AUSTIN (KXAN) — The email came in late on a Friday.

The Austin Independent School District message on Dec. 8 was for parents with children at Akins High School — the subject line: Arrest of former Akins Tutor. 

Earlier that day, Austin ISD police arrested Isaiah Xavier Smith, a man hired by the local nonprofit Austin Partners in Education to tutor at Austin ISD schools. The district told parents Smith had been arrested on a felony charge of indecency with a child by contact tied to a report out of Akins.

But parents did not know that, at the same time, a state investigation was ongoing into Smith over a similar allegation in nearby Lee County. A KXAN investigation found that Smith, a former juvenile corrections officer at the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s Giddings State School, got a job at Austin Partners in Education, all while being investigated by the agency.

In late February, sparked by KXAN’s investigation, Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, sent a letter to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and Texas Education Agency requesting an explanation of how Smith could move from one juvenile education setting to another. Bettencourt is now promising to file new legislation after the head of the Texas Education Agency revealed another gap in the laws meant to prevent individuals who have harmed minors from having access to students.

From Giddings State School to an Austin high school

Smith started his assignment with Austin Partners in Education at Akins in September 2023. By October, Austin ISD said its police department was investigating the tutor. According to an Austin ISD police investigator, one of the high school students reported Smith touched him inappropriately in a computer lab. Police arrested him on Dec. 8 related to the Akins student’s outcry.

More than a year before, in August 2022, Smith started work as a juvenile corrections officer at Giddings State School. According to officials with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, or TJJD, Smith was fired not even two months into his job.

Smith was dismissed from his job for turning off his body-worn camera, which, according to TJJD, was a fireable offense. The body-camera violation was discovered after TJJD began reviewing video footage as a part of a sexual misconduct investigation that began into Smith in September 2022.

Agency officials said one of the minors at Giddings made a report that Smith touched his private parts.

In July 2023, TJJD’s Office of Inspector General concluded Smith had an “inappropriate relationship” with a youth and that abuse occurred. The OIG also referred the case for further review to the Special Prosecution Unit, which led to Smith being indicted in January 2024.

The agency said despite the ongoing investigation, it put a flag on Smith in its database, ICIS, within days of the allegation of sexual misconduct being made in September 2022. The flag alerted anyone in the juvenile justice system to contact TJJD before hiring him.

The flag had been on Smith’s record in TJJD’s database for nearly a year when he began working as a tutor at Akins High School. However, according to agency officials, the database where TJJD flagged Smith is only accessible to other juvenile justice facilities in the state. The Texas Education Agency, public and private schools, and educational non-profits do not have access. 

Austin Partners in Education has yet to clarify to KXAN whether Smith disclosed his previous work history at TJJD or the allegations he faced before being hired as a tutor. TJJD officials told KXAN the nonprofit would not have known about the ongoing investigation through a routine background check. 

Although Smith was flagged in the TJJD’s database days after allegations of misconduct were made at Giddings, agency officials told KXAN he was not formally made ineligible for certification as a juvenile corrections or probation officer until December 2023, after he was already under investigation for a sexual misconduct allegation at Akins.

Smith’s court-appointed attorneys in Lee and Travis counties did not respond to KXAN’s request for comment. Smith, who is currently in Travis County jail, sent a letter to KXAN addressing some of the allegations against him. KXAN is working to verify the claims in Smith’s letter.

In the letter, Smith told KXAN, “I am in a legally binding settlement agreement with TJJD that has wiped any disciplinary record that I have, and that listed me as ineligible for rehire after I appealed a disciplinary decision.”

According to TJJD officials, the agency and Smith went to mediation after his termination, allowing him to resign for personal reasons in October 2022. The agency said Smith was still flagged in its database, alerting other juvenile detention facilities to call TJJD before hiring.

“The mediation did not stop the independent OIG investigation of the alleged sexual misconduct. Once that OIG investigation was completed and had an affirmative finding of an [abuse, neglect, and exploitation] violation, TJJD was able to change Smith’s status to ‘ineligible to rehire,'” agency officials told KXAN.

The cracks in Texas’ Do Not Hire registries

“When I saw the story, I said, ‘I had to act,’ and I had to act by asking the two agencies what happened here,” Sen. Bettencourt said. 

In last year’s regular session at the Capitol, lawmakers, including the Houston senator, passed Senate Bill 1849. The bill, introduced by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, required the Department of Information Resources to create one giant search engine combining the data about neglect findings from all child-serving state agencies — including Texas Education Agency, The Department of Family Protective Services, Health and Human Services and TJJD.

In a letter sparked by KXAN’s reporting, Bettencourt asked the leaders of TEA and TJJD, “What exactly went wrong in the protections we established that allowed Xavier Smith to be passed from one juvenile education setting to another?”

In response, Education Commissioner Mike Morath and TJJD Executive Director Shandra Carter told the lawmaker Smith was hired as a tutor at Akins before the law became effective. SB 1849 went into effect on Sept. 1, 2023, the same month Smith was assigned to Akins High School as a tutor.

Morath and Carter shared that the search engine SB 1849 requires is still being designed and developed, more than six months after the bill requiring it became law. The bill did not specify a deadline for creating the search engine.

The Texas Department of Information Resources, which is building the database, told KXAN it’s now in the “assessment and design phases.” The agency said it does not expect to complete the project until the end of 2024 and added, “… it is difficult to determine a precise end date.” 

“As bureaucratic as that is, that is the way state government works,” Bettencourt said. “There’s a failure here, no question, and this person should have never been around young people ever again in their life.”

TJJD said that since the fall of 2023, it’s reviewed previous employees who were terminated with cause to flag them as not eligible for certification retroactively. The agency told KXAN school districts and other agencies could call the agency for a reference check to ask about a person’s status while the larger search engine is developed. 

‘This problem will be fixed’

Despite the abuse report at Akins, Smith is not listed on the TEA’s Do Not Hire database. Bettencourt asked about this in his letter to the agency head.

According to Morath, Smith’s name is not in the database because state law does not require school districts to report alleged misconduct to TEA if the allegations are against a contractor like Smith. The law also does not give TEA the authority to investigate contractors and put them on its Do Not Hire registry, even if reported, according to TEA officials.

“By including ‘contractors’ in statute, it would strengthen TEA’s authority to require school districts to report to the agency abuse and inappropriate incidents between students and contractors that occur and the placement of those contractors on the Do Not Hire registry,” Morath wrote in a letter back to Bettencourt. 

TEA officials confirmed it did not receive a report from Austin ISD about Smith’s alleged misconduct at Akins.

In the last decade, multiple state laws have addressed how people with documented sexual misconduct allegations jump from one child education setting to another. That includes House Bill 3 in 2019, which created TEA’s Do Not Hire registry, and Senate Bill 7, requiring school superintendents to report misconduct to the State Board of Education Certification.

Bettencourt, who authored SB 7, said he would introduce a bill in the next legislative session to require school districts to report contractor misconduct and give the TEA the authority to investigate and put contractors on its Do Not Hire registry when the allegations are substantiated.

“It’s really infuriating to me to see this type of problem, but I am determined, and I know my colleagues — Senator Kolkhorst — [are] determined to stamp it out, and we’ll do it again in the next legislative session,” Bettencourt said. “This problem will be fixed one way or the other by the next legislative session.”

Investigative Photojournalist Chris Nelson, Director of Investigations & Innovation Josh Hinkle, Digital Executive Producer Andrew Schnitker, Graphic Artist Christina Staggs, Reporter Sam Stark and Digital Director Kate Winkle contributed to this report.