Port Ste. Lucie, FLORIDA

A trail of misconduct allegations.

Oct 18, 2006 - "Florida Teacher Left Trail Of Misconduct Allegations"

A teacher was hired in Florida after fleeing allegations that he'd had an inappropriate relationship with a female student in Oklahoma and a sexual relationship with one in Georgia. The Oklahoma allegations were kept quiet and charges were dropped in the Georgia case, but, nevertheless, neither school district or school told the Florida school of the allegations. He was tried once - in 2001 - but the Georgia jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.

The teacher denies the allegations. In an ironic twist, the school superintendent in Georgia who failed to disclose his problems has since resigned as superintendent and her teaching license was been revoked, partly because she failed to report a sexual misconduct allegation against her daughter - a high school guidance counselor - on time.

TT - How did a background check fail to discover his trial in Georgia? And how could school administrators not wonder at how often he moved from one school district to another and one state to another?

No national registry will prevent this problem. School districts will not even report to their state agencies, let alone report their bad hiring decisions to a national registry. Besides, the same self-defined legalese that prevents them from revealing a teacher's past also protects the school district from lawsuits.