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How much do you know about the teachers who spend so much time around your kids? 11 News Investigates has discovered it might not be enough.

Click here to read Bay City ISD's memo

How would it make you feel if someone sexually approached and harassed your child online?  How about if that stranger turned out to be your little girl’s teacher? 

“He was nice.  You could go to him with problems,” said Kimberly, a 13-year old student athlete.

“I take writing, I take pre-algebra,” she said.

“Everything she did, I monitored,” Kimberly’s mother said, referring to her daughter’s computer activity.

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Merkens asked his 13-year-old student about her sexual history.

But one day last summer she was reading her daughter’s e-mail and found a note from that “nice” man.

“Just got up one morning and looked,” she said.

“I saw there was one deleted message.”

And she said what she read scared her deeply.

“I got sick.  I got physically sick.”

So just what was it?

Young Kimberly was on MySpace.com when “the nice man”  found her.

“I felt scared,” Kimberly said.  And why?  “He asked me if I liked him.”

“Him” is Jeremiah Merkens and he began to ask more probing questions.

“As in, if I thought he was hot or if I had a crush on him,” the student explained.  

He went much farther than that.

“He asked me if I was naughty, like with other guys,” she said.  “It was scary and I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.”

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Jeremiah Merkens

But Merkens pressed on.

“He asked me what was the farthest I had went with a guy,” the girl said.

But there was something even more disturbing.

Jeremiah Merkens was her middle school history teacher.

“He violated every oath and moral any teacher should have,” said Kimberly’s mother.

When asked what she was feeling inside the young girl’s mother said, “Rage,” as she wiped tears from her eyes.

Take a look at the online chat between the two:

Merkens wrote: “u really do like me then?...tell the truth… are u not as innocent as u seem to be???”

Kimberly: “i can’t like you., that would be weird!... U know what i mean???

Merkens: “but what if i wasn’t in the position i was??? Answer that then…”

Then Merkens asked:  “are u kind of naughty with the guys or what?? Tell the truth.  u would say that i am like your secret crush or what??? What if i wasn’t in the position i am in and i did live next to u?? Then what??”

And he had one other instruction: To “delete” all of his messages.

“It’s clearly sexually suggestive,” said Randy Burton.  “I would call it grooming.”

“It’s the kind of thing we see with sex offenders all the time,” said the former prosecutor and founder of Justice for Children.  “Where they try to ingratiate themselves to a child.”

Plus “grooming” also works to break down a child’s inhibitions.

“It’s a teacher,” Burton exclaimed.  “What could be worse?”

And what did the Bay City School District do?

“I told the mother we would make sure that gentleman was not teaching at Bay City next year,” said Superintendent Richard Walton.

And that he did. 

A document shows Merkens admitted last July to “very inappropriate” and “sexual” comments online with a student and in the end, resigned.

But while Bay City administrators were busy thinking about their own district, 11 News Investigates discovered they didn’t do what state law says they should have to protect kids elsewhere. 

So perhaps it’s no surprise 11 News Investigates found Merkens at Stafford High School, working as the brand new assistant football coach and a teacher where he was once again close to young girls.

“That’s horrible,” said Walton.

Reporter: “Do you believe he should be around any kids?”

Walton: “Absolutely, absolutely not.  We took our finding to the Matagorda County District Attorney’s Office.”

Reporter: “In your mind, you thought that you had reasonable evidence that a crime had been committed?”

Walton: “Absolutely.”

But after Merkens confessed, Bay City ISD was supposed to report him to the Texas Education Agency within seven days, as required by law.

It didn’t happen until four weeks later.

Reporter: “Why would you wait on something as serious as this?”

Walton: “If you turn the camera off, I will tell you.”

Reporter: “I don’t want to turn the camera off.”

Walton: “Well then you will have to ask the DA why we waited.  I feel like we notified T.E.A. as quickly as we were sure that there was something that was untoward.”

Reporter: “But the law says that you have to do it within seven days after learning of even an allegation.”

Walton: “Yeah, well, maybe we missed on that.”

What’s worse?

Another young girl in Merkens class claims he sent similar sexual language to her online.

But the Matagorda County District Attorney declined to prosecute the teacher.

“I’m gonna call,” said Rodney Ellis.  “I’m gonna ask what happened in this case.”

State Senator Rodney Ellis championed a new law to get tough with online predators.  He has also a special interest in this case.

“I happen to represent Stafford ISD,” he said, as their attorney.

11 News Investigates told Ellis that Jeremiah Merkens was now working in his district.

“Well I’m shocked,” he said.  “I’m going to ask T.E.A. to investigate it.”

But there’s an irony to that because the T.E.A. closed their investigation on Merkens after just two weeks, incomplete and with no findings.

Why?

His teacher’s certificate had expired and the T.E.A. claims they “lack the authority to investigate anyone who doesn’t have a current teacher’s certification.”

“If they don’t have the authority, they ought to ask,” Ellis said.  “They ought to not be in the position of waiting until some aggressive news reporter gets on the trail and brings it to the public’s attention.”

Ellis said many teachers don’t have any state certification at all.

“I think you may have uncovered an opportunity here for us to do some good for the public, and some good for our kids,” Ellis said to 11 News Investigates reporter Mark Greenblatt.

11 News tried to get  comment from Jeremiah Merkens but he wordlessly drove off in his car.

However his former student Kimberly does have something to say.

Reporter: “What do you hope happens after from here by you speaking out here today?”

Kimberly: “That something like this never happens to any other girl and I won’t have to go on TV again.”

After 11 News Investigates informed the school district in Stafford about Merkens’ past, the superintendent said Merkens resigned.

Stafford also claims that they checked our Merkens references when he was first hired and those references included his former employer the Bay City School District. They also claim that Bay City gave Merkens a thumbs up with no mention of  the incident with Kimberly.  However,  Bay City Superintendent Walton says his district received no phone calls from anyone at Stafford.

In the meantime, the loophole in state law means Merkens and other teachers who have confessed improper behavior might never get a full investigation by the T.E.A.