Checking educators for the students' sake

Is the new law that requires teachers and school employees to be fingerprinted neccessary? Right now they are fingerprinting more than 11,000 educators in San Antonio in the city's two largest school systems, Northside and North East independent school districts. The Austin Independent School District was actually the first to start this process. In Jenny LaCoste-Caputo's article, Checking educators for the students' sake, from Feb 19th she gives us an insight to who the law affects, the cost, and how the process works. In the article John Folks, the Superintendent for Northside ISD, says he agrees with this new requirement that adds to their already extensive background checks because it is more thourough. There are some concerns, though, from such groups as the Texas Classroom Teachers Association because they think that some indescretions from their pasts might hurt teachers as well. I don't think this will be a huge issue, however, because with minor offenses that might be found the discretion will be left up to the district and the Texas Education Agency. Overall there haven't been complaints in San Antonio. I definitely think that this is a great law, especially these days it seems more and more teachers are getting busted for such things as sexual harrassment or sleeping with students. This law may weed out some of those people, because this more extensive background check will catch anything the old system may have missed. For someone who is an education major, I definitely wouldn't be opposed to getting fingerprinted and it would be more comforting to know that my collegues were thouroughly checked as well. It would also be more comforting for the parents as well. Anything that would ensure teachers are not murderers or sexual preditors is definitely a good thing. The most important thing is the safety of the students and this is definitely a good law that provides more protection and more assurance for them.

4 Travis candidates lay out their views on death penalty

There are four candidates in line for the Travis County district attorney. They are all assistants or former assistant to the current district attorney, Ronnie Earle. All three currently under Earle said they would seek a death penalty if neccessary. Rick Reed, who resigned last week from Earle's office, said he would never seek the death penalty. All four candidates are democrats and whoever wins the primary will have the sole discretion to seek the death penalty and is expected to become the top prosecuter in Travis County. If Reed wins, no matter what crime is committed he will not seek the death penalty, so hopefully one of the other three will win. I think the death penalty should be an option and is neccessary in some cases. Rosemary Lehmberg has been in Earle's office since 1976 and she also helped develop the system in evaluating which cases deserve the death penalty. It seems she has the most experience with this issue and would probably be best suited for the job. I expect that in Texas our next district attorney for Travis County will be for the death penalty.