Secret in the Classroom
Kids Who Are Sex Offenders
By Daniel Muniz

Awareness of sex offenders in this country has come a long way from being practically non-existent to the advent of plenty of legislation requiring the tracking and monitoring of such predators in state databases by law enforcement. And more importantly, schools districts now perform background checks to prevent these miscreants from ever being hired in our education system.

But more to the point, in an environment with young children and teenagers, it is absolutely essential that our education system works as hard as possible to keep our schools safe. However, there is one glaring loophole that many states still have to grapple with.

Some schools districts have students enrolled in normal classes who are sex offenders.

States require compulsory education but at this time, many policies are vague about how to deal with students who are sex predators because they are still required to be in the classroom. And if their crimes do not involve a school district, then there is no mandate to require such convicted criminals to be sent to alternative schools.
 

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As a result, these predators are able to sit in the same classroom with everybody else.

But to add insult to injury, many school districts are not required to inform anyone that a student is actually a sex offender. And some schools are not even obligated to tell their teachers or counselors even though the principals and superintendents already know who they are.

Obviously, there is a paradox here.

State laws have been very prudent to compel school districts to perform background checks on all school employees in order to keep these predators away from our children. In addition, society expects our education system to be proactive and vigilant in regards to sex offenders. Unfortunately, there really is nothing that can be done at this time with offenders who happen to be children themselves. Many of our laws require them to attend school even if it means that they will be sitting right next to our sons and daughters.

However, it is patently disingenuous on the part of a school district not to inform anyone, especially parents, that there are such criminals taking classes on their campuses. And what makes this issue more disturbing is that in a school environment, there are plenty of times and activities that these offenders are unsupervised while they are hanging out with our children.

In Texas, law enforcement follows a procedure to inform a school district when a sex offender moves into their attendance boundaries. Next, the educational leadership relays that information to the principal of the school where the student will be attending. Unfortunately, it now up to the principal whether or not he or she bothers to notify faculty and staff as well as the rest of the student body and their parents.

For Texas and other states, this voluntary discretion is the weak link in the chain.

In relation to the student population, the number of sex offenders who are in school is actually miniscule. But still, their very presence in the classroom should be a cause for concern especially when teachers and students don’t know anything about it.

The bottom line is that it serves no useful purpose to keep such important information a secret.

Of course a revelation of sex crimes will probably create a terrible stigma to the student who is the offender because everyone will now know who he is and what he did. And perhaps with this information out in the open, it will create an unpleasant environment for the offender. However, what the offender did was still a heinous crime even if he or she did it as a youth. And the truth of the matter is if the student didn’t commit the crime in the first place, then he or she wouldn’t stigmatized. Those are just the consequences of committing such an awful crime.

Simply put, society has taken a zero tolerance approach to sex crimes especially when they involve children as victims.

But overall, the purpose for a sex offender’s database and for the enormous awareness that has taken place is that sex predators have a propensity to commit this sort of crime again. It doesn’t mean that all of them will make the same mistake again but if they are present amongst other children, then there is an obligation for the public, especially parents who have kids at the same school, to be informed.

And more importantly, states need to enact legislation that will automatically send such students directly to alternative schools instead of having them attend mainstream classes. Perhaps such a policy is unfair but the gravity of the crime is what makes these kinds of requirements necessary.

It is also time for legislators and school districts to get serious about this loophole and make awareness of it a top priority particularly when so much has already been done to keep sex offenders away from minors. Policies need to be reexamined and corrected so that our educational leadership has a legal basis to make sensible decisions regarding sex offenders who attend school in their districts.

In summary, the schools our children go to need to be safe and free from predators.

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