Report 2010-119 Recommendations

The Commission should seek a legal opinion from the attorney general to determine the legal authority and extent to which the committee may delegate to the division the discretionary authority to close investigations of alleged misconduct without committee review, and take all necessary steps to comply with the attorney general's advice.

Once the Commission has received the attorney general's legal advice regarding the extent to which the committee may delegate case closures to the division, the commission should undertake all necessary procedural and statutory changes to increase the number of cases the committee can review each month.

The division should provide the training and oversight, and should take any other steps needed, to ensure that the case information in its database is complete, accurate, and consistently entered to allow for the retrieval of reliable case management information.

To adequately address the weaknesses in its processing of reports of misconduct, the division should revisit management's reports and processes for overseeing the investigations of misconduct to ensure that the reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate reduction of the time elapsed to perform critical steps in the review process.

The division should ensure that its reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate prompt requests for information surrounding reports of misconduct from law enforcement agencies, the courts, schools, and knowledgeable individuals.

The division should ensure that its reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate an understanding of the reasons for delays in investigating individual reports of misconduct without having to review the paper files for the cases.

To comply with the law and reduce unnecessary workload, the division should continue to notify Justice of RAP sheets for individuals in whom the division is no longer interested, so Justice will no longer notify the division of criminal activity for these individuals.

The commission should revise its strategic plan to identify the programmatic, organizational, and external challenges that face the division and the committee, and determine the goals and actions necessary to accomplish its mission.

To ensure that it can effectively process its workload in the future, the commission should collect the data needed to identify the staffing levels necessary to accommodate its workload.

The division should develop and formalize comprehensive written procedures to promote consistency in, and conformity with, management’s policies and directives for reviews of reported misconduct.

The commission should continue to implement its new procedures related to deleting cases from its database to ensure that all such proposed deletions are reviewed by management for propriety before they are deleted and a record is kept of the individuals to which each such deleted case record pertains. Further, the commission should develop and implement policies and procedures related to managing changes and deletions to its database.

To ensure that the division promptly and properly processes the receipt of all the various reports of educator misconduct it receives, such as RAP sheets, school reports, affidavits, and self-disclosures of misconduct, it should develop and implement procedures to create a record of the receipt of all these reports that it can use to account for them. In addition, the process should include oversight of the handling of these reports to ensure that case files for the reported misconduct are established in the commission’s database to allow for tracking and accountability.

To adequately address the weaknesses we discuss in its processing of reports of misconduct, the division should revisit management’s reports and processes for overseeing the investigations of misconduct to ensure that the reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate the adequate tracking of the reviews of reports of misconduct that may require mandatory action by the commission to ensure the timely revocation of the credentials for all individuals whose misconduct renders them unfit for the duties authorized by their credential.

To adequately address the weaknesses we discuss in its processing of reports of misconduct, the division should revisit management’s reports and processes for overseeing the investigations of misconduct to ensure that the reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate clear evidence of management review of reports intended to track the division’s progress in its investigations of misconduct.

To adequately address the weaknesses we discuss in its processing of reports of misconduct, the division should revisit management's reports and processes for overseeing the investigations of misconduct to ensure that the reports and practices provide adequate information to facilitate clear tracking of the dates at which the commission will lose its jurisdiction over the case as a result of the expiration of statute-based time frames for investigating the misconduct.

The division should develop and implement procedures to track cases after they have been assigned to the investigative process.

To better ensure that its hiring decisions are fair and that employment opportunities are equally afforded to all eligible candidates, and to minimize employees’ perceptions that its practices are compromised by familial relationships or employee favoritism, the commission should prepare and/or formally adopt a comprehensive hiring manual that clearly indicates hiring procedures and identifies the parties responsible for carrying out various steps in the hiring process.

To better ensure that its hiring decisions are fair and that employment opportunities are equally afforded to all eligible candidates, and to minimize employees’ perceptions that its practices are compromised by familial relationships or employee favoritism, the commission should maintain documentation for each step in the hiring process. For example, the commission should maintain all applications received from eligible applicants and should preserve notes related to interviews and reference checks. Documentation should be consistently maintained by a designated responsible party.

To better ensure that its hiring decisions are fair and that employment opportunities are equally afforded to all eligible candidates, and to minimize employees' perceptions that its practices are compromised by familial relationships or employee favoritism, the commission should ensure hiring managers provide to the commission's office of human resources documentation supporting their appointment decisions, and the office of human resources should maintain this documentation so that it can demonstrate that the hiring process was based on merit and the candidate's fitness for the job.

To ensure that employees understand their right to file either an EEO complaint or a grievance, and to reduce any associated fear of retaliation, the commission should include in its EEO policy a statement informing staff members that they may make complaints without fear of retaliation.

To ensure that employees understand their right to file either an EEO complaint or a grievance, and to reduce any associated fear of retaliation, the commission should actively notify employees annually of its EEO complaint and grievance processes, including the protection from retaliation included in both.

To ensure that employees understand their right to file either an EEO complaint or a grievance, and to reduce any associated fear of retaliation, the commission should conduct training on its EEO complaint process on a periodic basis.