By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

PHILADELPHIA – U.S. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (D-Pennsylvania) has introduced federal legislation that’s designed to stop sexually abusive teachers from quietly leaving one school district and gaining employment in another.

Under the proposed law, school administrators could serve prison time for knowingly helping employees who have engaged in sexual activity with minors secure employment in another school across state lines.

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We understand the need for such legislation, but we think it should be broadened to also target union officials who defend the teachers and sometimes broker deals on their behalf that allow them to work in other schools.

We also believe more states should adopt legislation streamlining the process for firing teachers accused of sexual misconduct. In too many states, tenure laws require a long and expensive process to dump a teacher accused of even the most serious of offenses.

Fitzgerald’s legislation (House Resolution 3766) is named the Jeremy Bell Act, after a 12-year-old West Virginia student who was sexually abused and murdered by his principal. The principal had been hired at the West Virginia school after losing his job at a Pennsylvania school following allegations of sexual misconduct.

However, the principal used letters of recommendation from his former employers to get hired at the West Virginia school that Jeremy Bell attended, Congressman Fitzpatrick said.

“Regardless of how rare these abuses are, they are so serious and so egregious that it’s our responsibility as lawmakers to do everything we can to keep sexual predators from moving anonymously throughout our schools,” Fitzpatrick was quoted as saying by PhillyBurbs.com.

Union declines to participate in hearing

Fitzpatrick recently hosted a hearing on his proposed legislation in Philadelphia.

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Several witnesses gave shocking testimony about the lack of response from many school administrators when informed their teachers were allegedly molesting young students.

Marie Stillman, a Pennsylvania resident, testified that two of her sons were sexually abused by a teacher more than 30 years ago.

“We requested a meeting with the school district,” Stillman said. “They refused to put anything in (the teacher’s) record. The school board seemed more concerned about the response of the teachers union.”

A mother who did not give her name testified that her teenage son had been having sex with a female teacher before school in an empty classroom.

She said she informed school authorities, but “the school didn’t report it to the police. I went to the police myself.”

Pennsylvania State Sen. Anthony Williams testified that his state’s Department of Education received 100 reports of disciplinary actions against teachers in 2011, and half of those incidents involved allegations of sexual misconduct.

In 24 of those cases, teachers were offered the option of giving up their state certification rather than face disciplinary action, Williams testified. The catch is that they may be able to be certified in another state, which could mean another teaching job and further abuse of students.

Such deals are often brokered by teachers unions, or attorneys hired by the unions to represent the offending teachers.

“The teachers are being given these options, but the children who suffered from their abusive acts aren’t afforded the option of avoiding this nightmare,” Williams said.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, declined to participate in the hearing, according to the news report. Given the union track record of supporting abusive teachers at the expense of innocent students, we’re hardly surprised.

Firing process too long and expensive

In some instances around the nation, the situation goes beyond taking away teachers’ certificates. Some schools have allowed sexually abusive teachers to quietly leave their districts, sometimes with severance checks and letters of recommendation. Nobody even asks them to surrender their teaching certificates.

How could such a cover-up possibly happen, particularly when the safety of children is in doubt? An editorial published on PhillyBurbs.com suggested that some “school districts and unions … are more concerned about protecting their image than about safeguarding students.”

We think it’s often more complicated than that.

Many state tenure laws force school districts to go through a long and expensive legal process to fire bad teachers, even sexual offenders. It can take several years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of legal fees to dump even the most perverted teacher.

Teachers unions make the situation worse by providing legal assistance to offenders, and sometimes quietly brokering deals on their behalf with school administrators.

The worst case we’ve heard of comes from southern Illinois.

High school band director Matt Lang was asked to resign several years after having a sexual affair with a student (in violation of state law) and then marrying her. The union president wrote a letter to the school board, asking that the real reasons the board sought Lang’s resignation be kept out of his file, and that Lang be given a letter of recommendation from the district.

The school gave Lang the letter of recommendation, he secured a job at a nearby high school, and promptly had sex with another minor student. Today’s he’s in prison, while the school administrators and union president are still walking free.

Even when school administrators decide to do the right thing and go through the termination process, the legal system sometimes betrays them. We only have to point at recent cases in New York City, where 14 teachers charged with a variety of wrongdoings, including accepting pornographic pictures of students and bending students over desks in a sexual manner.

The United Federation of Teachers defended these teachers through the arbitration process, and they were all given their jobs back.

All of the abuses listed above should be brought to a screeching halt, through the adoption of federal and state laws that require everyone in education to report sexual abuse to authorities as soon as possible, or face the bitter prospect of spending time behind bars.