Schools Target Sex Cons

Seeking to narrow a loophole that allows sex offenders who are parents access to California schools, the Orange County Board of Education on Thursday directed its staff to look into drafting legislation that would increase notification and monitoring requirements.

The move was prompted by several parents’ discovery that the father of elementary school students in Huntington Beach had been convicted of lewd behavior with a person under age 14.

“While I’m all for parental rights, it’s also my duty to protect all my students from sexual offenders, from predators, particularly from child molesters,” said board member Alexandria Coronado. Currently, parents who are registered sex offenders “have carte blanche to be on a school campus.”

Under state law and the education code, as a parent, the man can go on campus and volunteer for classroom duty. The man currently only walks his children to school in the morning and picks them up in the afternoon, said district officials who did not identify him.

The school’s principal became aware of the man’s background after the state’s Megan’s Law website became active in late 2004. She informed his children’s teachers, so they could be on the lookout for any unusual behavior, as well as an on-site day-care center.

The board Thursday directed staff to look into drafting legislation that would increase notification requirements, as well as create potential monitoring guidelines for when offenders are on campus.

Coronado said two state legislators are discussing sponsoring a bill.

Defense attorneys and civil libertarians urged the board to move cautiously.

Scott Ciment, co-chairman of the legislative committee for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said that the information on registered sex offenders was readily available and that increasing notification requirements would be costly and duplicative.

And Elizabeth Schroeder, associate director of the ACLU of Southern California, said any modifications to existing law must be done in a way that would not harm the children of the offender.

“Legislators should be very cautious about stigmatizing children who have done no wrong,” she said.