Teacher screening, conduct issues in public schools, too
A teacher in the Sarasota County district was arrested last week for possession of child pornography. He was hired this year even though he had resigned while under investigation from a neighboring district last fall. Investigators had found photos of him and a 16-year-old in bed, but his former principal still gave him a good recommendation.
Last year, the Polk district hired a teacher after she had resigned from a neighboring district. An investigation by her former employer, which generated headlines in her former district, showed she had engaged in “sexually charged communications with a student in her care.” Her new principal didn’t know until somebody emailed her the newspaper links.
Three years ago, another Polk district teacher made news when she was sentenced to 22 years in prison for having sex with three students. The teacher’s previous job was in the Orange County district, but she resigned while under investigation for sending racy texts to an eighth-grader. Orange school officials told WKMG-Channnel 6 news in 2014 they didn’t report the behavior to the state, but should have.
Some might be inclined to string these incidents together and issue a thundering indictment of district schools. They’d be wrong.
Bad apples happen in all kinds of schools, regardless of how good the regulations and oversight. The truth is, school districts are full of talented, caring people doing their best to help all children. They work hard every day to make their space even better.
That’s true, too, of private schools participating in Florida’s school-choice programs. But you’d never know it from the Orlando Sentinel’s hyperbolic reaction to its discovery of three private school employees who may have been hired in violation of state law (“Felons can find teaching jobs,” April 22).
On April 25, the Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell reacted to the article in a column entitled “Convicts are teaching in Fla. voucher schools.” He then describes “a culture of dereliction at private schools,” with “shaky finances, shady safety records and unqualified teachers,” where “the rules go out the window.”
If the schools in question violated state law, their wrongs should be righted immediately. But Sentinel readers need to know that problems with employee screenings are hardly limited to private schools.
Just as state regulators don’t routinely double-check background screenings for every private-school employee, neither do they double-check every publicschool employee. The state auditor general periodically checks a tiny sample of district employees to gauge compliance, and often finds gaps. Polk, Brevard and Seminole are among the districts recently red-flagged for deficiencies.
Last year, the AG doublechecked 30 employees (of about 9,000 total) in the Brevard district. It found one, a community coach, who had not undergone a background screening at least once in the past five years, as required by law. It then broadened its doublechecking to all 290 community coaches, and found 26 without proper screenings. The district promised to do better. I have no reason to believe it won’t.
I know from eight years as an education reporter, looking at hundreds of teacher-conduct cases, that districts employ teachers with criminal records. It’s not uncommon to find teachers convicted of DUI, drug possession and domestic battery working for districts. My hunch is, a fair percentage of the roughly 500 Central Florida teachers state-sanctioned for misconduct in the past five years were penalized for those kinds of crimes.
Those aren’t disqualifying offenses by law. I’m not arguing they should be. I also have no doubt teachers with similar backgrounds work in private schools.
Scholarship programs shouldn’t be spared scrutiny. They’re growing fast, and have challenges, even if the evidence on academic outcomes is positive. But the Sentinel’s indignation seems selective.
Since the beginning of 2018, there have been at least 50 headlines statewide involving district employees and sexual misconduct.
Meanwhile, the Sentinel published a front-page article Friday about a former teacher in a Central Florida private school who pleaded guilty to child molestation. It portrayed the situation as symbolic of broken oversight for “voucher schools.”
Yet on the same day, a former teacher in a Central Florida district school pleaded guilty to sending nude photos of herself to a 15-year-old. In this case, the Sentinel didn’t find it newsworthy.
I learned long ago how complicated public education is, and how little good it does to point fingers. Suffice it to say there’s room for improvement. Everywhere.