Do you realize our children spend approximately 1600 hours in the care of teachers every year, and we gladly allow these strangers to watch our children without actually giving it another thought? Yet we take the time to interview day homes, child care providers and babysitters asking for references and picking the one we are most comfortable with. The catch, we have no control over the teachers or sending our children to school. While the law lets us pick between public and private school, they hinder us by only allowing us to pick schools in our assigned districts.

 The school board asks us to trust their judgment in picking teachers, and the principals to run our schools. Luring us into a false sense of security by thinking the applicants are screened with a fine tooth comb before being placed in such a position of trust. The actual truth is the only real screening done is a check to make sure the license is legitimate, they have a letter of recommendation from the school they graduated from and they are part of the mighty teachers union. Once accepted in the union and by a school, they become protected by the union laws and contracts.

Speaking from experience, it is not an easy feat to have a teacher removed. Step one, you have to place a complaint with the principal of the school, and then he/she speaks with said teacher telling them that there was a verbal complaint. Then if not satisfied with the results, you have to write a formal letter to said principal .Now the letter is on file, a meeting is usually set up with the teacher and complaining parent, principal acting as a mediator. Usually does not solve much and just frustrates both parties. It is at this point the parents walk away, drop the complaint and hope their child makes it through out the year and moves on. You would be surprised to note that the “letter on record” 90% of the time is filed in your child’s school file but not in the teachers file and unless you come forwards years later nobody ever knows the teacher had any complaint ever made against them.

If you’re persistent, like I am, you now proceed with step two; you contact the school board and lodge a complaint. They request you do step one first and once you tell them you have attempted it and nothing was solved they give you a run around for a bit. Talk to this person, then this person only to be sent back to the first person you originally spoke to. Finally once you start to sound like your about to lose your cool and mumble not so nice words under your breathe, they patch you to the person in charge of your district. You leave a message on the voice mail, and if you’re lucky they call you back with in a few weeks. Hoping you calmed down and decided to let things be, they call you back. 5% out of the 10% percent who get this far usually drop it.

The last diehard 5% who have the patience and persistence to follow through will move to step three; you are now requested to send a detailed letter of the complaint and make sure you provide any proof or evidence to back your claims, also if possible a copy of the original letter you sent to the principal of the school. Remember to include a brief summary of the one on one meeting you had with the teacher.

Now you wait for the district supervisor to read the information you sent in, then they talk to their supervisor and eventually they get back to you, usually a few weeks. Only to be told that they will have someone spend time in the classroom to oversee and observe the teacher in action. You will be contacted when the report comes back. As if you need to be told what will be in that report. You already know that the teacher will be on best behavior while they are being watched or supervised. But you have no choice but to wait. Just as predicted, the report exuberance nothing but good things said about the teacher, no evidence of the manner or behavior stated in the complaint. Last step is getting a lawyer and hope you have a good case. Or you wait until other parents mentions they are going through the same thing and then file a group complaint.

Well in my case it was easy to get other parents because 15 out of the 31 students had the same complaint. In the end she was removed from our school, but not dismissed as a teacher, we found out a year later she was re-assigned to a new school.

Three years later she was on the news, arrested for partying and providing drugs and alcohol to minors. During her trial, we found out that she had a criminal record for drinking and driving on two counts; those charges were on her record while she was teaching. Yet there was no mention of our complaints about her being drunk and keeping a mickey of alcohol in her desk. The pictures we provided to the school board were never seen in court.

So it should come as no surprise that the two pedophiles in the LA. Elementary went undetected for so long, they were screened and handpicked by the teachers union and school board, labeled as trusted. Who knows how many previous complaints were dropped, lost or not taken seriously?

K. Waters

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