Teacher Disciplinary Website

[frank9700]

My friend who is a certified Florida teacher (and no longer in the teaching profession) is in jeopardy of having his name placed on a Teacher Disciplinary Website. The Department of Education has told him that his name and his Final Order (as a result of his teacher license process which caused a letter of reprimand) will be posted on the website soon because it is supposedly public information. My friend never signed or consented for the Final Order (in 2005) to be made public. He is very distraught with this outcome, especially when incidents that caused the letter of reprimand in the Final Order happened 15 years ago and 10 years before he became certified as a teacher. He feels this website serves no purpose except to make it more difficult for teachers to teach and to cause ridicule and disrespect toward them, if and when someone accesses the teacher website. Also, there is information in the Final Order that is an invasion of privacy because his sealed police record is part of the Final Order for all to see. The Final Order application specifically states that all sealed records would not be part of the Final Order. Also, there is private information on the Final Order which should not be on there, like his Driver’s License Number. With this information, someone can easily steal his identity.

He would like to try to invalidate the Final Order for the above reasons due to Invasion of Privacy so that the Final Order could be stricken from the public record and of course not have his name eventually placed on the website. As it is, my friend is not a teacher any longer and would be willing to surrender his teacher license, voluntarily. Even so, the Department of Education has said they will post his name and Final Order forever on the Internet.

Would an injunction be his first step to make the Final Order non-public and to eventually sue to invalidate the Final Order on the basis that my friend has been injured for the last 3 years that the Final Order has been public?What is the name of your state?

 

[quincy]

Sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, criminal convictions and other teacher misconduct can result in disciplinary action against a teacher and a teacher's license. This is all a matter of public record. There is a list maintained by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, that lists teachers who have been punished nationwide. Although details of the misconduct are not given on this list, the list allows school districts nationwide to do a search of potential teacher hires.

Although this particular list maintained by the NASDTEC was purportedly confidential, a Florida newspaper was able to access the information for an investigative piece they were doing on sexual misconduct charges leveled against teachers in Florida, and other newspapers picked up their report. Close to one-quarter of all disciplinary actions reported against teachers in the country involve sexual misconduct.

Information on teacher misconduct has been available online for a long time. Several online databases exist that allow for a search of teacher misconduct records by submitting the teacher's name and state where the teacher is licensed (CourtReference.com and The Free Public Records Directory are two such sites).

There is little your friend can do to prevent information that is considered public record from being published. A driver's license number is not considered "private" information and is not a concern as far as identity theft goes (whereas a social security number would be).