March 6, 2008 - The News-Tribune (Tacoma, Washington) urges the Senate to pass a child protection bill.
Strange as it sounds, teachers can be convicted of kidnapping without automatically losing their certificate to teach in Washington’s public schools.
They can be convicted of murder, rape, assault with intent to kill and many other heinous felonies without getting the bum’s rush from the educational system.
As the law stands, only a small number of crimes against children automatically trigger a teacher’s expulsion from the classroom. House Bill 3103, sponsored by Tacoma state Rep. Jeannie Darneille, would change that.
The bill is partly prompted by the case of a Tacoma middle school principal, Harold Wright Jr., who pocketed – while suspended – more than $90,000 in pay while being investigated and prosecuted on a rape charge. He had the audacity to collect his paycheck for three weeks after he was convicted last year.
He got away with his long paid vacation because the victim was 19 – an adult.
Darneille’s bill wouldn’t, unfortunately, provide a way to recover any of the money paid to felons while suspended prior to trial. But it would at least stop payments to a newly convicted felon.
Another reason for the bill is Jennifer Rice. Now in the Pierce County Jail, the former McKinley Elementary fourth-grade teacher is accused of 13 crimes – including rape – against two youths.
After the accusations against Rice emerged, Tacoma school officials learned that she had earlier been getting too close to students in the Bethel School District – and that administrators there had let her resign instead of firing her.
Interim Tacoma Superintendent Art Jarvis tried last fall to file a complaint against a Bethel administrator who’d strongly recommended Rice to the Tacoma district – days after he’d signed an evaluation slamming her inappropriate behavior with students.
Jarvis got nowhere, because he had no standing under the law to complain of an employee in another district. HB 3103 would empower superintendents to file complaints against educators elsewhere – a deterrent to districts tempted to deal with problem teachers by letting them quietly leave to find positions elsewhere.
As the Rice and Wright cases illustrate, these changes are needed. There’s been no serious opposition to HB 3103, which has cleared the House and awaits final approval in the Senate. But a “small” bill like this can always fall between the cracks in the final rush of a legislative session. Senate leaders should make sure that doesn’t happen.
