, they have the fear of God in them that they need to report this. And so we are seeing individuals I've gotten phone calls myself from superintendents, asking me how to get on the portal, and we have actioned that, you know, immediately. Right? Because they've gotta make these portal these reports very quick.
So this is this is something that it does not sound good, but from someone who's done this before, it is a good thing. These incidents are occurring no matter what. Whether or not you know about them or not, they're gonna occur. For us to know about them, we can then action them. So step one is getting the reporting up, and we are getting we are on the way to doing that. Step two then, is getting is is the investigations aspect. And as you can see, David David's team has sort of caught the ball midstream and and started running with.
Right? And so they've expanded their capability. So we have not only do we have more reports, but we we have the David's team has shown that they have the capability, as, you know, as much as, you know, feasible with our resources to investigate these things. Now part three, there's gonna be, you know, two more parts of this. Obviously, holding people accountable through sanctions, whether that'd be SVEK sanctions or the commissioner sanctions. That's gonna be getting that's gonna be removing the population of bad actors. And then the final aspect of this is gonna be proactivity. Right? And I think we're already seeing,
the proactive measures being put in place, you know, by by at least some school districts. I've seen that where their hiring is becoming more rigid. They're becoming more discerning of who they hire and who they bring in. And that really is, you know, one of the one of the the best ways to prevent this from occurring. And, like, I've I've briefed people before, by the time something gets to you, all the damage has already been done. The students already been affected. There are no winners from here. None. So how do we make this situation better while we get to the proactive?
So, anyway, what I wanna say is I don't want anyone to be disheartened by the increased reports, by the increased investigations. These are all good things. And if we are successful, then eventually, these numbers will go down, but they will go down okay because we have called the population of bad actors. Great. No. Thank you for that explanation and great insight. And if I recall, and I there's also, legal liability for districts at this point that didn't exist before. And, consequently, if that is, in my recollection, accurate, obviously, school boards are going to be,
you know, much much more diligent in interacting with school leadership and saying, are we protecting ourselves from liability in terms of both the reporting and taking action and time, etcetera? Yes, sir. And I can I can I can expound on that too? As you are aware, you now have the authority, I believe, to to levy fines in the in the amounts of up to $10,000 failure to report. There are so now there's multiple provisions in both the education code and in the code of criminal procedure regarding failures to report. They've taken sort of an old criminal concept to failure to report a felony,
and now they've applied it specifically to incidents where, you know, a child's been abused and they've expanded that. And so, it could be a class a misdemeanor if, you know, done, you know, intentionally knowingly or recklessly. But if it done with intent to conceal, it could be a stage y'all felony. That's a severe felony for anybody. And so if someone intentionally, refuses to report or fails to report, they could very well be brought up on charges for that. And then to your point, you brought up a very good bill. It's outside of the purview of the TEA, but it's something that that is is definitely,
you know, sort of, over us. With the the forty six twenty three, school districts can't be sued civilly, for for sexual offenses. Right? And so now the TA, obviously, being state entities, we don't we would not engage in that. And, our client from the attorney general's office is here, and so he can tell you all about sort of the conflict that comes. But it is something to consider, because if you were a school district, then you are mindful of whatever SFEC does, whatever TEA does, they very well can end up in a civil case down the road. So there's all these forcing mechanisms out there.
You know, and I always have to do this disclaimer. The vast majority of our population, I just wanna point out, we have 9,007. We have all misconduct reports. Right? We have, 13,390 misconduct reports. Not all of these reports, as you can see from the the next breakdown, are gonna be your serious, felonious offenses. But we have a we have a educator and non educator population of over a half million people. Right? So the, you know, the statement that I I've given before, this is a fraction of a percent, which is good.
But that being said, it is something we need to root out. I think it's but, anyway, the the caveat on that, having that having that extra extra bill out there, the forty six twenty three provisions, that is something that that I think is on superintendent's mind, very much like we need to report these things. We need to get it over to the TEA. We need to get the experts in there, and then we need to let the process roll out. That's right. I I don't see Mr. Stafford anymore. Okay. No problem. But I did wanna reiterate what you're saying. These numbers seem disheartening,
right? But this was our goal. We wanna protect kids. We wanna make sure that reports are happening. We wanna investigate them. We wanna figure out and, only have the best educators around our kids and keeping our kids safe. I know that's been a priority of this board, of the legislature, of TEA. And so seeing this, these numbers like this, shows that what we're doing is working and progressing towards our goal of keeping our kids safe in our schools. Board, do y'all have any other questions?
My question is, what's the link so that they can It's in the Zoom chat. Okay. Great. But I can also email it to everyone. Is it an easy thing to say? Like, dashboard at anything? We have, we have code named this the dashboard. Okay. Project dashboard, super secret project dashboard, and we could codenamed that. But, yeah, no. The the website is gonna be, the website where it's embedded is gonna be the, and we're doing a migration. I think the migration we already did. It's educator investigations. And so this is gonna be I think let me see if it's already operational with Texas educators.
I'll back up one. So we've got the Texas. And so we they we've we've we've we're reformatting the TDA. We are learners. We are improving our website. And so if you go to Texas educators, you'll see it. And then you, I've got all of your heads over my my screen, but it is it is it is somewhere on here. And, and, yeah, the the direct link should be should be on there, but if it's not, we're still updating the Education and the Educator Investigations. It sub a right there. It is also in your Zoom chat, and we can send it via email here in just a few minutes.
Yeah. And I'm thinking just publicly. People that might wanna go look at this can get to Go to the next one. Hopefully, it takes you Friday. Yeah. We are there's a couple of updates. There's a couple of pages that were update updated as part of this. So, we are making sure that we're mapping out to the right way, but we'll get all of the the updated pages to y'all in addition to the dashboard. They all do connect. We'll make sure that it's clear about how they're all related. Right. Maybe we add a little shortcut link. Shortcut sounds a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. And that way, we can all get to it because this the TA website has a lot of
information. Lots of information. Good information, but there's a lot. So oh, hold on one second. Sorry. So, and so last thing, if we can go well, so and we were gonna brief off this, but, however, because the dashboard is this so phenomenal, how do I go to see back to the PowerPoint? Yeah. If you could go back to the PowerPoint, then we'll oh, I see. Yeah. I think we'll screen things. Stop here. And, so we were gonna brief off these next two slides. These were normally what we present you, but, you know, since the dashboard has kinda replaced the per this is this is what you would've would've got instead. So you're welcome.
This is, throw away. This is the the the old way. I don't think we really have to brief about this since we've already kinda given you the numbers. And then, and then we have this as well so you can kinda see the uptake for fiscal year, '26. But, so this was gonna be an extra product to tell you guys, but what we can tell you is that it's now outdated. The new the new the new new is here. So thank you for your time. Thank you. I like the dashboard much better than the slides. So this is great. I know the Board shares that sentiment. But that completes our business as posted. So, Ford,
unless you have any further questions for Levi, that's what I was gonna say. Then, okay. It is 11:32PM, and this meeting is adjourned.