Texas Now Has a ‘Do Not Hire’ Teacher Registry

Up until now, school districts were pretty much on their own when it came to running background checks on potential new teacher hires. That's all changing though.

The Texas Education Agency has now created a "Do Not Hire" list. This will help district leaders when it comes to hiring because it's an easy way to see if an applicant is eligible to hire, or if they are under investigation for any kind of conduct and not eligible to hire. By law, if someone is under investigation they aren't allowed to be hired.

It was difficult for districts to do their own background checks because those checks wouldn't show everything especially if someone had plead out or settled without an actual conviction.

This centralized database will help the districts with a more thorough background check with the hope that it cuts down on the amount of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students.

The public will have access to the database starting in April.