Almost 40% of All Teacher Discipline in Arizona Involve Sexual Predation of Children in Schools
But no one wanted to do anything about it - until Gretchen Jacobs said "Enough!" and Shawnna Bolick, in her trademark acerbic style, replied "Damned Straight!"
Every month for the past year on Twitter(X) I highlight just some of the 39% of all teacher discipline cases in AZ involving sexual predation of minors. No one is doing anything about this. No one wants to do anything about it - because schools currently have immunity defenses.
Schools and their syndicate of political clients don’t want to mess with the system, however imperfect, and risk exposing districts to more lawsuits and actual *gasp* damages for their failures.
A parent can complain, the school does nothing, and school still gets immunity. Nice gig.
But that would have changed with SB1435, a bill sponsored by Senator @ShawnnaLMBolick and conceived by Scottsdale Unified School District governing board candidate Gretchen Jacobs to make it easier for victims to sue schools and hold administrators accountable - by eliminating "immunity" defenses, and forcing school administrators to take parent complaints seriously by actually doing something.
Specifically, SB1435 would eliminate immunity for a public entity where any child, including a child with a disability, is the victim of a sexual offense by an public employee, and either:
the public entity failed its duty to obtain a background check on the employee,
the entity or its employee had a mandatory duty to report and failed to do so, or
the public entity failed to reasonably investigate or take reasonable action on a complaint that a written policy was violated leading to the harm.
That’s all they’d have to do - just investigate when there’s a complaint, do your diligence on new hires, and report incidences you’re already obligated to report. Pretty reasonable stuff, really.
Governor Hobbes vetoed it.
The Arizona School Boards Association opposed it.
The Arizona School Administrators (i.e., superintendents) opposed it.
The bill was not perfect - but then, our current system of relying on fingerprint clearances and arrest reports from out of state is not perfect.
Perfection can be the enemy of the good. And this bill would have incentivized everyone to finally, at long last, improve the system that is meant to protect children in schools. Or else get sued into oblivion, like anyone in the private sector would.
Read more at AZ Free News here, and please - consider donating to Gretchen’s campaign by clicking her photo above or here.
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