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Hold Unions Responsible for Covering Up Abuse, Says EAG
EAG says that legislation that would punish officials with jail time for allowing troubled teachers to transfer should apply to union officials as well.
The settlements with victims of clergy abuse for failing to investigate accusations and transferring suspected priests from parish to parish have now cost the Catholic Church hundreds of millions, and a severe loss of prestige and trust. Still, this lesson has not been heeded by school districts around the nation when it comes to dealing with staff who are similarly implicated. To battle what U.S. Representative Michael Fitzgerald, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, calls a pervasive problem of teachers “quietly leaving one district to transfer to another” when accused of sexual activity with minors, led him to introduce a bill that would impose penalties up to and including jail time for district officials who knowingly assisted such teachers in landing another job out of the area.
EAG.org, while applauding Fitzgerald’s effort, also believes that the bill should be expanded to include similar penalties for the teachers union officials who help their members walk away quietly from accusations of sexual misconduct. Furthermore, states should introduce legislation that would make it easier for school districts to fire teachers for this kind of crime, without having to go through the cumbersome union-mandated procedures.
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.
At the recent hearing on Fitzgerald’s proposal, held in Philadelphia, witnesses described their fruitless attempts to get districts and school officials to act on accusations of sexual abuse made by students. A mother of a student who was regularly having sex with his teacher before the beginning of class said that those in charge seemed entirely uninterested in taking action on her report and rather than having the school contact the police, she was forced to contact them herself.
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.
Williams also explained that these kinds of deals were frequently done at the behest of the teachers unions whose focus was to protect the teachers’ jobs rather than than ensure the safety of their students.
The unions declined to send a representative to the hearing.
Tuesday
April 24th, 2012
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Comments
Please document how many times this has happened. Is this really a problem or is this an attempt to put the words “abuse” and “union” in the same headline.
Matt didn’t you read the article. It said that in 2011 there where 50 cases of teachers sexual misconduct and in 24 of those case the teacher was offered a FREE PASS out of state so they could abuse again.
In my eyes the UNION should be held accountable for passing the abuser on to a new school.
why, your logic makes no sense. the union has nothing to do with their teaching license, the union has nothing to do with their employer recommendations.
all the union does in cases like this, is make sure the investigations are done, and done properly. once a teacher is proven to be molesting children the unions role is finished.
you literally just want to come on here and say “i hate unions it is their fault for every bad thing that happens.”
That’s not true. On this same site, there is an article about the 16 NY teachers that can’t be dismissed due to this same type of misconduct. Who protected them a little more than they needed? Due process is one of may good things the union brought about, but keeping these people in their jobs instead of jail is not a good of the union. This article is mostly due to the admins not giving them proper recommendations.
The union doesn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing who it gets to defend. It has to defend all its members, that is his job. It’s like denying someone legal representation based on how unsavory a crime they are accused of. There were 50 accusations of abuse mentioned in the article. Do we know how many of those were actually true? Maybe the 24 who were transferred weren’t actually guilty! That’s a possibility too!
The unions were complicit in letting abusers get away with it at least 24 times AS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE.
and if they weren’t guilty? besides, if someone is guilty and can’t be fired something is wrong with the law not the union.
Who promotes those laws?
It’s not the law, it’s the grievance process which is negotiated by the union.
you are nothing but a blind union hater.
unions negotiate by themselves awesome, i can’t wait for my next contract then
and again, do you honestly believe that if a person was guilty of molesting or mistreating a child they couldn’t be fired. The problem here is you here “accusation” assume it must be true and then rail on unions as stopping their firing. but if they are guilty they will be fired.
and if they aren’t, why do you believe they don’t deserve due process?
Due process is what everyone deserves. Innocent until proven guilty.
Unfortunately Tired Teacher you are wrong here. The union supports and lobbies for laws. In the NY teacher article it says the UTF is what is behind keeping these teachers in their positions. And it appears as if there is little doubt as to their guilt. Unions have and continue to do a lot of good, but they can be their own worst enemy also.
the article is biased, show e the concrete evidence the union did anything beyond assuring due process.
Come on teach, there has been enough black eyes to education just recently about teachers that not only don’t belong in the classroom, but don’t belong in society. How else do you explain them being there? In part inept admin., but that can’t be the only answer.
your right it isn’t, it is the bashing the blame the low pay the stress, that keep people away and drive them out.
the only thing the union does is make sure a person can’t be fired until they are proven guilty. beyond making sure that a school district has proof they have no role in this.
And how would you feel if it was your child and the school says we have no reason not to believe your student because we have had these reports in the past, but we don’t have enough proof. No I’m not suggesting we take every kids word for it, but in the NY case this wasn’t a one time thing with a group of kids trying to get a teacher fired, there were seperate incidents years apart. Coincidence?
and how is the union covering this up? at the end of it all an independent arbiter makes the decision.
hell sometimes i don’t agree with the decision, but no one is here claiming we should hold the arbiter accountable.
when i have switched jobs, my new employer calls my old employer to ask about my employment, why can’t we hold them accountable? or why not the state, they ask if you have been licensed in another state don’t they check up on why you lost it?
instead it is that evil union making sure only the guilty get crapped on. can’t have that
We aren’t staying focused here. My very firts post I say that for this article it is on the shoulders of admins. Looks like we agree. As for the NY article which I brought up and which I believe is what brought on your arbitrators, the fact is that the law, supported and pushed for by the union prevents them from being fired. As far as an arbitrator making these decisions I think you’ll find its lawyers and the threat of draining an already strapped school system dry. Unfortunately, its easier and cheaper for schools to not fight these battles. Reason being, the laws put forth and supported by the union. And to conclude, I have stated many times over that unions have done many great things, all I’m saying is that a group that fails to police their selves loses credibility in the eye of the public, in this case that is whom we work for.
Ok, so what is the solution then? Should the union conduct its own investigation before making a decision? I am not comfortable setting out a special case of complaint that will get less than a fully vigorous defense from the union rep. Is it really so hard to imagine someone being accused of sexually molesting a student falsely? It happened at least once while I was in HS myself, and there was recently a story on this site of it happening in the UK where the teacher was removed from teaching for over a year. I have no issue with removing teacher from the classroom for the duration of the inquiry, but I am not at all comfortable with that teacher being fired without cause.
The district administrators who hire new teachers should be contacting the administration of the old school for a recommendation. They should not be contacting the union at the old school. It is the responsibility of the administration at the old school to give an honest evaluation. The new administration should ask the question “Would you rehire this teacher in your school district?”
http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/ny-cant-dismiss-sex-abuse-teachers-after-all/
It looks like that is what they are doing, but the administrators are giving them good recs. It’s hard to make use of this resource when there are constant attempts to make it basically useless.
These dumb ideas always come from people with little familiarity with unions functions, purpose, or level of control. Unions do not ship people out of state, board management and certification bodies decide who can teach where, not unions.
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-abusive-coaching-positive-role-models-in-our-hs-coaches
This is emotional and verbal abuse to a child in my opinion, and a school board union member, AL Spencer from Tigard Tulatin School District, wrote me an emailing stating that my complaints were abusive and I had a vendetta against this chair throwing coach. So far 155 petition signers against this coach! Most normal parents can see this as abusive coaching. I believe this is ONE of the reasons why this coach has been getting away with this for so long. This union member just happens to be a teacher at the same school with this coach. I feel, this Oregon Educational Association’s board member is covering for teachers like this teacher/coach. OEA and TTSD both did not find any fault and blamed each other’s organization for Al Spencer’s email. Does Al Spencer have an evil twin doing these things. Accountability??? I vote to get rid of both of these educators. Parents should no be treated like this!!!!! Kids should not be treated like this in our public schools!!!!!!! Please support me by signing Linda Barrow’s petition on change.org. You can find my petition by clicking on link above or search the site for “role models”
The Teachers Standards and Practices Commission of Oregon will have to decide both complaints, since it seems to be a big cover up at the district level.