UPDATE
Teacher Sex With Students – “Not a Fringe Benefit” in Alabama Any More
Sex with student over 16 cost teacher here teaching certificate in Alabama
(For further comment contact, Citizens for Better Schools 1-888-316-2325
or Larry Craven General Counsel, Alabama State Department of Education,Email:
Telephone: 334-242-9700
Teacher Sex With Students – Is “Not a Fringe Benefit” in Alabama Any More:
The Alabama State Department of Education revoked the teaching certificate of Allison Fisher, a former Wenonah High School teacher, for unethical conduct on July 17, 2009. The Birmingham Board of Education allowed Fisher to resign her Advanced Placement History teaching position last February when the mother of a 17 year-old male student in Fisher's class informed school officials of sexually explicit text message exchanges.
The Wenonah incident prompted reform legislation protecting children against sexual predators who have sex with schoolchildren over the age of sixteen, promoted by Citizens for Better Schools' public advocacy and research www.cfbsedu.org . Under current Alabama law, teachers having sex with students over 16 is not a crime. Efforts to close Alabama's "Sweet Sixteen Sexual Loophole" will continue in the legislature next year. See:
In response to the legislature's failure to enact protective legislation, ALSDE promulgated new rules governing school personnel ethical conduct. In July the Alabama State board of Education adopted a new Code of Educator Ethics which allows the Alabama State Department of Education to sanction, including revocation of teacher certificates, school personnel, administrators, teachers, and school system employees. Fisher is believed to be the first school teacher in Alabama to have a teaching certificate revoked for sexual misconduct under the new Code of Educator Ethics.
Alabama's revocation of Fisher's teaching certificate revocation will be reported to other state education department in the U. S.
Citizens for Better Schools executive Director, Ronald E. Jackson, applauded the actions of ALSDE in establishing a new code of educator ethics in Alabama and revoking the former Wenonah High School teacher's teaching certificate. Jackson said "This revocation is welcome news on the eve of the start of a new school year. The State Department of Education's announcement of this revocation for sexual misconduct could not be better timed, sending a crystal clear message to all school personnel that sexual misconduct involving students, of any age, will no longer be tolerated in the State of Alabama. The message now is - Sexually harassing or engaging in sex with our schoolchildren, even if you can't be criminally prosecuted, will result in the loss of your job and teaching career.
ALABAMA TEACHERS ARRESTED THEIR STUDENTS SEXUALLY ABUSED:
The Birmingham Board of Education allowed a Wenonah High School Student to “resign” after a parent found sexually explicit text messages from the female teacher to her 17 year old son. In another incident, a male Huffman High School band teacher was arrested and charged with having sex with a 17-year-old male student behind the old Curry Elementary School.
BREWTON SPECIAL ED TEACHER'SSEXUAL MISCONDUCT (WAITED UNTIL STUDENTS WERE 16:
Sexual misconduct by school employees in Alabama is a growing problem. School districts too often simply “allow” these employees to “silently resign” their positions, leaving many of them in position to seek similar employment in other school districts in Alabama and other states. More troubling, receiving school districts will have no knowledge of the prior misconduct and bad acts of these undisciplined sexual offenders because the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE, www.alsde.edu ) will not release information on school employees who have been found to have violated school system sexual misconduct policies. According to Larry Craven, the chief lawyer for ALSDE, the State Department of education will release this type information to the public and news media only where an employee has been convicted of a crime
The curious case of the Madison County School System pedophile is a good example of the problem parents face in protecting school children from sexual misconduct by school employees. . See, Ex Parte Madison County School Board (William Ford Reeves) http://www.maynardcooper.com/news/Weekly%20Law%20Report%203-17-08633414436387135303.html (Held: because the teacher’s previous [sexual misconduct complaints were sporadic over a sixteen year period], [Madison County School Board Human Resource Director Nash’s] failure to act, while possibly negligent, did not amount to deliberate indifference [to student safety.] ) The Madison County school board, on five different occasions, three times while Reeves was teaching in a high school, and two times while teaching in an elementary school, disciplined Reeves for sexual misconduct. Reeves’ last known offense in the Madison County school system was for allegedly asking a female student to “suck hid penis.” Reeve’s defense, as reported in an appeals court’s opinion, was that “I told her to suck my noise.” Nonetheless, this conduct was held to be legally insufficient to fire this acknowledged pedophile from Madison’s school system. This teacher later retired from the Madison County school system, while he was charged for allegedly raping a Madison County school system teenager.
HB 810 would be an effective deterrent and send a strong policy massage to school system employees, children come to school to learn, not to be sexual fringe benefits for unethical school employees. Senate passage of HB 810 is essential to maintaining public confidence in public education’s ability to protect our children. Schools should be a safe haven for children, not a sexual trap or playground for pedophiles.
Only the Alabama Senate can, by passing House Bill 810, now help rid Alabama schools from the kind of sexual misconduct found in the Madison County School System case.
MOTHER ON QUEST TO CHANGE ALABAMA SCHOOL SEX LAWS (Wenonah High School teacher’s sex with student prompts reform movement) Read Birmingham News story here:
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA (APRIL 18, 2009) THE ALABAMA LEGISLATURE - WILL THEY PROTECT ALABAMA SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL PREDATORS IN ALABAMA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
With only two legislative days left in the 2009 Regular Legislative Session Senators Rodger Smitherman, Zeb Little, and Lieutenant governor Jim Folsom, Jr. control the fate of House Bill 810 (Preventing sexual misconduct against students committed by school employees). HB 810 has been “in the basket” of the Senate in sufficient time for the Bill to become law – Except, Lt. Governor Folsom and Senators Smitherman and Little have not “moved the Bill” for final passage.
Sexual misconduct by school employees in Alabama is a growing problem. School districts too often simply “allow” these employees to “silently resign” their positions, leaving many of them in position to seek similar employment in other school districts in Alabama and other states. More troubling, receiving school districts will have no knowledge of the prior misconduct and bad acts of these undisciplined sexual offenders because the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE, www.alsde.edu ) will not release information on school employees who have been found to have violated school system sexual misconduct policies. According to Larry Craven, the chief lawyer for ALSDE, the State Department of education will release this type information to the public and news media only where an employee has been convicted of a crime
The curious case of the Madison County School System pedophile is a good example of the problem parents face in protecting school children from sexual misconduct by school employees. . See, Ex Parte Madison County School Board (William Ford Reeves) http://www.maynardcooper.com/news/Weekly%20Law%20Report%203-17-08633414436387135303.html (Held: because the teacher’s previous [sexual misconduct complaints were sporadic over a sixteen year period], [Madison County School Board Human Resource Director Nash’s] failure to act, while possibly negligent, did not amount to deliberate indifference [to student safety.] ) The Madison County school board, on five different occasions, three times while Reeves was teaching in a high school, and two times while teaching in an elementary school, disciplined Reeves for sexual misconduct. Reeves’ last known offense in the Madison County school system was for allegedly asking a female student to “suck hid penis.” Reeve’s defense, as reported in an appeals court’s opinion, was that “I told her to suck my noise.” Nonetheless, this conduct was held to be legally insufficient to fire this acknowledged pedophile from Madison’s school system. This teacher later retired from the Madison County school system, while he was charged for allegedly raping a Madison County school system teenager.
HB 810 would be an effective deterrent and send a strong policy massage to school system employees, children come to school to learn, not to be sexual fringe benefits for unethical school employees. Senate passage of HB 810 is essential to maintaining public confidence in public education’s ability to protect our children. Schools should be a safe haven for children, not a sexual trap or playground for pedophiles.
Only the Alabama Senate can, by passing House Bill 810, now help rid Alabama schools from the kind of sexual misconduct found in the Madison County School System case.
MOTHER ON QUEST TO CHANGE ALABAMA SCHOOL SEX LAWS (Wenonah High School teacher’s sex with student prompts reform movement) Read Birmingham News story here:
COMEDIAN WANDA SYKES URGES PRESIDENT OBAMA END SEX WITH STUDENTS - IT'S NO JOKE:
COMEDIAN WANDA SYKES MAKES APPEAL AT WASHINGTON WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' BANQUET:
Scroll to 7:56 minutes of this video for "Pay teachers more money, maybe they will stop sleeping with the students"
U. S. DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION STUDY:
ALABAMA TEACHERS ARRESTED
THEIR STUDENTS SEXUALLY ABUSED:
The Birmingham Board of Education allowed a Wenonah High School Student to “resign” after a parent found sexually explicit text messages from the female teacher to her 17 year old son. In another incident, a male Huffman High School band teacher was arrested and charged with having sex with a 17-year-old male student behind the old Curry Elementary School.
House Bill 810 is waiting final passage in the Alabama Senate. The Bill would make it a felony for school system employees to have sex with any student below the age of 18, closing Alabama's "Sweet Sixteen age of consent" loophole in Alabama's current sexual misconduct laws."
With only two days left in this legislative session, only Senate Pro Tem. Rodger Smitherman of Birmingham or Lieutenant Governor Jim Folsom, Jr. can put an end to this outrageous conduct by having the Alabama Senate Vote on final passage HB 810 before this legislative session ends. The last legislative day of this regular session is May 15, 2009.
THE CURIOUS CASE of “EX PARTE MADISON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION’S” PEDIOPHILE TEACHER - In Alabama, it is extremely difficult to fire a school employee for sexual misconduct. In spite of five (5) documented cases of sexual misconduct against elementary and high school girls, a Madison County teacher kept his job, even though the Madison County School Board was "negligent" in supervising this employee accused of raping a female student.
(Ex Parte Madiosn County School Board, read about it below)
BREWTON SPECIAL ED TEACHER'SSEXUAL MISCONDUCT (WAITED UNTIL STUDENTS WERE 16:
Huffman Band Director Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charge, Birmingham
HOW WIDESPREAD ARE THESE PROBLEMS? HOW FREQUENTLY ARE THEY OCCURING? WHAT ARE SCHOOL BOARDS DOING TO PREVENT SEXUAL MISCONDUCT BY STAFF WITH STUDENTS? HOW MANY OFFENDERS ARE THERE AND IN WHAT SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND SCHOOLS? WHAT DOES THE PUBLIC KNOW? WHAT SHOULD THE PUBLIC KNOW? WHAT CAN THE PUBLIC DO TO STOP THESE ATROCITIES? These are question Citizens for Better Schools www.cfbsedu.org is assiduously working (on behalf of students and parents) to answer. Frankly, According to a survey by the Associated Press, Alabama is among states that fail to provide the public the data these questions asks.
Last month the parent of a male Wenonah High School Advanced Placement History student asked for CFBS assistance and help. The parent informed CFBS that her son’s 38 year-old female Advanced Placement History Teacher was engaged in a sexual relationship with her son, which began when he was just 17 years-old. The Wenonah parent met last December (2008) with Wenonah school officials, a Birmingham police officer serving as the school’s “resource officer,” and Birmingham Board of Education area administrators, and lawyers. The school district conducted an “investigation” of the parent’s allegation against the Wenonah teacher. In February, 2009 the Birmingham Board of Education “allowed” (in defiance of state law) the tenured Wenonah Advanced Placement Teacher to “resign” in lieu of termination “to save money” by not holding a “due process termination hearing,” according to school Board members Virginia Volker and Wenonah High School district representative Odessa Ashley.
EASY TRANSFER FOR DISCIPLINED TEACHERS “KEEP IT QUIET – JUST EASE THEM OUT OF OUR SYSTEM” Unless the Alabama State Department of Education acts to revoke the Wenonah high School teacher’s teaching certificate (and this is nearly impossible under an Alabama Supreme Court case out of Madison County), this teacher may be back in Alabama classrooms in some other school district soon (Many Alabama school districts do not share teacher sexual misconduct information with other school districts, allowing some “disciplined” teachers to go from one school district to another without detection of prior sexual or ethical misconduct.)
All the worst, Alabama teachers having sex with school children is not a new issue in the state. According to the Dothan Eagle newspaper, “the Alabama Department of Education, between 2001 and 2005, the department took action against the certification of more than 140 teachers. More than 60 of these offenses regarded sexual misconduct. The department defined sexual misconduct as, “not only criminal conduct, but also [sic] conduct which did not result in a criminal conviction.” That’s the tidbit of the problem the public now knows. Alabama has 132 school systems serving its 760,000 public school students. How many sexual misconduct incidents did local school boards deal with during the same period, and to date? No one knows for sure, and the ALSDE and its school boards are not telling.
TEACHER SEX DISCIPLINE KEPT FROM PUBLIC: Alabama school boards, like Birmingham’s, keep this data from public view. State school law allows school boards to keep “personnel actions confidential until a final decision has been made.” In the case of the Wenonah High teacher, that meant that the Wenonah parent was not notified by that the teacher was being allowed to resign without any adverse school board disciplinary action. In fact the Birmingham Police Department and Birmingham school system investigators did not have follow up contact with the Wenonah parent victimized by the school system’s teacher. Only when the parent initiated a call to Birmingham’s school board’s lawyers was the parent informed that the sexually miscreant teacher had been “allowed” to resign. School system personnel accused of sexual misconduct seem to know that school boards abhor “bad publicity,” and are willing to allow them to “ease” out of their school systems under the public’s radar. These sexual offenders also know Alabama sex laws very well.
DOTHAN HIGH SCHOOL – LAW NOT MUCH HELP IN FACE OF “ALABAMA’S SWEET SIXTEEN LOOP HOLE” The outlandish case of a Dothan High School principal sheds light on the confounding problems facing parents trying to protect their children from sexual miscreants in Alabama schools – “The Sweet-Sixteen Sexual Consent Loophole” in Alabama’s juvenile sex laws (the same problems my confront Jefferson County’s District Attorney as the Huffman High School band teacher’s sex case winds through Alabama’s courts): Houston County District Attorney Doug Valeska had a solid case against Andrew Sewell. Valeska had text messages sent by the former Dothan High principal to a student saying he loved her and wanted to marry her. He had phone records of calls exchanged between the two and excuses for absences written for the student by Sewell. He had evidence, but because the victim was over 16, all Valeska could charge Sewell with was contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor to which Sewell later pleaded guilty.
If you now think the Dothan situation is a legal loophole, wait until you read what the Alabama Supreme Court has said about firing teachers accused of sexual misconduct in Alabama Schools
EX PARTE MADISON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
The Alabama Supreme Court has written the following about a Madison County teacher with at least five (5) confirmed instances of sexual misconduct with elementary and high school students:
"Viewed from the perspective of the twenty-first century, the responses of [the supervisors] to reports of [the teacher's] conduct are disturbing. Hindsight reveals that [the teacher] was a pedophile. But our task is not to reconstruct the reality of [the teacher's] proclivities. Our task is to determine whether [the supervisors] were confronted with conduct that was `obvious, flagrant, rampant, and of continued duration, rather than isolated occurrences,' . . . or with `such a widespread pattern of constitutional violations' . . . that their actions demonstrated deliberate indifference to the danger of [the teacher's] sexually abusing students. We hold that they were not. We cannot weave the threads of such a pattern on the loom of hindsight, and the facts as [the student] portrays them do not demonstrate anything more than negligence on the part of these defendants. Although [the student] had a constitutional right to be free from sexual abuse at the hands of a school teacher or official, she did not have a constitutional right to be free from negligence in the supervision of the teacher who is alleged to have actually abused her. Negligence is not enough to impose section 1983 liability on a supervisor."
Like the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Roseville, we conclude that Nash's [Madison County School Board’s Human Relation’s Director] actions were at most negligent and that he is entitled to qualified immunity. Nash presented substantial evidence indicating that the previous incidents of misconduct by Reaves [the pedophile] were not "obvious, flagrant, rampant, and of continued duration," but were 5 isolated occurrences over a 16-year period that did not provide a basis for terminating Reaves's employment or provide him with sufficient notice that Reaves would seriously harm A.S.(fn8) A.S. . . [T]hese instances, however, do not amount to deliberate indifference but to, at most, negligence. As the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recognized, we cannot use hindsight to conclude that Nash inferred from these incidents that Reaves [the pedophile] posed a substantial risk of harm to the female students. Five instances of sexually harassing elementary and female high school students, confirmed, “reprimands” written and documented in teachers personnel file, but in the sixth bite at the apple, the school board was legally prohibited from firing a confirmed and known pedophile. He ultimately retired on An Alabama Teacher Retirement System pension. Perhaps teacher-pedophiles in your child’ school some day will retire on taxpayers dollars As the Madison County school system’s pedophile did.
Opposition to “Teacher-Student Sex Ban” legislation is expected to come from the Alabama Education Association and some members of the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus.
THANKS ON BEHALF OF OUR 768,000 ALABAMA SCHOOL CHILDREN AND 45,000 ETHICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS. Dial 1-334-242-7600 or email your State Representative by simply typing the first and last name of our House member Example:firstname.lastname@alhouse.org and SUPPORT THE WORK OF CITIZENS FOR BETTER SCHOOLS www.cfbsedu.org Contact us at cfbsk12@aol.com or CALL TOLL FREE 1-888-316-2325
DO IT NOW -YOU CAN PREVENT STUDENT SEXUAL ABUSE AT SCHOOL. Her are few recent examples of sexual misconduct by Alabama teachers:
ASSOCIATED PRESSGROUP SAYS ALA SEX LAWS TOO WEAK
2009/03/30/258916lteacherbuselaws_ap.html&destination=http://www.
edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/03/30/258916lteacherbuselaws_ap.html&levelId=1000
BREWTON SPECIAL ED TEACHER'SSEXUAL MISCONDUCT (WAITED TIL STUDENTS WERE 16):
TEACHER-STUDENT LOVE TURNS DEADLY
A Troubling Trend The pervasiveness of teacher-student sexual affairs is alarming
TEACHER SEXUAL MISCONDUCT, SCHOOL BOARD GOAL - "SAVE MONEY"DOTAHAN, BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL BAORDS ACCEPTS PRINCIPALS TEACHER’S RESIGNATIONS "IN LIEU OF TERMINATONS"(Birmingham's school board allowed a female teacher accused of sexual misconduct with her 17 year-old male student to resign, although state law prohibits teacher resignation during the school year. http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10121970&nav=menu33_1_7 
