THREE RIVERS, Mich. – Former public school teacher, coach and principal David Wing was arrested earlier this month and charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct involving young men, according to SturgisJournal.com.

Now that Wing has been arrested, the educator’s long history of creepy behavior with male students has become public. And those revelations make it clear that Wing should have been removed from the classroom many years ago.

Wing’s eyebrow-raising behavior with students appears to have begun in 1997 when he was serving as a boys’ basketball coach at Michigan’s Three Rivers Community Schools. A student-athlete alleged that Wing “pulled down his pants” while the boy was wrestling with a teammate, SturgisJournal.com reports.

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The school’s athletic director “concluded there was insufficient evidence to verify either the boy’s allegation or Wing’s denial and no disciplinary action was taken,” reports the news site.

Wing was investigated five more times over the next 18 years for other highly questionable behavior – though he always managed to escape with nothing more serious than a written reprimand in his personnel file or a brief suspension.

SturgisJournal.com gives this example: “In June 1998, a parent alleged that Wing had had her son go to his home and asked the boy to remove his pants before being weighed. Wing denied the charge and then-Three Rivers Superintendent James Bermingham gave Wing a written reprimand for ‘insubordination and poor professional judgement (sic).’”

“In several instances, school records allege Wing told some boys he was conducting a ‘scientific study, asking them to remove their clothing,’” the news site adds.

Not only was the evidence never quite conclusive enough for Wing to be arrested, but the educator also allegedly had a knack for targeting students who wouldn’t go public with their stories.

“The parents of some of these kids were on the school board or the city council or teachers and nobody wanted the media attention for their kids,” Michigan State Police Detective/Sgt. Todd Petersen told SturgisNews.com. “(Wing) was the greatest teacher but he was smart enough to know the kids he could victimize.”

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Petersen told SturgisJournal.com that he has interviewed at least 10 of Wing’s former male students and none of them has claimed the teacher sexually abused them.

“A lot of these kids were out of high school and they didn’t want to deal with it anymore,” Petersen said.

When things got too hot in one school district, Wing moved on to another – a strategy that not only allowed him to stay around children but also helped him climb the career ladder. Wing went from being a teacher to being an assistant principal and a head principal before returning to the classroom near the end of his career.

All told, Wing worked for four Michigan school districts – Three Rivers, Hillsdale, Marcellus and Constantine – from 1993 through February 2013, when Michigan State Police started investigating the educator. It was then that Wing agreed to resign his teaching position – in return for a $12,660 payout, two years of state retirement credit and health insurance coverage, SturgisJournal.com reports.

“According to the resignation settlement, Wing’s record would reflect no ‘substantial unprofessional conduct’ in violation of school code,” the news site reports.

Those unfamiliar with how the public education system works are probably wondering how Wing managed to stay employed after so many investigations and close calls. Unfortunately, that’s easy to explain. School officials couldn’t easily fire Wing because he was protected by all kinds of heavy-duty union rules that make firing a troublesome teacher difficult and expensive. Without a smoking gun, school leaders knew any attempt to fire Wing would not only cost a small fortune, but the odds of success were probably no better than 50-50.

Wing also survived – and thrived – in the education profession because so many of his school superiors were cowards who decided they’d rather subject children in another district to a potential predator than to risk a lawsuit by picking up the phone and warning Wise’s next employers.

Sgt. Petersen described this attitude as “out of sight, out of mind.”

It’s more commonly known as “passing the trash.”

“In some cases they had no records about how or why he left,” Petersen told the news site. “When you talk to some of the people at the schools, you could tell as soon as you mentioned his name they just didn’t want to talk.”

What’s remarkable is that an enterprising journalist at SturgisJournal.com assembled all these disturbing incidents involving Wing by simply getting his personnel records through a Freedom of Information request. Apparently, the administrators who hired Wing didn’t even bother to do that – which is utterly shameful.

Wing will have his day in court and should remain innocent until proven guilty. However, for justice to be truly served, investigators should publicly identify each of Wing’s superiors who willfully turned a blind eye to his behavior over the last two decades. These administrators should then be fired by their school boards for gross negligence.

Having predators in the classroom is intolerable, but having cowards in the front office and in the administration building is almost as bad.