What Schools Are Actually Doing To Protect Students From Predatory Teachers
I was leaning against the scuffed cinder block wall outside my daughter’s 7th grade after-school art club last month, folding crumpled gym clothes from my trunk into a laundry bag, when another mom I know from PTA, Lisa, pulled me aside out of earshot of the other waiting parents. She asked if I’d gotten that new background check reauthorization form the district emailed out the week before, said she almost tossed it in the junk folder before a friend reminded her what it was for. Three years ago, Lisa’s oldest daughter went to this same middle school, and the popular long-time art teacher, Mr. Hale, was fired after he admitted to sending inappropriate text messages to an 8th grade student. No one saw it coming, Lisa told me, and for months after, all the parents were asking what the school was going to do to keep that from happening again.
I’d just talked about this with my sister two weeks before, so I told her what I learned. My sister works in human resources for a nearby public school district, and she says a lot of parents assume nothing has changed after that kind of scandal, but that’s not true. Most of the changes are boring, administrative things you don’t hear about unless you’re looking for them, but they add up.
I remembered when I chaperoned my daughter’s 6th grade outdoor ed trip last spring, I had to get fingerprinted, upload a copy of my driver’s license, and wait 10 days for clearance before I was allowed to get on the bus. I complained about it at the time, joked that it felt like I was applying for a security clearance at the Pentagon, just to sleep in a cabin with a bunch of 11-year-olds. That’s a big change from 10 years ago, when only hired teachers got background checks, and any parent who showed up could chaperone, no questions asked. Now, pretty much every public school district requires recurring background checks, not just a one-time check when a teacher is hired. Most do a full recheck every 2 to 5 years, which pulls any new criminal offenses or sex offender registry listings that pop up after hire. And it’s not just teachers: coaches, bus drivers, after-school program volunteers, even regular classroom helpers have to get cleared.
Another common change that’s become standard almost everywhere is rules around one-on-one interaction and private communication. When I was in high school 20 years ago, teachers added students to their personal Facebook pages all the time, and it wasn’t seen as a big deal. Now, almost every district bans private communication between teachers and students on personal apps or social media. All check-ins, homework reminders, everything has to go through the school’s official communication platform – Canvas, ClassDojo, whatever the district uses – so every message is logged. For one-on-one meetings between a teacher and student, most schools now have an open-door policy: the door has to stay open, or the meeting has to be held in a visible space like the main office or a corner of the library, not a closed classroom with the door locked. After Mr. Hale was fired, our district added that rule specifically, because he’d been meeting that student in his classroom after school with the door closed for months before anyone noticed.
Mandatory annual training for staff and students is another big shift. It’s not just a one-time video when you’re hired. Every year, all teachers and staff have to go through training on what grooming behavior looks like, and they’re required by law to report any suspicion immediately to administration, no matter how small. For students, most middle and elementary schools now hold age-appropriate assemblies every year that go over red flags, and tell kids exactly who to talk to if something feels wrong. Our district also added an anonymous text tip line a couple years ago, where kids can report inappropriate behavior without giving their name. My sister says that almost half of the reports of misconduct her district gets now come through this tip line, because kids are often scared to speak up to an adult face to face if the person they’re reporting is a popular teacher.
Of course, none of this is perfect. There are still gaps: private schools don’t always have the same mandatory requirements as public schools, depending on the state, and some smaller rural districts don’t have the budget to run frequent background checks on every volunteer. There are still cases where a teacher fired for misconduct moves to another state and gets another job, though more and more states now require schools to report any confirmed sexual misconduct to the state licensing board, so the teacher’s license gets revoked and they can’t teach anywhere else. That’s still a work in progress.
As we waited for our kids, I gave Lisa a couple small concrete things she could do, besides filling out that form. I told her it takes two minutes to look up any teacher’s license on the state department of education website, and you can see if there’s any disciplinary action on their record. I told her at the next back-to-school night, she could ask the principal three simple questions: do you do recurring background checks for all staff and volunteers, do you require all communication with students go through official school channels, and how do you handle reports of misconduct? I also told her to talk to her kid using specific lines, not just “stay safe”: “No adult should ask you to keep a secret from mom or dad, and no adult should text you privately about anything that isn’t school. If that happens, tell me right away, and I won’t be mad, we’ll fix it together.”
Lisa pulled out her phone and filled out the background check form right there against the cinder block wall, before our kids came out. My daughter walked out a minute later, covered in cobalt blue paint, holding a lopsided clay mug she’d made for my birthday. We walked to the car, and I tossed the clay mug in the back seat next to the folded gym clothes. I still worry, of course. No system can ever eliminate all risk. But it’s not true that nothing is being done. All these small, boring, annoying administrative changes add up to more protection than there was 10 or 15 years ago. There’s still more work to do, but progress doesn’t always make the news.
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