It came as a surprise to many parents Wednesday that a convicted felon could be their child's teacher.

“I'm surprised, worried and concerned,” said parent Marc O.

On January 9, 2008, AISD became the first district to implement a new state law requiring fingerprint background checks on all certified teachers.

In Austin, some 6,600 employees have to be checked.

An open record's request has revealed this:

Of the 1,009 fingerprints that have been processed so far 31 came back with a criminal history -- one for a felony and 30 for misdemeanors.

“We have some DWI’s, some theft by check, we have criminal trespassing -- we do have a couple, and these we'll have to look at carefully,” said AISD’s Director of Human Resources Pamela Hall. “There there's some family violence, assault by family violence issues.”

But none of those crimes will result in an automatic termination.

The new law only requires Title 5 felonies -- which include offenses against a person, such as homicide, kidnapping; or an offense where the person is required to register as a sex offender -- to be fired.

That means the convicted felon working for the AISD does not have to be fired.

“It's related to a social security fraud,” said Hall.

District officials said the employee disclosed the conviction at the time they were hired and will keep their job. It happened in 1996, in another state.

Some parents say that's simply not enough.

“A felon doesn't have the right to vote and there are other restrictions that may be applied as well and maybe that's working with children or in specific type of careers,” said Marc.

“As a general rule, you'd like to not have criminals teaching your children,” said Christine Hughes.

Because of privacy issues, parents won't know information on a campus by campus basis -- for now, AISD will only release district wide statistics.

AISD has changed its policy since hiring a convicted felon in 1999. It will no longer hire convicted felons.