Federal prosecutors are set to announce a settlement with Dallas ISD, tied to a North Texas initiative targeting schools that fail to report educator misconduct. The announcement is expected Tuesday, according to CBS News Texas, which reports that the deal is connected to Project Safe Schools, a federal program aimed at stopping the practice known as “passing the trash.”
CBS News Texas reporter Deneeka Hill is breaking down what is expected to be learned about the settlement, according to CBS News. Project Safe Schools brings together federal, state and local partners, and it directly targets failures in mandatory reporting of educator misconduct, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of Texas, which describes the “passing the trash” practice as educators with known misconduct issues moving between schools without disclosure of their history.
The exact terms of any Dallas ISD settlement have not been independently confirmed, but the initiative has already produced a resolved case involving a different North Texas district. The U.S. Attorney's Office reached a civil False Claims Act settlement with Forney ISD, the office said, after alleging that falsified compliance certifications helped the federal government award more than $2.8 million in IDEA funding to that district, per CBS News Texas's earlier reporting.
How the Forney ISD Case Unfolded
Forney ISD entered its civil settlement with federal agencies on Aug. 18, agreeing to a $14,308 payment and new measures meant to prevent future mandatory-reporting failures, according to K-12 Dive. The inaccurate certifications were allegedly material to the government's decision to award the district that federal aid, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported, though the settlement itself was not an admission of liability by Forney ISD, according to Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth.
That civil matter ran alongside separate criminal charges. Former Forney ISD principal Wendy Bailey and Michael Roell, also known as Jonathan Michael, face federal wire fraud charges, CBS News Texas reported. Roell had spent six years in the hospice and healthcare industry before Dallas ISD hired him in 2022, per the same K-12 Dive account, and Forney ISD's settlement came while federal investigators were examining two former Crosby Elementary School educators, according to Fox 4.
A Push to Expand Statewide and Nationally
Federal officials have signaled this is only the beginning of a broader push. The U.S. Attorney's Office has said Project Safe Schools could be expanded statewide and eventually nationally following its North Texas rollout, K-12 Dive reported, with the ultimate goal of extending the program to every federal judicial district and having each U.S. Attorney's Office appoint criminal and civil coordinators.
Multiple other North Texas public school districts are under investigation as part of the effort, though officials have not identified which ones, Fox 4 reported. Federal agencies have also created a voluntary self-disclosure pathway for North Texas school districts that identify and promptly disclose violations, the Star-Telegram reported, and prosecutors have encouraged districts to come forward with any reporting failures from the past five years, according to Texas Scorecard.
The scale of the underlying problem has drawn attention at the state level as well. The Texas Education Agency has opened more than 9,700 educator misconduct investigations in the past two years, resulting in more than 590 disciplinary actions, CBS News Texas reported, while the Star-Telegram put the investigation count at more than 9,720 over the same period, with at least 480 educators placed on the state's Do Not Hire registry. In July, the U.S. Department of Education announced a nationwide crackdown on sexual abuse in schools and threatened to withhold federal funding from districts involved in passing the trash, Texas Scorecard reported. What Tuesday's announcement will mean specifically for Dallas ISD remains to be seen.
