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Teachers are bigger threat to students than cops in schools
Posted on: June 14, 2021 at 11:18:59 CT
Spanky KU
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(Brenda Lebsack is an Orange County teacher, a former Orange Unified school board member and former peace officer in the Orange County Probation Department.)
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/06/13/bad-teachers-are-a-bigger-threat-to-students-than-school-police/
Last summer, with tempers still boiling over the murder of George Floyd, the California Teachers Association and its hundreds of local affiliates joined the chorus of activists calling to defund all police everywhere. The Los Angeles teachers union still insists its members will not return to classes until police are removed from campuses throughout the nation’s second-largest school district.
As a former Orange County Probation Department officer and a current public school teacher in Orange County, you might think that would put me in an awkward position. But there’s nothing awkward at all about being a teacher who supports our law enforcement officers — because I know firsthand that cutting police resources will leave my students more vulnerable at school and in their neighborhoods.
I’d suggest that teachers union leaders apologize to police immediately – and further that those union leaders get their own members in order. Changes are necessary in policing, but change is absolutely imperative in our public schools.
I’m specifically demanding that teachers unions stop protecting the sexual predators in their ranks.
Sexual violence against K-12 students is not a new discovery. A 2004 United States Department of Education report concluded that one in 10 students will experience school employee sexual misconduct by the time they graduate from high school.
Even that astonishing number almost certainly discounts the problem. I know from personal experience that most teacher misconduct is never reported.
When I was an Orange County high school student, I accepted a teacher’s offer of additional help with a particularly difficult course. With his help, my grades rose quickly. I didn’t second-guess the teacher’s considerable sacrifice — or the fact that he was focused singularly on me in his empty lunchtime classroom. Thrilled with my improvement, grateful for his effort, my mother suggested I find a way to thank him. I sent him a candy-gram along with an innocent note of sincere thanks. In our very next session, he cornered me, making clear his intentions. Terrified, I fled the classroom. I told no one, thinking more of my own shame and the damage my accusation might do to the teacher and his young family. I did just two things: I moved my desk from the front of the classroom, and stopped seeing him for help. I never doubted that I was his first target or his last. To this moment, I wonder about the girls who came before and after me, each of us proceeding through our days around him with our heads bowed.
How does this happen? One answer can be found in a 2010 Government Accountability Office report. That study revealed teacher-offenders can be transferred to three different schools before they’re ever reported to police — a practice called “passing the trash.”
We’ve seen the results of child sex-assault in our schools, and they’re costly — in terms of children and families injured, the cost of settlements, and the reputational harm to the teaching profession. We now know that Los Angeles Unified paid out more than $300 million to settle sex-assault claims against students over four years ending in 2016. In 2018, a Chicago Public Schools investigation found 900 cases of sexual abuse in just three months, with an overwhelming number of those involving school personnel. Three months ago, the Orange County Register uncovered a $2.2 million payment to settle a sex assault case in Santa Ana Unified. This sort of detail is hard to come by. Every one of these discoveries came about because hardworking reporters followed the story for months.
So, instead of focusing on police violence, why don’t teachers union leaders practice what they preach? Why don’t they immediately turn over to police all reports of sex-assault in schools? You don’t need to share my educational training in psychology to bet teachers union leaders want to yell about defunding police in order to shift the spotlight from the criminals in our classrooms.
What would happen if videos of sexual abuse by school authorities were played over and over again on mass media, the way police abuse has been this past year? How would it affect the public’s perception of the teaching profession? You can bet that teachers would be viewed with contempt and shame, stereotyped as dangerous child abusers.
There is a solution. It works and it’s already in the law — and it’s the opposite of defunding police.
A 2017 case study of school employee sexual misconduct concluded that strong partnerships between schools and police provide greater protection for our children. Good relations between school staff, officials and police – not incendiary denunciations of police — create real accountability for all groups in our schools. Where such partnerships do not succeed in actually preventing all abuse, they bring efficiency to investigations that will assure greater student safety.
Before teachers union leaders point an arrogant judgmental finger at the police, maybe they should first check the stench under their own nose.
(Brenda Lebsack is an Orange County teacher, a former Orange Unified school board member and former peace officer in the Orange County Probation Department.)
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/06/13/bad-teachers-are-a-bigger-threat-to-students-than-school-police/
Last summer, with tempers still boiling over the murder of George Floyd, the California Teachers Association and its hundreds of local affiliates joined the chorus of activists calling to defund all police everywhere. The Los Angeles teachers union still insists its members will not return to classes until police are removed from campuses throughout the nation’s second-largest school district.
As a former Orange County Probation Department officer and a current public school teacher in Orange County, you might think that would put me in an awkward position. But there’s nothing awkward at all about being a teacher who supports our law enforcement officers — because I know firsthand that cutting police resources will leave my students more vulnerable at school and in their neighborhoods.
I’d suggest that teachers union leaders apologize to police immediately – and further that those union leaders get their own members in order. Changes are necessary in policing, but change is absolutely imperative in our public schools.
I’m specifically demanding that teachers unions stop protecting the sexual predators in their ranks.
Sexual violence against K-12 students is not a new discovery. A 2004 United States Department of Education report concluded that one in 10 students will experience school employee sexual misconduct by the time they graduate from high school.
Even that astonishing number almost certainly discounts the problem. I know from personal experience that most teacher misconduct is never reported.
When I was an Orange County high school student, I accepted a teacher’s offer of additional help with a particularly difficult course. With his help, my grades rose quickly. I didn’t second-guess the teacher’s considerable sacrifice — or the fact that he was focused singularly on me in his empty lunchtime classroom. Thrilled with my improvement, grateful for his effort, my mother suggested I find a way to thank him. I sent him a candy-gram along with an innocent note of sincere thanks. In our very next session, he cornered me, making clear his intentions. Terrified, I fled the classroom. I told no one, thinking more of my own shame and the damage my accusation might do to the teacher and his young family. I did just two things: I moved my desk from the front of the classroom, and stopped seeing him for help. I never doubted that I was his first target or his last. To this moment, I wonder about the girls who came before and after me, each of us proceeding through our days around him with our heads bowed.
How does this happen? One answer can be found in a 2010 Government Accountability Office report. That study revealed teacher-offenders can be transferred to three different schools before they’re ever reported to police — a practice called “passing the trash.”
We’ve seen the results of child sex-assault in our schools, and they’re costly — in terms of children and families injured, the cost of settlements, and the reputational harm to the teaching profession. We now know that Los Angeles Unified paid out more than $300 million to settle sex-assault claims against students over four years ending in 2016. In 2018, a Chicago Public Schools investigation found 900 cases of sexual abuse in just three months, with an overwhelming number of those involving school personnel. Three months ago, the Orange County Register uncovered a $2.2 million payment to settle a sex assault case in Santa Ana Unified. This sort of detail is hard to come by. Every one of these discoveries came about because hardworking reporters followed the story for months.
So, instead of focusing on police violence, why don’t teachers union leaders practice what they preach? Why don’t they immediately turn over to police all reports of sex-assault in schools? You don’t need to share my educational training in psychology to bet teachers union leaders want to yell about defunding police in order to shift the spotlight from the criminals in our classrooms.
What would happen if videos of sexual abuse by school authorities were played over and over again on mass media, the way police abuse has been this past year? How would it affect the public’s perception of the teaching profession? You can bet that teachers would be viewed with contempt and shame, stereotyped as dangerous child abusers.
There is a solution. It works and it’s already in the law — and it’s the opposite of defunding police.
A 2017 case study of school employee sexual misconduct concluded that strong partnerships between schools and police provide greater protection for our children. Good relations between school staff, officials and police – not incendiary denunciations of police — create real accountability for all groups in our schools. Where such partnerships do not succeed in actually preventing all abuse, they bring efficiency to investigations that will assure greater student safety.
Before teachers union leaders point an arrogant judgmental finger at the police, maybe they should first check the stench under their own nose.
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Teachers are bigger threat to students than cops in schools - Spanky KU - 6/14 11:18:59