Rules Letting Molester Run School Draw Fire : Education: The director of a Los Angeles private school was convicted three years ago. His case is prompting officials to look into loopholes in the state education code.

State officials are investigating loopholes in the California education code that have allowed the director of a Los Angeles private school to continue in his post despite a child molestation conviction three years ago.

In 1987, the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, a school serving dozens of Muslim children in kindergarten through the 12th grade, was convicted of two counts of committing lewd acts on an 11-year-old girl.

Saad Aldin Alazzawi was never jailed and has retained his post as the school’s chief administrator. Unlike public schools, there is no law that prevents convicted child molesters from running or teaching at a private school and no formal requirement that the schools be notified if a current employee is accused of molestation, according to Roger Wolfertz, an assistant general counsel for the state Department of Education.

“It’s outrageous,” said Jane Henderson, a consultant to the state Senate Select Committee on Children and Youth. “I can’t believe that a convicted child molester could be allowed to continue to run a school. If that’s the case, it certainly needs to be corrected posthaste.”

Alazzawi, who has staunchly maintained his innocence, said he found it ironic that his case had prompted state officials to begin looking into legislation to prevent a convicted child molester from staffing a private school.

“For those who are clearly guilty, they shouldn’t be around children, around those they could harm,” Alazzawi said. “But if they take my case as the reason for legislation, it would be unjust. My case is an example of injustice done.”

Public school officials are automatically alerted by the state Justice Department’s computer whenever a teacher or administrator is charged with molesting a child. Such is not the case in most private schools.

While the computer warnings are available to all California schools, only 42 of the 6,882 private schools in the state--fewer than 1%--have signed up with the Justice Department to be notified if a teacher is arrested.

“I don’t know why they don’t take advantage of it,” said Doug Smith, assistant chief of the Justice Department’s identification and information branch. “One possibility is that private schools may not realize the service is available.”

Some private school administrators may believe they’re already getting the service. John Hitchcock, director of a Pasadena private school, said state officials don’t make it “clear at all” that an extra effort has to be made to get the arrest reports of current employees.

Founded by Alazzawi in 1975, the Institute of Islamic Studies--also known as Qurdobah--has long offered a curriculum set within the framework of the Muslim faith. Prayers are observed, the Koran is memorized. Girls wear long skirts to cover their legs and scarfs over their hair.

On Oct. 31, 1986, Alazzawi was arrested at the school and booked on the molestation charges. He was accused of committing lewd acts with a student at the school by exposing his genitals and rubbing them against her body. The molestations occurred off the school grounds.

Soon after he was released on bail, Alazzawi gathered parents at the school, told them of the accusations--and flatly denied them. Alazzawi argued that the molestation was the fantasy of a little girl who was rebelling against the strict tenets of Islam and wanted to strike out at the man she saw as the chief proponent of those beliefs, according to court papers.

Many of the parents believed Alazzawi, even after he was convicted. But in recent years the school’s student population has shrunk from as many as 70 pupils to 24 at the beginning of the 1989-90 school year.

“Everyone I’ve talked to said there was no way he could have done it,” said Darlene Waheed, who sent three children to the Islamic school for a time. “But ever since that happened, the quality of education wasn’t the same.”

Sam Badawy, who removed his daughter after the scandal broke, was more direct: “It’s not right for him to run the school. It’s not right for anybody to allow him to run the school.”

After Alazzawi was convicted by a jury in June, 1987, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Henry P. Nelson sentenced the school administrator to six months in jail. An appellate court upheld his conviction in 1989, but the jail time was waived.

Alazzawi said it is his personal policy to tell parents of children who are new to the school about his conviction.

“The parents and everyone involved know the case is phony,” said Alazzawi. “I am a man of integrity. . . . I value the trust between me and the parents.”

In recent months, the episode has also caused a rift between Alazzawi and leaders of the Islamic community in Los Angeles, who believe the school director should step down in light of the conviction.

“The guy is just another individual in Los Angeles who broke the law, and he should pay the price,” said Omar Ricci, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California, which is not associated with the school. “He shouldn’t be running the school. We’re doing our best to put some community pressure on him.”

It is unclear whether the Alazzawi case is an isolated one. There are no statistics on child molestation convictions involving the 32,000 teachers in California’s private schools, state education officials say.

But a look at the frequency of child molestation in California public schools provides a useful illustration. Out of about 300,000 credentialed teachers, there were 84 cases in 1988-89 involving educators accused of sexual molestation or other abuse, state officials said. That is one out of every 3,500 teachers.

Some administrators fear that loopholes in the law could attract molesters to private schools.

“I’ll bet there are some others,” Hitchcock said. “One of the things I think is real clear to me having worked in the system is that a pedophile will find a loophole and take advantage of it. I’m sure there are some pedophiles out there who found they could own or run a private school and get away with it.”

Indeed, there are some vivid examples across the country of child molesters who have managed to land jobs at private schools despite previous run-ins with the law.

A private school principal in Maryland was arrested in 1987 for molesting a 14-year-old boy. Only then did authorities discover that the man had been convicted nearly two decades earlier in a child abuse case in Connecticut.

In another Maryland case, a gymnastics instructor at a Bethesda private school was arrested and charged with sexual offenses against six boys in his neighborhood. Police later discovered he had been convicted twice previously of molesting boys.

California has had similar episodes. Alan Thomas Rigby, a onetime track coach at a private grade school in Corona del Mar, was sentenced in May, 1989, to 19 years in prison for forcing 19 students to perform sexual acts with him and each other. Rigby had been arrested previously in New York and Orange County on suspicion of molestation, but those charges had been dropped or reduced.

But it is the Alazzawi case that is prodding California lawmakers into action.

After they learned a few months ago that Alazzawi was still at the Institute of Islamic Studies, California education officials and aides to state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), whose district includes the Muslim school, started searching for ways to tighten the law.

“It’s a real unfortunate situation that there are no laws on the books that would protect against this sort of situation,” said Anna Gonzales, a Watson aide. “It’s a very difficult thing to regulate because a private school is a business, just like a hot dog stand or anything else.”

Indeed, private schools have long been exempt from many of the rules enforced within classrooms of the public sector, largely because legislators have been reluctant to place regulations on institutions that do not receive state funding, education authorities say.

One result has been a lack of any law that specifically prohibits private schools from being run or staffed by convicted pedophiles.

At public schools, officials keep tabs on a teacher’s criminal background through the credentialing process. To get a state teaching credential, applicants must pass a criminal records check to determine if they have been charged with any felonies, such as child molestation.

Once a credential has been granted, public school teachers are held under strict standards during their tenure in the classroom. If they are charged with child molestation or other felonies anywhere in the state, a police report is sent to the California Justice Department’s central computer.

Justice Department officials then notify the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which suspends the teacher’s license and removes him from the classroom while the matter is settled in court.

The standards are far more lax in private schools. Because private schools are not required to hire credentialed educators, teachers at such institutions are generally unlicensed.

But such uncredentialed teaching applicants at private schools are required under California law to obtain a state criminal record summary from the Department of Justice and forward it to the school.

After that, it is left to the discretion of the private school administrator to review the criminal record and decide whether the applicant’s background is suitable for working with children.