Erin Anderson
44.7K posts
@TrueTexasTea
True Texan. @TexasScorecard. Fan of the Constitution, free & fair elections, Rule of Law, yoga, wine, whiskey, 🚀Give me liberty... #TXLege #LiveInTheRed 🇺🇸
🪶 UPDATE: FORMER PFISD EMPLOYEE ACCUSED OF FRACTURING AN AUTISTIC FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S FINGERS IS SET FOR A PLEA HEARING JULY 23 🪶 By: Buddy Falcon Media LLC McKinzie Merrell, the former Pflugerville Elementary School employee accused of intentionally fracturing two fingers on a five-year-old autistic student’s right hand in September 2024, is scheduled for a plea hearing on July 23, 2026, in Travis County’s 460th District Court. A grand jury indicted Merrell on a charge of first-degree felony injury to a child causing serious bodily injury. She remains presumed innocent unless and until she is convicted, whether through a plea or at trial. PfISD publicly confirmed that Merrell was not a certified teacher and was toward certification. Texas school districts regularly employ noncertified instructional staff through different positions, permits, programs and local policies. That fact alone is not the issue. The issue is public transparency: How will parents identify and follow an uncertified instructional employee who changes districts, job titles or legal names? Merrell is not necessarily invisible to TEA, law enforcement or school-district background-check systems. Districts have access to fingerprint-based criminal-history checks, employment records and internal state systems that parents cannot access. Texas also has a public Do Not Hire Registry, which may include certified and noncertified school employees who are under investigation or have been found ineligible for employment. But it is not a complete statewide employment-history database. It does not list every former school employee, district assignment, arrest, allegation, termination or investigation. Because Merrell never obtained a Texas teaching certificate, parents searching TEA’s public Certificate Lookup will not find a certificate record under her name. That means she may be traceable internally, but there is no single public Texas system that allows parents to see a complete, name-linked record showing where an uncertified instructional employee has worked; whether the employee was certified, permitted or completely non-certified and whether the employee was previously investigated or reported by another school district. Parents are left searching separate staff directories, court records, certification databases and the Do Not Hire Registry—often without knowing every name or job title an employee has used. Merrell’s case is a perfect example of that transparency gap. A school staff directory may identify someone as a teacher, facilitator, educational associate or instructional employee, but it usually does not tell families whether that person holds a Texas teaching certificate or what authorization allows that employee to provide classroom instruction. A plea hearing on July 23 may resolve the criminal charge against McKinzie Merrell. It will not resolve the larger question: How does Texas ensure that parents can publicly identify and accurately follow an uncertified instructional employee after that person leaves one district, changes positions or changes names? Parents should not have to investigate multiple databases or file public-information requests to learn whether the adult placed in their child’s classroom is certified. Texas school districts should link every instructional employee’s staff-directory entry directly to the applicable TEA certificate, permit or clearly disclosed noncertified status. — Buddy Falcon Media, LLC Keeping Watch. Always🪶 @PfISDHR @pfisd
A Sail Boston sunrise. Tall ships participating in today’s Sail Boston extravaganza are seen with various stages of this mornings sunrise, starting with a Massachusetts state police helicopter doing a quick scan of the area and then lots of colors. 📸@pictureboston
@TexasScorecard Wtf! Why are these people around children!? People need a psych eval before becoming a teacher. They are not becoming a teacher to help teach children the ways of the world. They are becoming teachers to sexually abuse these children. Innocent children's lives are being destroyed
UPDATE: The @fortworthpd has now BLOCKED us. Lmao 😂
**UPDATED** with a link to the arrest affidavit, for those who prefer primary sources. PLANO ISD parents, TALK TO YOUR KIDS if they’ve ever had contact with elementary school teacher PAUL CAMPBELL… texasscorecard.com/local/plano-is… @Plano_Schools #PlanoISDFacts #TxEd
