Teachers’ sex offenses public record BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press
Want to know if any teachers in your local public school were found to have had sex with students? A request under the state Freedom of Information Law should do it. “There is not a worst nightmare I can think of than to have a role model cross those boundaries,” said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, the state’s senior deputy commissioner of education for pre-K through higher education. “So we want to make sure the integrity of the profession is preserved.” A written request to the state Education Department by mail or e-mail should provide the resolution of a misconduct case for a teacher, aide or administrator. The offenses include sex with students, inappropriate correspondence, pornography, theft and fraud. Although a public record, few of the hundreds of cases in recent years ever get to the public. Most teachers’ certifications are revoked quietly, after a referral from a school and review by a state hearing officer who is a lawyer. A search of local news media found schools made few of the cases public. To get the public records from the state Education Department, you’ll need to know the teacher’s name. Unlike test scores, spending, violent incidents and other comparisons on the state’s school report cards, you can’t search a school or state data base to see if there were any incidents or how they were handled. Most records don’t even identify the school or community. “If there has been a circumstance and it was addressed, then what effect would it have on the school district?” Duncan-Poitier asked. “The kids involved in the school, is it going set up a climate of fear? You know, ‘Well, if it happened to so and so, even though the teacher’s gone, what other teachers do we have to worry about?’ I’m not sure where the value added is.” “These involve complicated issues such as personnel files, privacy issues, children involved,” said Bart Zabin, the state’s chief investigator of the cases. “I don’t think they are the kind of thing necessarily the school would want to have a poster on with check marks against the horrifying incidents that have occurred.” Hofstra University Professor Charol Shakeshaft, a nationally recognized researcher on the topic, said press accounts of isolated cases have raised awareness of the damage a sexual predator can do in schools. On this, Duncan-Poitier agrees, noting that media exposure has helped the state focus attention on the problem. “We want to make sure that we protect the kids,” Duncan-Poitier said. “That’s our bottom line.” He said school districts often aren’t named because the teacher in most cases has already been fi red or forced to resign before the state acts on his or her teaching certificate. Some school officials said they acted immediately on tips. A couple of students at Niagara Falls High School passed along to an administrator a rumor the kids heard about music teacher Philip R. Sims having sex with a student. A district lawyer was called and Sims never taught there again, said district Administrator Robert Mohr, then the high school principal. “I think that when even the least bit of innuendo was brought forth, we moved,” Mohr said. Sims later pleaded guilty to sodomy and was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to register as a sex offender. Prosecutors said the relationship lasted three years, beginning when he was 46 and the girl was 14. Attorney James Evans, representing the Jordan-Elbridge School District in Onondaga County, also said it immediately investigated a case of a coach who state investigators later said had a sexual relationship with a girl. The reports themselves have also increasingly shrunk over the last decade from detailed accounts of evidence, witnesses, the extent of the misconduct, how the school district handled the case and the number of victims (while always shielding the victim’s identity). Many recent reports in the last couple years have been one- or two-page legal settlements with few if any details that exclude mention of the specific offense. Zabin said the settlement agreements provide an efficient, less expensive means to the same end: Revoking a teaching certificate to teach in public schools and submitting the name to a national data base. Recent state actions provide more safeguards. Three years ago, as many as 14,000 uncertified teachers were in classrooms. Today, all public school teachers must gain certification, a process that includes background checks. And more than 1,340 people seeking to teach in public schools were rejected in the last few years because of criminal background checks under a state law to fingerprint teacher applicants. This year, all current school employees will also start to be fingerprinted, Duncan-Poitier said. Nonpublic schools don’t always require teachers and administrators to be certified, and so they aren’t subject to the same process of certified educators. Still, the records do show the concern extends to nonpublic schools. James E. Irwin, a principal at a private school not identified in records, pleaded guilty in 2001 to using his computer to promote an obscene sexual performance by a child less than 16 years old, a felony, and was sentenced to five years in prison, according to state records. But a conviction alone can’t keep someone from teaching, under a state policy noted repeated in cases to “encourage” the hiring of convicted people as long as they are rehabilitated and don’t pose a threat. For example, some disbarred attorneys and people convicted of robbery and other crimes earlier in life have become certified teachers.
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