Top official targets abuse by educators
Driscoll to urge school vigilance
By Anand Vaishnav, Boston Globe, August 24, 2004

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On the eve of a new school year, Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll plans to urge schools today to act more vigilantly to protect students from sexual abuse by educators.

Calling for increased scrutiny, Driscoll said in an interview yesterday that neither the Department of Education nor school districts have paid enough attention to the problem. Sexual misconduct is the primary reason that Massachusetts educators lose or surrender their teaching licenses. Even so, the number of teachers disciplined for sexual misconduct accounts for less than 1 percent of the state's 72,000 public school teachers.

The commissioner said he wants school districts to work harder to make students feel comfortable enough to report a possible sexual offense by a teacher or another adult in school. The state defines sexual misconduct as a range of activities, including verbal harassment, improper correspondence with a student, physical abuse, or inappropriate use of the Internet, such as browsing adult websites or chat rooms.

In his scheduled remarks at the monthly Board of Education meeting in Malden, Driscoll said, he plans to urge the board to consider hiring more staff to investigate cases. He also wants to push for legislation tightening background checks on applicants. Right now, school systems must conduct criminal background checks of applicants, but they cover only offenses committed in Massachusetts, not out of state. Twice in the last two years and as recently as June, the Department of Education tightened its rules on reporting teacher misconduct.

Driscoll said he was spurred to do more by recent high-profile cases of alleged abuse by teachers. A middle-school teacher in Chelmsford pleaded guilty last week to raping one of her students, and a high school teacher in Dudley was placed on leave earlier this month after pleading not guilty to inducing a minor into having sex. In Florida, a middle-school teacher has been charged with having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

"It doesn't take long to recognize that this is something we have not dealt with as a society, as schools, as an agency, in a way we perhaps should have," Driscoll said. "We're talking about a small number, but I think the time is right to be more diligent. We're seeing more and more instances, so we just have to recognize that they may be there."

In the past six years, the Department of Education has revoked, suspended, or denied 26 teaching certificates, including those a teacher voluntarily surrendered, because of some type of sexual misconduct. Those cases range from suggestive e-mails to a physical relationship, state statistics show.

Last year, the state suspended, denied, or took away 17 teaching certificates, up from five the year before, and as in previous years, the majority of the cases involved sexual misconduct, said Cathleen Cavell, a lawyer whom the Department of Education hired last year to help pursue the cases with its lone investigator.

Not all of the cases have involved physical abuse, Cavell said. Some involved verbal harassment or improper correspondence with a student, which also can harm a student.

Nationally, a report commissioned by the US Department of Education estimated that as many as one of every 10 public school students faced sexual misconduct by school employees. Teacher unions raised questions about the study's validity because of its broad definition of sexual misconduct; the study allowed inappropriate comments, along with assault, to count as sexual misconduct.

Still, given the national study, Driscoll said he wonders whether the problem has reached similar proportions in Massachusetts.

Principals applauded Driscoll's call for heightened vigilance, but said that background checks do not always solve the problem, because sometimes nothing appears on a check.

In 2003, within a month of each other, two popular Brookline High School teachers faced accusations of abusing students. Geoffrey Dana Hicks pleaded guilty in January to charges of rape of a child, while Waldemar K. Ulich pleaded guilty in March to indecent assault and battery charges, the Norfolk district attorney's office said.

Both lost their teaching licenses, were placed on probation, and had to register as sex offenders. And both, Headmaster Robert J. Weintraub said, had been perceived as "esteemed members of the community."

Ulich had been accused in 1997 of grabbing another student's buttocks repeatedly and was charged with indecent assault and battery. But a judge threw out the case because Brookline police had not turned over evidence that could have worked in the teacher's favor. An arbitrator ordered the school to give him his job back the next year.

Afterward, Weintraub said that he walked into Ulich's office frequently and monitored his behavior, but that the teacher faced similar charges five years later.

"That's one case where if we couldn't tell what was going on after that, doesn't that say something about how tough it is to find out about this stuff?" Weintraub said. "What can you do? You can be aware. Pay attention. Watch interactions. Be visible."

Last year at 4,400-student Brockton High School, a student approached Susan Szachowicz, then the associate principal, saying a teacher had sent another student nude pictures of himself. The teacher, Charles Michael Everett, was fired and lost his license, she said.

"Absolutely, we need to be vigilant, and every time a kid comes in, it can't be passed off," said Szachowicz, now the principal of the state's largest high school. "But it isn't simple. [Perpetrators] are bright, they're articulate. This guy had two lives."

In 2002, the Department of Education began requiring school administrators who fired or obtained the resignation of a teacher for any reason to report those teachers to the agency.

In June, it began requiring administrators to notify the state if damaging information came to light, even after a teacher left the system; administrators who don't turn over such information can lose their own educator credentials. Under law, educators also must report allegations to the Department of Social Services.

Still, Massachusetts laws on reporting teacher misconduct are not as stringent as those in other states. In New Hampshire, for example, superintendents must report any allegation, not just a conviction, to the state Department of Education.

All 50 states and some countries have access to the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification's database of educators who have lost their teaching licenses. States can check a roster of 23,500 names dating back to the 1970s to ensure that applicants have not lied about their records.

However, new applicants who have never had a credential revoked would not appear in that database, and states are just beginning to find ways to share information on applicants' backgrounds, said Roy Einreinhofer, the association's executive director.

"It's never happening fast enough," Einreinhofer said.