Commissioner's Decision
Parents Lose Appeal
School Staff Made “Very Troubling” Decision
To Hide Student’s Whereabouts from Parents
Ruling: The education commissioner can’t do anything about the fact that employees at a school violated a state law by concealing from a student’s parents — for 72 hours — the student’s whereabouts. Parents A/N/F Student, v. El Paso ISD, No. 004-R10-09-2019. Signed May 18 by Education Commissioner Mike Morath.
In early May 2019, a 15-year-old female EPISD high school student told the school’s at-risk coordinator that a physical altercation she had with her mother amounted to child abuse and pointed to marks on her body as evidence.
The student said she was afraid to go home.
A sheriff’s deputy told the at-risk coordinator, after the deputy conducted a preliminary investigation, that this case appeared to be a child discipline issue and the mother had the right to take the child home.
A high school counselor, after consulting with the district’s counseling office, also told the at-risk coordinator that the parents had every right to take their child home.
The at-risk coordinator arranged to have the student transferred to a shelter for victims of family and sexual abuse.
When the mother went to the school that day to pick up her daughter and son (who attended the same school), the girl was no where to be found.
The mother and her son searched the school, and asked staff where she could be, to no avail.
The student all the while had been in an office in the school awaiting to be transported to the shelter. The girl stayed at the shelter the next day, and thereafter was transported to and from school by the shelter. At school, the girl was kept away from the rest of the students so her brother wouldn’t see her and tell his parents.
It wasn’t until 72 hours later, when the girl’s stepfather, accompanied by an El Paso police officer, went to the school and was told where she was.
A CPS investigator, on that day, also reportedly told staff that while it was not recommended, the parent was entitled to take the child home. A few days later, the girl and her mother and stepfather met at the shelter and she agreed to come home.
The parents appealed to the commissioner after EPISD denied most of their claims, except for eliciting a promise for better training for the school’s staff and a concession that staff should have told them where the student was.
In dismissing the parent’s complaint, the commissioner acknowledged that the school’s staff violated the parental rights provisions contained in Texas Education Code §26.008, which the commissioner said entitles parents to always be told by school staff where their children are during the school day (if they know), even in cases involving investigations of child abuse.
“Encouraging or Coercing”
But, the commissioner concluded that he lacks the authority to sanction school employees for violating §26.008 because the law only allows school employees to be disciplined for encouraging or coercing a child to withhold information from the child’s parents and because only school districts, and not the commissioner, are empowered to discipline school employees.
“Although the school’s staff did not encourage or coerce the student to conceal her whereabouts from her parents, they certainly facilitated it,” the commissioner added.
The commissioner also ruled the provision by the shelter of services to the student, without the parents’ prior written permission, did not violate the Texas Education Code because the shelter is not a school-based health center.
Despite siding with EPISD in dismissing the appeal, the the commissioner said he found the facts of the case to be “very troubling.”