SAN ANTONIO -- You'd be pretty upset if you found out your child's teacher is a registered sex offender or their bus driver has been convicted of drunk driving.
Well, under a proposed new law set to be approved by the House of Representatives on Friday, you'd never get that information.
In 2006, the News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooters exposed the criminal records of several local school employees. At the time, Lee Albert Russell was a teacher in San Antonio Independent School District. He was arrested in 1996 for public lewdness.
Vick Zamora was a teacher at the Schertz Cibilo Universal City School District. Zamora was busted in 1998 for indecent exposure.
Both resigned after we uncovered their arrests.
The arrests were discovered after running criminal background checks on more than 53,000 school employees at seventeen area districts.
We did that by matching their names and dates of birth with a database of criminal court records.
But now, a bill by Texas State Representative Diane Patrick of Arlington would make dates of birth of school employees secret. It would also allow districts to refuse to release an employee's criminal record. She claims it is to protect teachers from identity theft.
Despite the fact experts say it is Social Security numbers that thieves want.
"The most important thing you can safeguard is your Social Security number. So anything you can do to protect that. Get it out of your wallet or purse. Don't reveal it to anybody without an argument", said identity theft expert Danny Lents.
We tried to find out what the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers thinks about the bill, but did not get a call back.
If you'd like to let lawmakers what you think of this idea, we've made it easy for you to send an e-mail telling the legislature that this is a bad idea.
