Teacher Transfer
The most despicable part of the Los Angeles Schools’ delay in reporting accusations of child molestation by grade-school teacher Terry Bartholome at 68th Street School in the inner city is that, instead of temporarily suspending him pending investigation, they transferred him to another Los Angeles school.
Bartholome is quoted as saying that he thought his sexual feelings were caused in part by his need to leave the inner-city schools.
Having been a teacher for almost 20 years in Los Angeles inner-city schools, I know that the virtual impossibility of transferring (unless you know somebody in Administration who requests you) is extremely frustrating. But is that any reason to keep mentally and physically ill teachers in the inner city?
Or, in Bartholome’s case, should he have been teaching in any school in the system while the investigation was going on?
DOROTHY S. SCHONEBERG
Los Angeles
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