After scandal, school district to keep closer eye on staff behavior
The new policy comes after former teacher Nicholas Moseby was charged with multiple counts of child molestation
The fallout from a campus administrator's apparent botched investigation of a biology teacher has led to sweeping policy changes in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District.
The new protocols come in the wake of a San Ramon Valley High School vice principal's exoneration of Nicholas Moseby, the biology teacher whom prosecutors later charged with child molestation and related crimes. Some of the charges were based on complaints students brought to campus administrators.
Stricter background checks and hiring practices, as well as more thorough documentation of complaints against teachers and staff accused of bad behavior, are among the changes Superintendent John Malloy outlined at a recent school board meeting.
The district is also tightening controls over record keeping after an investigation by this news organization uncovered that the vice principal, Nicole Chaplan, left the district and did not pass along a file on Moseby to other school officials. Those documents remain missing — and the saga has led Chaplan's new employer in Lafayette to place her on leave and begin their own investigation.
But the policies intended to protect the integrity of investigations, including those brought on by students, have had unintended consequences and are resulting in a higher number of teachers being put on leave, some teachers say.
Changes to district policy include digitizing investigation files and creating a “complaint log” to track all pending and closed investigations, records that officials say will be available through a public records request.
Previously, only allegations that had to do with race discrimination were elevated to the district level. Now a campus administrator must contact the district human resources office about any complaint alleging assault, discrimination or harassment, hate or any type of inappropriate behavior from a staff member.
Under the new policy, a letter will be sent to the complainant acknowledging receipt of the complaint and identifying the lead investigator.
The district is also shifting to a team model for investigations, meaning no one person will be fully in charge of receiving, investigating and adjudicating a complaint. However, this change does not mean that administrators with conflicts of interest or any connection to the accused would be removed from the process, Malloy said.
Some teachers say the new district rules go too far and have left educators walking on eggshells.
“It has never been like this before,” said one Monte Vista High School teacher, who like other teachers interviewed were not authorized to speak because of a district policy on discussing personnel matters. “This year is out of control.”
Other teachers interviewed by this news organization expressed concern over a trend of students pulling “pranks” on teachers and staff in an attempt to get them suspended or even fired. And two teachers who spoke with this news organization confirmed knowledge of a teacher recently put on leave for months over a prank involving a photo being taken of a male teacher next to a female student.
San Ramon Valley Unified District spokesperson Ilana Israel Samuels said she could not comment on any personnel matters and would not provide information on how many district employees have been placed on leave under the new policies.
Daniel Gross, a junior at Monte Vista, said he's “aware of a few situations where students have been upset with their teachers at Monte Vista and acted out in retaliation.”
“I've heard similar stories of students using photos or videos to try to mislead others on things that teachers say in the classroom, such as trying to make teachers appear racist (and) homophobic,” he said in an interview.
But the overall goal, district officials say, is to prevent any future investigations from being subpar, incomplete or biased. In the case of Moseby, he was cleared by Chaplan — who was a reference for the teacher and met him through a local cheer organization — and later moved to a neighboring middle school. Ultimately, Contra Costa prosecutors charged Moseby last year with child molestation, sending a lewd video to a girl, sexual battery and felony counts of lewd acts upon a child. The victims, all girls, were students or cheerleaders he coached.
Chaplan left the San Ramon Valley district months before Moseby's arrest. She was hired as a principal at Stanley Middle School in the Lafayette School District but was placed on administrative leave after this newspaper reported on her role in the Moseby investigation and the disappearance of the investigative files she created and kept.
Brent Stephens, the Lafayette school superintendent, in an email to parents and students last week said: “An initial round of documents is now in our possession, and so the substantive work of the investigation can begin.”
“At this stage, it's still not possible to comment on how long this process will take,” Stephens wrote. “We understand that the timing of the investigation has many ramifications for the Stanley community, so we'll try to balance our interest in expediency with our obligation to be thorough and fair.”