Reinstatement of Teacher in Lewd Conduct Case Assailed

When social studies teacher King Steadman was arrested last year, Fullerton Elementary School District officials told the PTA president at D. Russell Parks Junior High that it was “a morals problem,” that it did not involve children and that they would appreciate her help in keeping it quiet.

So during the six months that Steadman was on mandatory suspension from teaching, Betsy Cheek didn’t say a word. And, aside from some speculation among teachers at the school about Steadman’s absence, neither did anyone else.

There was no announcement by school district officials, formal or otherwise, about the charges--lewd conduct and indecent exposure--that were filed against Steadman in San Bernardino County or about the circumstances surrounding them. The only official mention was one line in a school board personnel report: Steadman’s name and the Education Code number that governed his leave of absence.

But just as quietly as Steadman was removed from his teaching duties, so too was he put back into his eighth-grade classroom earlier this year, after a closed meeting of the Fullerton Elementary School District’s Board of Trustees.

Only his name appeared in a March 22 school board report of action on personnel matters, along with yet another Education Code number.

Today, Cheek remembers her meeting with school district officials in October, 1987, with some bitterness. That was when they called her in, she said, to inform her of Steadman’s arrest.

“As PTA president, both the superintendent and the principal said that they wanted me to know that there was a problem and that they hoped I would keep it confidential,” she said.

“I knew it was a morals problem, and they said it had nothing to do with children,” she said. “And then, when he was put back in the classroom, I assumed that he had been cleared and then I said to myself, ‘See, it wasn’t really bad. It was good that I had kept quiet. Why ruin this man’s life?’ And then when I found out. . . . Whew.”

What Cheek found out, after hearing rumors and later confirming them with school district officials, was that Steadman pleaded no contest to lewd conduct in a plea bargain. For sentencing purposes in a criminal case, a no-contest plea--a defendant’s declaration that he will not offer a defense to the charge--is tantamount to a guilty plea.

Court documents filed in Municipal Court in San Bernardino County show that Steadman served one day in jail and was put on two years’ probation, the terms of which ban him from returning to the scene of his arrest, the Erotic Words And Pictures Bookstore in Fontana.

Were it to end there, Cheek and other parents believe, the school district’s decision to reinstate Steadman still would merit some explanation. But what Cheek was to find out later--that Steadman’s arrest in Fontana was his second on lewd conduct charges--has left her close to incredulous.

After meeting again with Supt. Duncan Johnson and later sending a letter to the school board, Cheek believes that her concerns have been brushed aside.

“I think the school board and Duncan have been real arrogant about this thing,” Cheek said. “The impression that they have given me is that is that they wouldn’t do anything about it and that it was no big deal.”

Under the California Education Code, which lists lewd conduct as a sex offense, the school district may, in its discretion, fire any teacher for conviction of any crime involving moral turpitude or for immoral or unprofessional conduct.

In an unrelated incident, four of the current five school board members voted in 1984 to demote elementary school Principal John Roseman after a judge dismissed charges of child molesting against him. The court found that Roseman had changed a 5-year-old girl’s soiled underpants after she had an accident and was crying.

“He exercised extremely poor judgment,” school board member Robert Fisler said at the time. “And frankly, we don’t want principals with bad judgment.”

In the Steadman case, as required by state law, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department sent a report of the arrest to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing in Sacramento, which then began its own investigation before deciding whether to revoke Steadman’s teaching credential. The commission, which is expected to decide this week whether to revoke Steadman’s credential, does not distinguish between no-contest and guilty pleas, said Walter Taylor, the commission’s administrator of professional standards.

Cover-Up Alleged

But even if the commission decides to revoke Steadman’s teaching credential, making his reinstatement at D. Russell Parks Junior High moot, Cheek believes that the district’s handling of the case smacks of a cover-up.

She complains that she and other parents were never given the opportunity to decide whether they were comfortable with Steadman teaching their children.

“It is entirely possible that in a social studies class there would be discussions on value judgment and responsibility,” Cheek said, “and (Steadman), as far as I am concerned, does not come from a good base to be leading such a discussion, as a good citizen. I certainly don’t want my son to grow up and see him as a role model.”

In addition to his October arrest in Fontana, documents filed in North Orange County Municipal Court show that Steadman was arrested on March 20, 1981, a Friday night, in the men’s restroom at Hillcrest Park in Fullerton. He was charged with soliciting an undercover police officer to “engage in lewd and dissolute conduct in a public place,” with loitering in a public restroom “for the purpose of engaging in and soliciting a lewd and lascivious and an unlawful act,” and with possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.

Charges Dismissed

Those charges were dismissed when Steadman pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace. He was put on two years’ probation with the stipulation that he not return to Hillcrest Park “or similar location.”

And even Steadman’s attorney in the prosecution after the October arrest, Stephen Klarich of Tustin, conceded that if the district attorney’s office in San Bernardino County had been aware of the prior offense in Orange County his client would have faced a stiffer criminal penalty.

“Was it a reduced charge? I don’t know,” Klarich said of the 1981 Fullerton case. “The D.A. (in San Bernardino County) didn’t care--perhaps he should have. Was it really a lewd conduct? Was it a sex crime? The D.A. didn’t really care, and neither did I.”

But the Fullerton Elementary School District knew of Steadman’s prior arrest, after which he was quietly transferred within the district from Ladera Vista Junior High School to J. Russell Parks.

Andrew Clay, the principal at Ladera Vista at the time, said Steadman requested the transfer “because of all the rumors at school. It was not a recommendation of the district.”

Fullerton Police Chief Philip Goehring said that the Police Department, as required by law, informed the state credentialing commission of the 1981 arrest, in writing, on March 25 of that year and that on April 2, 1981, a nearly identical letter was sent to the Fullerton Elementary School District.

In an interview with The Times, Fullerton Supt. Johnson said he was unaware of the 1981 arrest but, when contacted later, acknowledged that he did “remember the incident” and that the school board also knew of it when it voted to reinstate Steadman earlier this year.

Arrest Incident Detailed

A source close to the school board said that during the closed meeting in October, 1987, in which Steadman’s Fontana arrest was discussed, Johnson described in detail the circumstances of the prior arrest.

But beyond saying that they believe the decision to put Steadman back in the classroom was correct, district and school board officials refuse to talk about King Steadman or the circumstances of his return to the classroom. There has been no public discussion of the matter, and the vast majority of parents at J. Russell Parks Junior High know nothing of the case.

Steadman could not be reached for comment. According to his mother and his former wife, he is on an extended camping trip in the Pacific Northwest.

In response to the letter Betsy Cheek wrote to the school board asking for herself “and other interested parents” why Steadman was returned to Parks Junior High, Johnson and John Bedell, the president of the school board, noted “uncertainity in the law” regarding the effect of no-contest pleas in civil matters.

“Although Ed. Code Section 44836 prohibits a school district from employing anyone convicted of any sex offense as defined in Education Code Section 44010, the law does not clearly view a nolo contendere plea in a criminal matter to be a conviction prohibiting employment under this statute,” the administrators said in a written response to Cheek.

Broad Discretion

But in making personnel decisions, school boards have relatively broad discretion, as was shown earlier this year in another case in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

Citing his “immoral conduct” and “evident unfitness to teach,” the Saddleback Valley district fired elementary school teacher Keith Milne even after a court had acquitted him of misdemeanor charges of touching eight fifth-grade girls on their breasts, thighs and under their blouses. The district, in explaining its decision, said it had considered evidence not admissible in court.

Attorney David Larsen, whose Costa Mesa firm, Rutan & Tucker, represents several Orange County school districts, said that all school boards, including the Fullerton Elementary School District Board of Trustees, have discretion in personnel matters, “although they cannot abuse their discretion.”

“Many times, there is conduct that may not qualify as a crime but may show that the person is not fit to be a teacher,” Larsen said. “There is nothing to prevent a district from looking at the underlying conduct. The question is, ‘Is this the kind of person we want to teach kids?’

“There are two questions that weigh on districts. Did the conduct occur and can it be proved? And the next is the impact on the educational process in general. They have a lot of discretion as a board,” he added. “But it is something that the public has a right to know about.”