Teacher abuse: some districts do what's right, not just what's required

I talked to some local superintendents last week to find out more about how they handle investigations within their districts. Here is what some of them had to say:

Clear Creek Amana Superintendent Paula Vincent told me her district appoints and trains a number of Level 1 investigators who are instructed to contact law enforcement immediately if they receive a serious allegation of teacher abuse or misconduct involving a student and they know they won't be able to immediately verify whether the incident took place.

When investigating a complaint, she said, they'll frequently seek guidance and help from the state Board of Educational Examiners throughout. Frequently, she said, the district will hire an independent investigator right away, instead of waiting for the case to reach the state-required second level of investigation.

“It's difficult, as you can imagine, having a staff member investigate another staff member,” she said. “So when it's one of our own staff members we often will have an outside person that we contract with.”

Linn-Mar Community School Superintendent Katie Mulholland told me her district appoints Level 1 investigators at each school and a few district-wide investigators so that a complainant has plenty of options even if they're uncomfortable reporting an incident to staff at a particular school. “We want to make it possible for anybody to report anything to anybody,” she said.

She said Linn-Mar also is working on a district policy that will govern digital communication between teachers and students – so every teacher and student understands what's appropriate. Although she said there haven't been any inappropriate communications reported at Linn-Mar, it's a “grayish” area that other schools have struggled with, and they're looking to clarify the issue of what's appropriate. They're still working out the details, she said:

“It's really hard to figure this all out without having five pages of rules,” she said. “So we're probably going to just going to get down to absolutes – either yes or no – and there would be very few instances when individual contacts are allowed.”

Vinton-Shellsburg also has Level 1 investigators in each building, Superintendent Mary Jo Hainstock told me: “they are generally people that students and staff would have direct and quick access to report something.”

She echoed the sentiments of several superintendents when she said that her district forwards every founded complaint to the state Board of Educational Examiners.

“The number one priority is making sure that we do things keeping kids safety in mind,” she said.

One key, she said, is in making sure that students and families and staff all understand where the boundaries are between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Her district encourages staff not to send text messages or e-mails to individual students – to contact an entire class or team if they're going to send messages – and to make sure their class websites are hosted on the school's site.

Iowa City Schools has four Level 1 investigators, Associate Superintendent Jim Behle told me: two assistant superintendents (including Behle), District Equity Director Ross Wilburn and the district's head nurse.

The district won't investigate anonymous complaints, and has an informal option for parents who don't want to start a formal Level 1 investigation. (“It's not an option to not investigate,” he said. “We just give parents the option of whether they want to do a formal or informal.”

Every single one of those founded formal complaints goes to law enforcement – officers in the Iowa City and Coralville police departments serve as the district's Level 2 investigators, Behle said. Those officers have been trained through the Department of Education, so they can do an administrative as well as criminal investigation.

In addition, Iowa City's policy is to immediately forward any allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct to law enforcement. Behle said that would include misconduct like sexually themed e-mails.

“We believe it's better if it's investigated by an independent party,” he said. “There's always a suspicion that the school may cover something up, and we don't want even a perception of that.”