HOUSTON -- Police agencies and courthouse officials are moving to fix a serious breakdown that Local 2 Investigates found -- criminals put in classrooms without the knowledge of school officials.

"We really need to know what is going on," said Houston parent Kim Bradford as she loaded her sixth-grader into her car after school. "If they have people that they've arrested, they should let the school know."

The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 15.27, requires any police agency to notify schools when a child is arrested on charges of any felony, or certain misdemeanors such as possession of drugs or weapons.

Randy Burton, the founder of advocacy group Justice for Children said, "Those are all the kinds of things that put their fellow students at risk, and clearly the schools should know about that."

If the students are released from jail, he said, "The schools can't do what they have to do to protect other students."

He called it "a serious danger."

Local 2 Investigates found that small police agencies in outlying counties and suburbs have systems in place to notify school districts when a child is booked for serious crimes, but when KPRC Local 2 Investigates requested records on those notifications from the Houston Police Department, commanders said no records existed.

While declining to speak about the lapse on camera, HPD Juvenile Squad Captain John Mokwa told Local 2 Investigates, "We have not been adhering to (Section) 15.27 as we should have."

He said HPD had been failing to notify schools of arrests for years, adding that the department is "in sore need of having procedures ... to get it done."

"My fear is that many children were exposed to people that were dangerous," Burton said.

The Harris County District Attorney's office reported that 15,706 children were charged with crimes in 2007, including 121 on suspicion of sex crimes, 14 accused of homicide/murder and 762 felony drug charges. All of the charges would have required notices being sent by police to schools immediately after arrest.

Mokwa said Local 2 Investigates' inquiry prompted him to immediately put a new notification policy in place.

"We're going to start doing it," he said.

"Well, they definitely dropped the ball, that's for sure," Bradford said.

Burton said, "Thank goodness this has been brought to their attention. I expect that they're now going to follow the law and do the right thing."

Harris County Juvenile Division prosecutors said other departments were also failing to notify schools.

HPD has begun contacting all school districts in its jurisdiction to implement an instant e-mail notification system so that schools are quickly notified as a child is being booked for a serious crime. Mokwa could not provide a timeline for when the new system will take effect.

Texas law also requires that the district attorney's offices send notices once a child is found guilty or sentenced. The Harris County District Attorney's Office and other district attorneys in surrounding counties report those notices had been going out as designed.

However, Burton pointed out that it is often months after an arrest and the lack of police notification means many schools never learned a child had ever been under suspicion until it is potentially too late.

Mokwa said he "reviewed the whole process because of (Local 2 Investigates') inquiry" and he is installing a system for tracking all notices that go to school districts to make sure no future arrests slip through the cracks.