Dallas School District intentionally used false SSN's for it's Immigrant Employees

M.Opaliski · #1 11-14-2008, 03:46 PM

Dallas ISD faulted for using fake Social Security numbers

Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.

Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere. And in some cases, the state's educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes.

The practice was described in an internal report issued in September by the district's investigative office, which looked into the matter after receiving a tip. The report said the Texas Education Agency learned of the fake numbers in 2004 and told DISD then that the practice "was illegal."

It's unclear how long DISD had been issuing the phony numbers, and district officials didn't know Thursday how many had been given out. But the investigative report and interviews with DISD employees indicate the practice went on for several years before it was discontinued this past summer.

Here's how the Dallas school district's false Social Security number process worked:

Foreign educators on visas were assigned false Social Security numbers to get them on DISD's payroll.
The foreign employees were instructed to obtain Social Security numbers from the Social Security Administration and report them to the district.
Once employees received the real numbers, the district entered those numbers in place of the fake ones in a computerized management system.
The fake numbers were supposed to be used temporarily until real numbers were in place. But some of the fake numbers wound up being sent to the Texas Education Agency when DISD asked TEA to conduct background checks on new hires. Those numbers stayed in the system if DISD didn't replace them with real Social Security numbers obtained by the employees.