State Teacher Panel to Take Hard Line on Abuse Reports

The state commission that licenses teachers and administrators has signaled that it will deal harshly with school employees who fail to act quickly in cases of suspected child abuse.

In April, the state panel recommended that a superintendent, a junior high principal, two assistant principals and a teacher--all in the Fremont school district south of Oakland--lose their state credentials because they did not stop a teen-age boy from harassing and assaulting several female students near a school campus.

“The law (on child abuse) doesn’t leave much room for discretion. It says you had better report it immediately,” said Walter Taylor, staff counsel for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

“If the evidence that comes to us shows that administrators or teachers knew about it (possible abuse) and failed to take action to protect the students, I think the commission will vote to revoke their credentials,” Taylor said.

For school administrators or teachers, losing their credentials is tantamount to losing their job, he noted.

At least six school administrators in Los Angeles have been called to testify before a grand jury about how they handled the case of a 68th Street School teacher who allegedly molested children in his care from November, 1983, to December, 1984.

Los Angeles school board members familiar with the investigation say “at least 10 and as many as 15” school employees knew of the accusations against teacher Terry Bartholome, but failed to report what they knew to police.

State law says that failure to report child abuse is a misdemeanor that carries a possible $500 fine, or six months in jail.

But Taylor said that even if Los Angeles school officials are not charged with a crime in the Bartholome case, the state panel will probably take a look at the case.

“I’m only speculating because that case (in Los Angeles) hasn’t come to us yet, but if there’s evidence that a person holding a credential has not carried out his duties, we would want to take a look at that evidence,” he said.

This attitude on the part of a normally low-key state agency has sent a scare through the ranks of school officials and teachers.

“There is a panic among our people on this,” said Ralph Flynn, executive director of the California Teachers Assn. Although the commission so far has moved only against the Fremont school employees, Flynn said teachers throughout the state fear that law enforcement agencies as well as the licensing commission will go after anyone who, in retrospect, didn’t act quickly in a case of child abuse.

“We are getting a lot of requests to expand our legal coverage. There’s just a real level of anxiety about this,” Flynn said.

The head of the state school administrators organization in Sacramento said the state commission is “on soft ground” in trying to take away the credential of the Fremont district superintendent.

“We think this goes a bit far,” said Wesley Apker, executive director of the Assn. of California School Administrators. “The commission considers questions of whether people are competent, and we don’t think this is a matter of competence.”

“Our view is they (Fremont officials) followed the law,” said Apker, whose association is helping pay legal costs for the administrators.

Before the commission can actually yank the credentials of the Fremont officials, their case must be heard by an administrative law judge, Taylor said. If the judge decides to revoke their credentials, the action must also gain formal approval from the full Commission on Teacher Credentialing, he said.

The Fremont case arose in December, 1982, when a 14-year-old boy attacked a female student in a park near Thornton Junior High School. Twice in 1983, in January and then in May, the same boy was accused of again attacking and harassing female students, although none of the incidents took place on school grounds.

Local police arrested the student after the first attack, but he was later returned to the school. In May, angry parents complained to the Fremont school board that the principal and his assistants had failed to halt the attacks.

“We didn’t hear about any of the other incidents (after December) until the parents came to the board in May,” said Wayne Ferguson, the Fremont superintendent. “I have 42 schools and 25,000 students here, so you can’t hear about everything.”

‘Didn’t Do Anything Wrong’

“The parents say we didn’t act quickly enough, and the credentials commission says we didn’t do enough, but in this kind of case, what is enough?” Ferguson asked. “We feel we didn’t do anything wrong. We did report the matter to police.”

He noted that the district attorney’s office in Alameda County investigated the complaints against the Fremont school officials and decided against filing charges against them.

However, the group of angry parents and officials of the Alameda County Board of Education referred the case to the state credentials commission.

The commission on credentials--made up of seven members, including teachers and school officials--decided in April that the Fremont officials had failed to act responsibly.

“The charge against the people at the school was that they didn’t take this seriously. They just tried to handle it internally,” Taylor said. “The charge against Ferguson was that he knew, or reasonably should have known, that persons under his supervision had failed to take timely action in this matter.”