Area school districts hurry to get abuse investigators certified

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Cedar Rapids school district isn't the only one in the Corridor with key investigators into student abuse reports being overdue for training.

A review of records shows five investigators and alternates - who are legally required to receive training every five years on how to handle claims of student abuse by employees - in the Solon, Mount Vernon and Clear Creek Amana school districts were also overdue for recertification last school year.

The Cedar Rapids district has come under scrutiny for the apparent mishandling of its investigations of 24-year-old substitute teacher Mary Beth Haglin, who was charged with sexually exploiting a student after a police investigation.

School districts in Iowa are required to have school board-approved investigators to look in to such assertions. Cedar Rapids district policy dictates its designated investigators should have been involved in the reviews of Haglin carried out by Washington High School administrators in both February and May. But none of them were.

And even if they had been, a review of training records shows, all three were at least three years overdue for training at the time.

Had this situation unfolded in two nearby school districts - Solon and Mount Vernon - investigators there were not properly trained to investigate a case of student abuse by an employee. In the Clear Creek Amana district, some - but not all - investigators were overdue for training.

None of Solon school district's three investigators had current certification until just days ago, records show.

The district's primary investigator, Solon High Principal Nathan Wear, renewed his certification Monday. He first received training while working at the Fairfield district from 2005 to 2011, Wear said, but allowed certification to lapse.

Alternate investigators Solon Middle Principal Mike Herdliska and Lakeview Elementary Principal Jodi Rickels were both trained for the first time Thursday.

Solon Superintendent Davis Eidahl said the investigators' lack of certification was an oversight on the district's part.

'With this being a topic, it really brought it to the forefront as far as going back to look at our own records and practices,” Eidahl said. 'That's what caused us to go back and review expiration dates.”

There were no training records for Mount Vernon's designated investigator, Matt Thede, associate principal and athletic director at Mount Vernon High.

Superintendent Gary O'Malley said Thede will be trained next week.

'It's a mistake on our part, and it's going to be corrected,” said O'Malley, who is not a board-approved investigator but has maintained his certification. 'Any explanation will sound like an excuse.”

O'Malley said he plans to have Thede - as well as Mount Vernon High Principal Steve Brand, Mount Vernon Middle Principal Bob Haugse and Mount Vernon Elementary Principal Kate Stanton - trained by Tuesday at the latest.

Two of the Clear Creek Amana School District's alternate investigators, North Bend Elementary Principal Brenda Parker and Clear Creek Amana Middle Principal Brad Fox, haven't been trained since October 2010 - meaning their certification expired in October 2015. Clear Creek Amana's primary investigator, Kathy Campbell, does have current certification.

Clear Creek Amana Superintendent Tim Kuehl said Parker and Fox have not been involved with any investigations since their certification expired, though they should have maintained it.

Investigators for the Iowa City, Marion Independent, Linn-Mar and College Community districts are all up-to-date on their training, according to records.

The records reviewed include training sessions from the Grant Wood Area Education Agency, which oversees all of the included school districts, as well from an online training system that has provided centralized training for all public Iowa school districts since 2012.

In Cedar Rapids, the teacher-student sex scandal at Washington High has led to the departures of three employees - Washington High Principal Ralph Plagman, Associate Principal Mike Johnson and district Human Resources Director Jill Cirivello.

Plagman, 72, and Johnson, 57, did not follow district policy during their initial investigation of Haglin in February, the district has said, and decided claims of an inappropriate relationship between her and a student were unfounded.

In May, administrators investigated again and asked Haglin to leave Washington High. But she continued to teach at other schools for the rest of the school year because Cirivello didn't remove her from a database, officials said.

Cirivello, 56, also submitted Wright Elementary Principal Greg O'Connell, Prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade Executive Director Val Dolezal and herself as the district's investigators to the school board in August, even though none of them had current investigative training credentials. O'Connell and Dolezal have since renew their training.

Haglin was arrested July 22 and faces two years in prison and a decade on the sex offender registry. She is out of jail on bail and is set for arraignment Sept. 1.