Failing to guard students from predators violates public trust

Arun Ramanathan

As a former counselor in a facility for teenagers who had been physically and sexually abused, I witnessed the indelible impact of this abuse on young men and women. As I read the stories about the sexual abuse scandal at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles Unified, I remembered these young people and the destruction that twisted adults had wrought on their lives. Then I waited for the calls for reform from those with the ability to make changes.

Afterward all, the allegations are monstrous. The possibility that school officials may have known about the sexual corruption and done nothing is appalling. The fact that the Los Angeles Unified had to pay an declared pedophile $twoscore,000 to leave the school rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to follow instructor dismissal laws is unbelievable. Worst of all is the knowledge that this situation could have been prevented by lawmakers in Sacramento.

Three years ago, the Los Angeles Times documented multiple cases of teachers who had abused students with picayune or no consequences. The articles revealed how the ten-step, state-mandated dismissal process for certificated staff including teachers (all other employees have the normal legal protections against arbitrary dismissal) protects abusive and incompetent adults from whatever accountability. Nonetheless, instead of fixing these laws, most of the Sacramento power structure yawned and waited for the outrage to dissipate rather than face their supporters in the statewide teachers unions. As a issue, we accept Miramonte.

Defenders of the current system like to argue that Miramonte is an isolated situation. But those who take been in schoolhouse systems know that this is far from the truth. Recently, I talked with an attorney who had represented districts in dismissal cases. He shared story after story of high-cost cases to remove teachers who had either physically or sexually abused students – including male person teachers who had raped impressionable female students and called their actions "relationships." In these cases, the districts had been willing to spend millions to use the dismissal process with no guarantee of success.

I shared with him a story nearly a wellness-class teacher who was physically aggressive and sexually forward toward students. Despite student and parent complaints, nothing happened. The standard advice from our attorneys to school leaders was, "certificate the incidents and create an improvement plan." For experienced school administrators who had already tried these steps, this advice was laughable. Finally, I received a report of a new problem. A female educatee complained that he had taught her class wearing loose shorts and no underwear so that his privates were clearly visible. Based on this complaint, our lawyers agreed to "counsel him out."

At present, when a system has become so degraded that the threshold for "counseling out" of the profession is non job performance, but the exposure of ane's privates to a classroom of teenagers, at that place is clearly a demand for change. This situation, Miramonte, and the earlier cases documented by the L.A. Times should raise troubling questions for those lawmakers protecting the current system. How many more teachers with similar histories have been "counseled out" and ended up in other schools? How many take had their records expunged and continued to teach? How many have been transferred or fabricated their way to high-need schools in poor and immigrant communities where the parents may be less aware and more trusting?

Similar questions accept been raised in other abuse scandals in powerful institutions such as the Catholic Church and Penn State. Similar those cases, defenders of the electric current organisation talk about the importance of due process and assail anyone recommending reform for "attacking the profession." In this instance, the accusation will be that critics are "bashing teachers." In any context, these arguments lack credibility.

Not only is the existing system bad for students and communities, information technology is fundamentally bad for the teaching profession. Kickoff, the millions of dollars spent trying to remove a few bad apples and training administrators on the x-step dismissal process could and should exist spent on instructional comeback. 2nd, the predictable futility of the 10-step process undermines the brownie of the evaluation organization overall. Most importantly, given the likelihood of similar cases coming to light, lawmakers should be making every effort to reform the organisation to prevent futurity collateral damage to the profession.

Senate Neb 1530, by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, would have done a groovy deal to fix this situation by modifying the existing dismissal process for teachers accused of serious misconduct including sexual practice, violence, or drugs. (A broader beak by Republican Sen. Bob Huff that would have encompassed a wider array of misconduct and abuse accusations failed to get out of committee.) SB 1530 had the support of children's advocates, school districts including LAUSD, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office. Predictably, information technology was opposed by both statewide teachers unions, who worked hard to defeat information technology. Last week, they announced to have succeeded when SB 1530 failed to become a majority vote in the Assembly Didactics Committee. Merely one of 6 Democrats on the committee — Chairwoman Julia Brownley — showed the courage to back up it. 2 others, Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo) voted confronting it, placing the CTA's interests ahead of children's safe. Four others — Betsy Butler (D-El Segundo), Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto), Mike Eng (D-Alhambra), and Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) — didn't even accept the courage to vote and abstained.

Sadly, many of marriage's key allies, including our most powerful educational activity leaders — Governor Jerry Brown, Superintendent of Public Pedagogy Tom Torlakson, and Speaker of the Associates John Perez — were also silent on the bill. This silence, together with the opposition of CTA'due south allies in the Assembly, contributed to the bill'due south apparent defeat.

For the average denizen, taxpayer, and voter, it must boggle the mind that Sacramento would even be debating this; that this situation wouldn't have been fixed years ago; and that our most powerful elected leaders refused to set up information technology now to protect kids. Now many of these same leaders and other legislators will be stumping around the state request the citizens of California to trust them to spend their money, fix the budget crisis, and solve a host of other problems. Of form, the average citizen might enquire in return, If nosotros can't trust you to protect our children from adults involved in sex, violence, and drugs in our schools, how can we trust y'all on annihilation at all?

Annotation: An before version of this ran on Pinnacle-Ed.org.

Arun Ramanathan is executive director of The Educational activity Trust–Westward, a statewide education advocacy organisation. He has served equally a district administrator, inquiry managing director, instructor, paraprofessional, and VISTA volunteer in California, New England, and Appalachia. He has a doctorate in educational administration and policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His wife is a teacher and reading specialist, and they have a child in preschool and another in a Spanish immersion uncomplicated school in Oakland Unified.

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Source: https://edsource.org/2012/failing-to-guard-students-from-predators-violates-public-trust/16847