Who this affects

Arrest records and teaching certificates

Checked 2026-08-25

Teaching is the only profession where an arrest with no charge resolved and no finding of any kind can put a state-published "currently under investigation" flag on your own public certification record — and where your district learns about the arrest automatically.

The public flag before any finding

Texas rule 19 TAC § 249.14 directs that after a case is accepted for investigation, if the alleged conduct indicates a risk to the health, safety or welfare of a student or minor, staff shall immediately place an investigative notice on the certificate holder's certification records stating that the holder is currently under investigation. Conduct constituting a felony offence is Priority 1.

That notice sits on the record the public looks at, before anything has been decided. Texas also runs a name-searchable public Do Not Hire Registry, and California's credential lookup displays an adverse-actions red flag beside a disciplined holder's name.

Your district finds out without you

Texas school employees are enrolled in FBI Rap Back, which notifies districts of new reportable criminal activity as it happens. The arrest reaches your employer through a federal fingerprint service, not through a conversation.

The reporting duty then runs on the district rather than on you: Tex. Educ. Code § 21.006 requires the superintendent to notify the State Board for Educator Certification not later than the seventh business day after learning the triggering facts, with principals on the same clock upward.

Florida reversed that direction in 2025. SB 1374, effective 1 July 2025, requires instructional and administrative personnel to self-report within 48 hours any arrest for a felony or for a listed misdemeanour, and requires the district to adopt a policy removing the employee from the classroom within 24 hours of notification. Forty-eight hours to report, twenty-four to be removed — before any court has done anything.

Where removal work fits

It does not touch the certificate record or the registry. Those are statutory, and a service claiming to clear them is lying to you.

What it touches is what a parent finds. Search a teacher's name and the results that surface are typically the aggregator copies and the county roster, not the certification database. A dismissed case that still returns a booking photograph is the problem removal work solves, and it is a different problem from the one your union representative or licence attorney is handling. Do both, in that order of urgency: the deadline first, the search results second.

Seventy-two hours, in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania sets the tightest clock we found in any profession, and it runs on arrest rather than conviction. A current school employee arrested for a listed offence must file Form PDE-6004 with the person responsible for employment decisions at the school entity within 72 hours. The form itself carries a warning that a false statement is prosecutable as unsworn falsification to authorities.

Florida puts the duty on the district instead and makes it faster still: a school district must report an educator's arrest to the state within 24 hours of the matter coming to its attention. Georgia, at the other end, has no comparable educator self-report duty in its ethics rules at all. Three states, three entirely different obligations from the same arrest.

Pennsylvania also attaches consequences that outlast any case. Its most serious listed offences carry a lifetime bar on school employment; a second tier carries bans of ten, five or three years, set by the offence rather than by the outcome for you.

Common questions

Can I get the 'under investigation' notice removed?

Not by a removal service. It is placed by rule and comes off according to the outcome of the investigation — that is a matter for your representation, and in Florida your 48-hour clock may already be running.

Will my district find out if I do not tell them?

In Texas, employees are enrolled in FBI Rap Back, which pushes new criminal activity to districts automatically. Assume they will know.

What can actually be cleaned up?

The commercial copies — mugshot aggregators, people-search sites, the county roster — and the search results a parent or a hiring principal sees when they type your name.

Try the free route first

Google removes your home address, phone number, email and — since February 2026 — government ID numbers at no cost. More than 10 million people have used it. It does not cover arrest records, and it will not touch a government or newspaper page, but it is free and it is worth running first.

Open Google’s Results about you tool

Sources

Every claim on this page traces to the sources above, checked on 2026-08-25. Rules in this area change — several of the ones on this page changed in the last three years. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.