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Zero Tolerance
We obviously don't have enough safeguards in place to keep perverts out of the schools. And the biggest problem is a background-check system that looks like Swiss cheese.Most states require a criminal background check for school employees, but some schools only check state databases, not national ones like the FBI's National Crime Information Center. Schools also need to be candid about former teachers when another school inquires about an applicant.
That's how an Iowa school in the Northwood-Kensett district got burned in 2000 when a teacher, Daniel Eveleth, was accused of having a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old student. It turns out that Eveleth had been at the center of sexual controversy before. A few years earlier, court records reveal, he had been accused of sexual harassment at another Iowa public school district known as BCLUW -- a charge that investigators believed to be credible. Eveleth subsequently resigned. Yet, according to the Northwood-Kensett superintendent, before hiring Eveleth, he contacted the BCLUW school district and no red flags came up. Not only that, in exchange for his resignation, Eveleth got a positive letter of recommendation from BCLUW school officials and a promise that the district would keep mum about the accusations against him.
Appalling settlements like this aren't unusual. In many cases, the first priority of school districts is to avoid expensive battles with unions and the bad headlines that can come with legal action. So they'll let an accused teacher resign quietly, sometimes with a financial settlement. Since 2000, West Virginia schools, for example, have reportedly paid nearly $7 million in settlements to suspected sexual predators.
In the 1990s, Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft studied 225 complaints against teachers where there was convincing evidence sexual abuse had occurred. In more than half, school superintendents allowed the accused teachers to resign or retire with no blemish on their records. And, Shakeshaft says, in none of those 225 cases did the superintendents notify the police, a legal mandate as of 2000.
You'd think politicians would be demanding tougher laws, but many shy away from measures like mandatory background checks, in part because they're afraid to cross powerful teachers unions.
At a minimum, schools must warn state officials when they have concerns about a teacher -- and the police should always notify schools about any troubling past charges. States might also follow the lead of New York, where a superintendent can be charged with a felony for letting a teacher resign rather than face a sexual misconduct allegation. Or Iowa, where after the Eveleth case, the state legislature passed a law saying that if an employee is terminated or resigns due to the sexual exploitation of a child, it must be reported to the Board of Educational Examiners. And, of course, any principal caught "passing the trash" should get the book thrown at him too.
It's easy to say we have zero tolerance for sexual predators in schools, but we haven't yet passed the test.
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