Less than a week after he announced the Project Safe Schools initiative… calling for school districts to disclose unreported educator misconduct from the last five years, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould says it’s parents who are reporting allegations of mi sconduct to the Department of Justice. “We’re vetting that information, giving that to our law enforcement partners, so it’s been incredibly valuable to have more insight in the school districts. I mean, there’s a lot of things that have happened there that having parents signed NDAs and having teachers who witnessed this stuff have signed non-disclosure agreements,” Raybould said. Raybould’s initiative addresses what he calls a culture of school districts not appropriately addressing educator misconduct when it first arises and quietly moving educators with known misconduct issues to new campuses or districts where they hurt other children. Over the last two years, the Texas Education Agency has opened more than 9,700 educator-misconduct investigations, resulting in 480 educators being added to the Do Not Hire registry; still, Raybould says school districts across North Texas continue to underreport abuse and keep educators with known misconduct issues. “There’s a lot of problems with the way that reporting works. The goal should be to get that information immediately to law enforcement, not to hire an outside counsel and run an investigation,” Raybould said. Raybould says his office already has active investigations into several North Texas school districts after announcing a civil settlement with Forney ISD last week, which also resulted in criminal charges against a former principal and a teacher. School districts that do not voluntarily disclose misconduct may face maximum civil penalties, may not receive reduced penalties and may be required to repay federal grant dollars. A systemic concern in North Texas school districts, Raybould says, will continue to see federal enforcement. “Those numbers indicate to me that it is an epidemic and we need to get a hold of it,” Raybould said. ...read more read less