Our Children Deserve Safer Schools

By William L. Bainbridge

Recent actions of prosecutors and government officials throughout the country have jeopardized the safety of schoolchildren.In one of a number of Ohio cases, for example, a teacher was charged with two counts of sexual battery stemming from an alleged 15-month affair with a student. In pretrial bargaining, prosecutors dismissed criminal charges in exchange for the teacher's withdrawing her application to renew her state teaching license. While the prosecutor said the teacher was "not fit to be in the classroom," the remedy merely ignored the behavior. This teacher would appear to be free to apply for a teaching position anywhere else.

Soft-handed treatment of school employees charged with unconscionable behavior has created a national crisis. Local attempts to negotiate settlements with sexual predators or other misguided adults in single school jurisdictions have placed the rest of our nation's children in jeopardy. Such actions shed a knotty problem for a locality, but create ominous consequences for the rest of the country.

Too many communities have learned the hard way the tragic consequences of making ill-informed school district hiring decisions. The news media are doing their part. Newspapers throughout the country have run expos‚s on this problem. ("A Trust Betrayed: Sexual Abuse by Teachers," November/December 1998). Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, the chief anchormen for NBC and CBS news, respectively, have recently highlighted the problem in their broadcasts. It's time for state and local school officials to catch up with the private sector in employment practices. We need to feel secure in the knowledge that every effort has been made to select people with the highest qualifications and most impeccable character possible to nurture our kids at school....