Abuse Cases Put Los Angeles Schools Under Fire
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
A new staff has been placed at Miramonte Elementary after two teachers there were accused of sexual abuse.
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: February 16, 2012
RelatedLOS ANGELES — The arrest of a public school teacher here early this month came with plenty of vivid details, thanks to hundreds of photographs that the police say show the teacher covering the eyes and mouths of children with tape and allowing cockroaches to crawl over faces.
Those accusations alone were enough to prompt outrage. But more came: Another teacher at the same school was arrested on charges of sexually abusing children. Then came news reports that two aides at the school had been fired after being accused of abuse, and that one had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Within days, other allegations surfaced at schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District: A high school music teacher was removed after being accused of showering with students; a third-grade teacher was being investigated for more than a dozen accusations of sexual abuse; an elementary school janitor was arrested and accused of lewd acts against a child. And on Wednesday, a high school softball coach and special education teacher was arrested on charges of sending inappropriate messages to children over the Internet.
There is no evidence to suggest that these abuse accusations are connected. But they have put an intense spotlight on the way the district monitors its employees and responds to reports of abuse.
The accusations have raised fundamental questions for administrators: How does the sprawling district interact with local law enforcement agencies? Once school officials know about accusations of misconduct, when and how should parents be told? And how does the district track teachers who have been accused of wrongdoing but not convicted?
Most of the attention has centered on Miramonte Elementary, a working-class school in South Los Angeles where, the police say, dozens of students were abused over several years. Many of the students are children of Latino immigrants, and some worry that parents were reluctant to report the allegations to the police because of their legal status.
Mark Berndt, the teacher accused of photographing students as he abused them, was removed from the classroom last spring, but parents were not told of the accusations or the investigation. He has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts upon a child.
After the arrests of Mr. Berndt and the second teacher, many parents at the school said that they were worried for the safety of their children and that administrators had failed to fulfill their basic responsibility.
John Deasy, who became the district’s superintendent a year ago, responded by transferring the entire staff, shutting the school for two days and putting a new teacher and a social worker in each classroom. The rapid removal of a school’s entire staff is unprecedented nationally, several education experts said. The old staff will remain at an unopened school until investigations by the sheriff and school district are completed.
“We really need to be erring on the side of caution on behalf of our students,” Mr. Deasy said in an interview. “When something like this emerges, our only choice is to act, and the last thing I wanted was any more surprises.”
Mr. Deasy said he was confident he had made the right decision. “When I told the parents about the decision, I stood in front of a room with thousands of people applauding,” he said.
The school district, the nation’s second largest, covers the city of Los Angeles and all or parts of several neighboring communities and unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, and as a result, it must work with several law enforcement agencies. Mr. Deasy said the district was trying to sort out each agency’s policies.
In Mr. Berndt’s case, school district officials said, the sheriff’s department told them not to speak to any staff members or parents about the matter until the inquiry was completed. On Wednesday, the state agency that accredits teachers sent Mr. Deasy a letter saying he should have informed it when Mr. Berndt was removed from the district last spring, rather than waiting for his arrest, to ensure that he could not be hired in another district.
Perhaps the primary issue, Mr. Deasy said, is what happens after a teacher is accused of wrongdoing. He said that in many cases the district did not appear to keep any central records of accusations of abuse, even if they were substantiated, as long as no formal charges were pressed.
“You can have something that is not criminal but is clearly inappropriate, and the question is: Why would we want that person teaching our children?” he said.
School officials said Mr. Berndt was investigated 18 years ago on suspicion of trying to molest a girl, but prosecutors said there had not been enough evidence to charge him. It is unclear whether details about that inquiry were kept in the district’s central files.
Under state law, any school employee who suspects child abuse is required to report it to law enforcement officials. Warren Fletcher, the president of the city’s teachers’ union, said that every teacher knows the law and that there is no evidence that other teachers were aware of Mr. Berndt’s actions. When the staff was transferred, Mr. Fletcher said, the district was unfairly penalizing innocent teachers.
“To remove every teacher because of the actions of two is really using a hatchet where a scalpel might be better,” he said. “These teachers are traumatized, and to suggest that they knew something bad was going on suggests that they are criminals, which is really irresponsible.”
Some question whether Miramonte’s size contributed to the problem. With nearly 1,200 students, it is the district’s second-largest elementary school. Mr. Fletcher said the principal was the only manager at the school and suggested there was “evidence of failure of supervision.”
The district does not keep track of the number of teachers accused of sexual abuse, but 853 have been pulled from the classroom over the past year for a variety of reasons, a sharp increase largely because Mr. Deasy has encouraged the removal of teachers deemed incompetent. From 2008 until June 2011, 699 teachers were removed from the classroom because of accusations of wrongdoing.
Mónica García, the president of the board of education, said that although the spate of accusations had encouraged more students and parents to come forward, the district needed to do more to tell parents how to handle suspicions of abuse. “We need to encourage everyone to act faster, and that includes district officials,” Ms. García said. “We really have to push for some better process than wait until we tell you,” she added.
Sylvia Reyes, 46, has several grandchildren at Miramonte, including a few who were in the class of the second teacher arrested on abuse charges. Initially, like several parents, she said she was afraid to send them back to school. But after the staff was removed, she felt reassured.
(So far only five parents have officially transferred their students out of the school, and attendance is 92 percent, down just slightly from the average.)
“Now I feel comfortable they’re protected and things will be all right,” Ms. Reyes said. On Tuesday night, she learned that a teacher from her son’s high school — who had visited her home several times to give him extra assistance — had been accused of lewd acts.
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