Amid recent accusations of inappropriate behavior by teachers toward students — including allegations involving sexual misconduct — the Texas Education Agency has appointed Levi Fuller as inspector general for educator misconduct. Fuller said his goal is to unify several departments within th e agency and identify issues with how cases are handled. He said he plans to integrate efforts with investigators and other stakeholders to address inefficiencies and fix problems moving forward. “I’ll also be integrating and working with our investigations and other stakeholders to identify, you know, things like inefficiencies or problems that we have going on, getting them right, getting them fixed going forward,” said Levi Fuller, inspector general for educator misconduct with the Texas Education Agency. Fuller said one area, sexual misconduct, will be his primary focus and that when cases appear to have potential criminal implications, he expects the agency to move quickly to refer them to law enforcement. “Let’s say there is a case that comes to us and our investigators review it and it looks like it could have a criminal application to it, right? We want to make sure that case goes to law enforcement immediately,” Fuller said. Asked whether the new enforcement role includes investigating ICE-related walkouts that have occurred at several North Texas schools, Fuller said he could not discuss what may or may not be under investigation, but confirmed that complaints have been received and they are being reviewed. Texas American Federation of Teachers President Zeph Capo said he worries the new position could create additional problems. “But how we fix this issue is not having someone else that maybe potentially weaponizes or creates more punitive issues. How we fix this issue is making those teachers that have left the classroom, because the conditions are so bad, willing to come back,” said Capo. As he begins the role, Fuller said he wants teachers to understand the effort is aimed at protecting students, not targeting educators broadly. “We want to make sure that teachers feel like this isn’t a witch hunt or a kangaroo court. But we wanna give it again, we wanna make sure that the actual bad actors, we get them away from kids as soon as possible,” Fuller said. ...read more read less