Callisburg ISD places employee on leave after arrest; letter does not disclose charges

Callisburg ISD removed an employee from campus immediately and placed that person on administrative leave after an arrest, Superintendent Chris Bradshaw said in a letter dated Sept. 9, 2026. The letter did not identify the employee or state what the charges are.

Bradshaw wrote that the arrest concerned conduct away from school grounds and that the employee stays on leave while law enforcement investigates. The district said it would cooperate with investigators and meet its reporting requirements. The letter did not say whether the leave is paid.

That pay question has a published answer for a different set of workers in the county. Gainesville's municipal personnel manual lets the city place an employee on administrative leave with or without pay after an arrest, charge or indictment. Those rules govern city employees, not school district staff.

The rules for reporting school employee misconduct in Texas were rewritten in 2025. Senate Bill 571, signed June 21 of that year, created Chapter 22A of the Education Code, which covers misconduct reports involving employees and service providers, according to Texas Education Agency guidance. That guidance sets two separate 48-hour deadlines, each beginning when the official in question becomes aware of evidence of specified misconduct: a principal must notify the superintendent, and a superintendent must notify TEA and the State Board for Educator Certification. The listed conduct includes soliciting sexual contact with a student or a minor. The Callisburg letter does not say which provisions apply in this instance.

A companion law, House Bill 4623, took effect Sept. 1, 2025. TEA says it opened public schools to liability for specified employee acts against enrolled students where a school was grossly negligent, reckless or intentionally wrongful in hiring, supervision or employment, with actual damages capped at $500,000 per prevailing claimant.

Federal attention followed. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas launched Project Safe Schools on Aug. 18, 2026, an initiative aimed at failures to report educator misconduct that asks North Texas districts to review the prior five years and disclose such failures voluntarily. The same announcement said Forney ISD agreed to pay a settlement and tighten its compliance procedures over allegations of false or misleading federal funding certifications about mandatory reporting; the Justice Department said the agreement established no civil liability. Citing TEA, that office counted more than 9,700 educator misconduct investigations opened statewide over the preceding two years, a count of investigations rather than convictions and not limited to sexual misconduct.

TEA opened a public Educator Misconduct Dashboard on June 2, 2026, covering reports, investigations, certification sanctions and Do Not Hire Registry placements. The agency tracks pending investigations apart from final certification actions, which range from a restriction or reprimand to suspension or revocation. Its downloadable disciplinary reports list only final actions.