Teacher’s Firing Brings Sexual Harassment Issue to Fore : Education: Critics worry that the instructor-pupil bond may suffer after a judge ruled an educator’s conduct with female students was immoral behavior.

Band teacher Kenneth Haar was an expressive, sometimes emotional instructor. The respected, veteran teacher would tease and joke with students at Killingsworth Junior High in Hawaiian Gardens. Once in a while he put an arm around a student. Sometimes he would move a student’s fingers on a clarinet or flute with his hand.

Now the veteran teacher is at the center of a dispute over whether he crossed the line from friendliness to sexual harassment, from professionalism to immoral conduct.

The ABC Unified School District fired Haar, arguing that on several occasions he went too far, that he cannot be trusted around adolescent girls. Hundreds of parents, students and colleagues have rallied to Haar’s defense. They say Haar is the victim of questionable allegations and accusers.

The controversy over Haar’s conduct has changed the way school district employees and students view sexual harassment. Some educators worry that the outcome will chill relations between teachers and students and expose teachers to unwarranted charges of harassment from disgruntled pupils.

The attorney for the school district maintained that Haar’s behavior was clearly improper. “Children are entitled to affection, but there are lines to be drawn,” attorney Jim Baca said. “I don’t think they’re fine lines. They are clear-cut lines that educators have a responsibility to acknowledge and not to cross.”

The case could break legal ground in California, setting a precedent for the handling of sexual harassment in schools.

The dispute is all the more bitter because of what Haar did not do.

No one claims that Haar molested anyone. All sides even agree on much of what happened. The difference is largely in the interpretation of events.

For now, Judge Stephen O’Neil has had the last say. He ruled Oct. 20 that the district had the right to fire Haar, a 26-year employee. Haar has been suspended without pay since February.

The judge concluded that in the last few months of 1991, Haar had engaged in immoral conduct, consisting of hugging and touching 13- and 14-year-old girls against their will and bothering them by commenting on their attractiveness.

Among the most damaging evidence was testimony that Haar dressed up as Santa Claus at a school party last year and offered girls an extra raffle ticket if they would sit on his lap, tell him what they wanted for Christmas, and give him a hug and a kiss.

Witnesses or alleged victims also testified that on other occasions, Haar told a girl that her skirt was too short, and in several other incidents, touched this girl’s hand, hugged her with one arm or commented that she was cute.

Haar said to another girl, in a discussion about attending high school, that she should take Mace with her because she was so cute, witnesses testified.

O’Neil looked at these incidents and found Haar guilty of immoral conduct. A school district administrative panel had accepted these same incidents as true but concluded that Haar was guilty of nothing worse than unwise behavior.

Haar, who is in his early 50s, declined to be interviewed, but according to his attorney, the music teacher did not dispute making some of the comments. But he denied touching students in a suggestive manner, as the district alleged. Attorney Laurence Rosenzweig said none of the incidents bore the “sinister aspects” implied by the school district.

Rosenzweig and the executive board of the ABC Federation of Teachers were scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss appealing the Superior Court decision.

O’Neil’s ruling overturned the decision of a school district panel consisting of an administrative law judge and two teachers--one appointed by Haar and the other selected by the district. The all-male panel concluded unanimously in June that the allegations weren’t serious enough to fire Haar. The panel’s ruling would have allowed Haar to return to work with back pay, but the district appealed to Superior Court.

“This is a classic sexual harassment case in which the testimony of the victim is pitted against the testimony of the harasser and the victim’s testimony is discredited, or worse, simply ignored,” Baca argued in court papers.

“The girls’ principal testified that all of these girls are good students with good conduct marks and no history of disciplinary problems,” he wrote.

The district presented corroborating witnesses for two of the allegations the panel discounted, Baca said. Witnesses or alleged victims testified that, among other things, Haar rubbed the leg of one girl with his leg while standing next to her. Two girls testified that, at the Christmas party, Haar placed his hand on a girl’s thigh and rubbed it in small circles.

Attorneys for the district argued that the evidence was more than enough to fire Haar. They cited cases outside California, including two from Washington state. In one, an elementary teacher lost his job for placing his hand on the knees or legs of girls, “sometimes in a caressing manner.” In the other, courts upheld the dismissal of a teacher, who, “among other things, hugged female students against their will.”

Baca could produce no California cases, however, of a school teacher being fired for sexually harassing students. He noted that he was asking the judge to venture onto untried ground.

The ruling against Haar could force teachers to re-evaluate even the most innocent student contact, said Laura Rico, co-president of the ABC Federation of Teachers. “Two male junior high school teachers said to me: ‘That’s it. How can I teach?’ One said, ‘I’m coming back to the classroom and sitting behind the desk and not moving again.’ ”

Parent Dina Lowe, a Haar supporter, questioned the motivations of the girls who accused Haar. “For some reason, they just did not appreciate him and made up their minds they were going to cause him some grief.”

Lowe is one of numerous parents and former students who have rallied to Haar’s defense. More than 200 supporters crowded a recent school board meeting to call for his reinstatement.

They described Haar as an essentially shy man who offered a showy exterior to students. They said his style was sometimes to act like a big kid, to tease and become a pal to students. They said he often used the word cute , sometimes to describe looks, but also sarcastically.

“If somebody pulls a stunt, he’ll say: ‘You’re real cute,’ ” Lowe said. “These hugs, these pats on the shoulders are reassurance. He’s always done things to build up students, build up their confidence.”

Haar spent most of his ABC Unified career as the band director at Gahr High in Cerritos, before transferring to the junior high. Parents and students said he was a capable and dedicated music teacher, and an energetic fund-raiser who took students on performance trips across the country.

Former student Della Smith said older teen-agers sometimes felt as though they outgrew Haar and no longer appreciated his attention. “But having filed a sexual harassment claim as an adult, I know what sexual harassment feels like,” she added. “And Mr. Haar never made me feel that way.”

But attorneys for the district insisted that they uncovered evidence that Haar made some students feel uncomfortable even before he came to Killingsworth.

The district began investigating Haar in January after four students complained to a school counselor about the way Haar was touching them and talking to them. The district called in the Sheriff’s Department and suspended Haar, a fairly standard procedure in possible abuse cases.

Sheriff’s deputies ultimately gathered evidence from interviews with at least 140 students. The district attorney’s office declined to file charges because investigators found no evidence of molestation. Sexual harassment is not a criminal offense, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney.

Haar’s attorney maintained that the district treated his client, a district teacher since 1965, in a heavy-handed manner.

“Obviously everybody knows that sexual harassment is wrong,” Rosenzweig said. “The danger in this ruling is that it could be read that if a teacher ever touches a student it is improper, and that is not how things work.

“Here’s a guy who’s been teaching for 26 years and had excellent evaluations, and they abandoned him,” Rosenzweig said.

But district officials insisted that it was Haar who went too far. Haar “has repeatedly demonstrated his poor judgment and his lack of respect for the privacy and the feelings of his female students,” Baca wrote in court papers. “He continued to touch them even when he knew they disliked such contact. . . . Haar’s attitude that his harassment was a joke evidences the fact that he does not understand sexual harassment and thus cannot avoid it.”

The school system is considering a sexual harassment policy, spokeswoman Helen Fried said. The proposed regulations are likely to establish harassment as grounds for dismissal. She added that the district also intends to educate employees on how to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Some district observers said administrators acted so decisively to fire Haar in part because of criticism they received over two earlier alleged molestation incidents involving teachers at Hawaiian Gardens schools. In the more recent case, a judge in 1990 sentenced long-term substitute teacher Ernest Ferguson to six years in prison for molestation. Ferguson, who worked in the district from February to May, 1989, taught band at Killingsworth Junior High, the same position as Haar.

In a lawsuit against the district, the attorney for one victim claimed that ABC Unified was negligent in hiring Ferguson because he had been fired from a previous teaching job over molestation allegations.

Supt. Larry Lucas said that the district was not negligent, that administrators checked Ferguson’s credential and that it was valid.

ABC officials denied any connection between the earlier molestation cases and their decision to fire Haar.