Protecting students from teacher misconduct

For a year, Deb Drahos has been bugging state legislators to strengthen reporting requirements for teachers accused of sexual misconduct.

Drahos, of rural Blairstown, wants lawmakers to require schools to immediately report those allegations to law enforcement, taking investigations out of co-workers' hands and into the hands of trained professionals.

It would protect victims' rights, preserve the integrity of investigations and help protect innocent teachers, too. “It's the right thing to do on both sides,” she told me this week. “It really is.”

The issue is getting a lot of attention after we found out former Benton Community sixth-grade teacher Walter Drahozal, was allowed to resign from his job in 2006 after complaints that he had been sending sexually themed notes to current and former students, but kept his teaching license until this past February, when he voluntarily surrendered it in an agreement with the state Board of Educational Examiners.

Drahos was a Benton Community School Board member from 1990 to 2000, but told me it's her “position” as a mother that has really driven her on this issue. She's not alone.

State Rep. Royd Chambers, R-Sheldon, introduced a bill this past spring that would have required school officials to report allegations of teacher misconduct - not just criminal charges - to the state Board of Educational Examiners.

The law now only requires schools to tell the licensing board if a teacher is fired, resigns or their contract isn't renewed because they're charged with one of a few types of criminal offenses.

That means school officials legally can quietly show teachers the door for violations of professional ethics -- including troubling behavior like that of Walter Drahozal.

Board of Educational Examiners Executive Director George Maurer told me again this week that he thinks school officials always should report cases to his board when they've terminated an educator because of an ethics violation.

That way the board could review the case and decide whether any action should be taken against the license. It would be a dramatic improvement over what happens now.

Maurer said he knows there are ethics cases that don't make it to the board, but he has no idea how many. “Superintendents and people tell us that it's not being reported,” he said. “But to really put a number on it - a percentage - I have no data to support any direction.”

Chambers' bill would have fixed that. But he found opponents this spring in both the The Iowa State Education Association and Iowa Association of School Boards.

Representatives from both groups told me this week they thought it was too far-reaching. It also would require schools to report any disciplinary action against a teacher to the state licensing board.

And Iowa State Education Association government relations specialist Brad Hudson told me Tuesday he thought school administrators should be reporting questionable teacher behavior to their county attorneys or law enforcement. When and if charges are filed, he said, that's when the licensing board should get involved.

As for the misconduct cases -- cases where an educator clearly has crossed an ethical line if not a legal one -- Hudson told me he thinks most of those questionable behaviors are being reported, anyway.

“We'll never build a perfect system,” he said. “We're always willing to review the law, but I think for the most part now is that things are working.”

But others say the opposite is true - that administrators don't report if they don't have to for fear that they'll get the district sued. That fear seems ill-founded. After all, if they had enough evidence to push an educator to resign, why be afraid of a lawsuit?

Or maybe the fear is really about something a little different -- like the headaches it might cause if parents and community members were to find out about the educator's unethical behavior.

At any rate, Chambers' bill didn't make it out of committee this spring, but the Sheldon High School history teacher told me Tuesday that he'll likely try again.

“We can't have these people who should not be in a classroom, around students, doing things that are inappropriate and then being excused,” he said. “We can't have them being rehired in other school districts.”

For her part, Drahos said she'll keep fighting, too.

“I don't care who these kids are,” she said. “I believe they should be safe in our schools.”