Suspended teacher's complaints prompt Hernando School Board to reject deal to reinstate him

BROOKSVILLE – Citing his gripes about his new assignment, the Hernando School Board has rejected an agreement to reinstate a teacher who’d been suspended for drug use.

All five board members during Tuesday’s regular meeting expressed disgust for Michael Provost’s comments published Saturday in a regional edition of the St. Petersburg Times. Provost told a reporter he felt the district was trying to force him to quit by placing him at the STAR Education Center, the district’s alternative school in Brooksville for students with behavioral issues.

“This is the height of arrogance as far as I’m concerned,” board member Dianne Bonfield said as she waved a copy of the Hernando Times. “Had we wanted to force him out, the board would not have come up with this agreement.”

“Those kids need every positive help they can get,” board member Sandra Nicholson said. “For someone to go into that site with a negative attitude, it’s not what’s best for our students.”

Teacher quality initiatives could be big part of Florida's Race to the Top application

Florida has two months before it submits its Race to the Top application. But if this presentation to the state Board of Education yesterday is any indication, a whole bunch of teacher quality initiatives are being looked at by the Florida Department of Education. Among them: Finding ways to put more high-performing teachers into low-performing schools. Using student test scores to gauge the effectiveness of colleges of education. Coming up with better ways to evaluate teachers. And linking student data to professional development.

Who knows what form the application will finally take? And who knows whether Florida will win one of the grants? But if the $350-$700 million figures being thrown around are real, and if Florida is in as good a position to get the money as some suggest, Florida teachers could be seeing some big changes, soon.

UPDATE: Florida Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith is feeling pretty good about Florida's chances.

'Florida got excited'

A science teacher at a suburban Kansas City middle school finds himself out of a job, no thanks to the Sunshine State. 

During a lesson on jet streams, Ryan Haraughty drew the East Coast of the United States with Florida a little out of proportion, if you will. (Use your imagination.)

His students jumped on the mistake, and Haraughty responded that "Florida got excited."

"And right after, I'm thinking, you know, but I decided not to dwell on it," he told Fox 4 in Kansas City.

One parent did dwell on it, though, and accused Haraughty of creating a hostile environment. The School Board agreed and fired him.

Parents and kids have begun protesting, the Kansas City Star reports.

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Manatee moves to fire teacher for incompetence

Here's something you don't see every day.

The Manatee school district has taken steps to fire a tenured educator for failing to educate.

The Herald-Tribune reports that Buffalo Creek Middle School math teacher Laurel Davis didn't give enough tests, failed to grade some assignments and regularly turned in late lesson plans. On top of that, nearly half of her students declined in their FCAT performance.

District officials have counseled Davis and offered her more training, to little success. Meanwhile, parents requested to move their kids out of her class.

Most of the time, teachers facing this fate resign quietly. But Davis isn't going down without a fight.

She's requested a formal hearing, with the backing of the Manatee Education Association.

"It should not be easy to terminate a teacher's employment," MEA president Pat Barber told the Herald-Tribune. "The administration should be required to show they have good cause for doing it."

Florida gets an F for removing bad teachers

Florida got a mixed and overall mediocre report card today for its education system, including an A for data, a C for school management and an F for how well it removes ineffective teachers.

Put together by researchers at a trio of think tanks, including the liberal Center for American Progress and the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the "Leaders and Laggards" report focused on what it calls the "innovation gap" in American schools. It did not grade on a curve. No state got more than two A's (out of 8 categories), and the report reached pessimistic conclusions about the nation's schools as a whole. "From weak data capacity to anachronistic finance systems, schools just do not have the ability to respond to 21st century educational challenges," it says.

Like a lot of reports these days, this one received funding from the Gates Foundation.

Survey: Younger teachers more open to merit pay, but ...

Generation Y teachers (those born since 1977) are more likely than older teachers to support the idea of earning more money for working harder, and more likely to say that linking financial rewards to student performance might improve teaching, a new national survey finds.

But the survey from Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates also finds that younger teachers are less likely to support performance pay based on standardized test scores. And they're just as likely to say other things will improve teaching more, such as reducing class sizes, improving professional development opportunities or increasing teacher pay overall.

There are plenty of other interesting nuggets in the survey, including this one: 66 percent of teachers strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that "the union sometimes fights to protect teachers who really should be out of the classroom." That's up from 48 percent in 2003.

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Former Seminole High School teacher has teaching license revoked

Thomas J. Anderson - the former Seminole High teacher who allegedly encouraged a 16-year-old student to skip class, come home with him and give him a massage - won't be teaching again in Florida. The state's Education Practices Commission permanently revoked his teaching license today.

According to the state's administrative complaint, Anderson pled guilty in October 2008 to one count of interference with custody and the court withheld adjudication.

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National survey: 40 percent of teachers are 'disheartened'

There's a lot of bummed-out teachers in America -- burned out by too much testing, too many unruly kids and too much accountability pressure, according to the results of a nationwide survey released today.

The poll by Public Agenda, based on a nationally representative sample of 890 teachers, shows that 40 percent of teachers are disheartened. Asked about drawbacks to their jobs, 58 percent said there is too much testing, and 50 percent said there are too many kids with discipline problems. Asked what is the most difficult thing about teaching, 32 percent said unreasonable pressure to raise student achievement.

The survey also asked teachers about a host of other issues, with nuanced and sometimes surprising results:

* 75 percent said good teachers can lead all students to learn, even those from poor families or who have uninvolved parents, compared to 24 percent who said it's too hard for even good teachers to overcome those barriers.

Attorney says Hernando School Board should fire teacher who smoked pot

BROOKSVILLE — The judge is wrong. Fire the teacher who smoked pot.

That’s the recommendation to the Hernando School Board from board attorney Paul Carland for how to handle Michael Provost, the Parrott Middle School health teacher who tested positive for marijuana in March after admitting to off-campus use of the drug.

An administrative law judge was incorrect in his interpretation of the law when he determined last month that the district did not have legal authority to fire Provost, Carland says. The ruling is not binding, so Carland and interim school superintendent Sonya Jackson are recommending that the Board fire Provost anyway.

“The superintendent feels strongly that based upon our current policy and application of law, under the circumstances it’s appropriate to terminate his employment,” Carland said Thursday.

Former Pasco teacher who came to school drunk reaches deal with state

Kylene Nelson resigned her job as a Pasco County middle school teacher shortly after she was found drunk at school in March.

Now she has reached a settlement agreement with the Florida Department of Education that could see her back in a classroom after a lengthy suspension.

In it, Nelson agrees to have her teaching license suspended through June 2013. During that period, she may not be employed by any public school or hold any position that requires a Florida teaching certificate.

She may, however, renew her certificate in case she chooses to return to teaching after her suspension ends. If Nelson does go that route, she would face an additional three years of probation. Conditions would include substance abuse counseling and fines.

Nelson faced penalties up to full revocation of her certificate. The Education Practices Commission will take up the settlement when it meets later in October.

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Give him another chance?

It’s not just tenured teachers who get multiple chances to correct “job deficiencies.” On Tuesday, the Pinellas School Board will consider the case of David Dees, the head plant operator at Madeira Beach Fundamental School, who has had seven write-ups in the past seven years, including four conference summaries, one directive memo, one caution and one reprimand.

National teacher quality group weighs in on Florida case

In its latest bulletin, the National Council on Teacher Quality takes an arbitrator to task for letting a Sarasota County teacher back in the classroom despite finding abuse charges against her - charges that including hitting, kicking and pushing severely disabled students - "credible." It writes:

Apparently the abuse inflicted by the teacher was not nearly as compelling to the arbitrator as the technical mistakes made by the school district in making its case against the teacher.

What sort of fatal mistakes? First, the aides had held off reporting the abuse, as they chose instead to build a case over four months in which they kept a daily log. Their prolonged silence, the defense maintained, argued against the severity of the teacher's actions. Second, while the principal had also suspected the teacher of abusing students and warned her in a meeting not to "hit, hurt, or treat the students roughly in any way," she had never transferred that verbal warning into writing or alerted the teacher that the meeting was classified as disciplinary.

We think there's a more fundamental problem revealed in this decision, one having to do with noneducators deciding what constitutes professional behavior of educators. It doesn't seem as if it should take an educator to reach the common sense judgment that a teacher who inflicts a "back-handed slap to a student's head" should not be permitted to continue to teach children, but there's ample evidence that the court system routinely can't get it right.

How often does the court system do this in Florida? We're not sure, but we know a good place to start. As The Gradebook reported back in July, Florida administrative law judges side with teachers more than 40 percent of the time. Anybody have time to take a closer look at those cases?

Still no closure for Pasco teacher accused of manhandling student

A month ago, the Pasco School Board overruled superintendent Heather Fiorentino's plan to fire Jeffrey Bush, a teacher at the Irvin Educational Center. Bush had been accused of violently grabbing a student who made lewd comments about his wife.

Even though the board sided with Bush, the story isn't over.

Fiorentino has stated that she will reinstate Bush to another post in the district, but she does not intend to repay him the salary he lost while suspended without pay. Bush's lawyers and union argue that such a move is against the law.

Hernando health teacher who smoked pot should get his job back, judge says

BROOKSVILLE — Michael Provost wanted school officials to be on his side.

The popular health teacher who led drug education programs at Parrott Middle School admitted earlier this year that he’d made a mistake by using marijuana at home. But he said he deserved another chance and not to be fired, as Superintendent Wayne Alexander had recommended.

Provost appealed that recommendation. Now, an administrative law judge has ruled that the law and the school district’s own policy are on Provost’s side.

Judge P. Michael Ruff has issued a recommendation stating the School Board should reinstate Provost, who has been on unpaid suspension since March, and pay him back wages and benefits.

The board did not have legal grounds to fire the 37-year-old teacher because state statute and the district’s personnel policy prohibit termination for a first positive drug test, Ruff wrote in the recommendation released late Wednesday.

Ruff presided over a June 23 hearing on Provost’s appeal. The School Board, which typically follows a judge’s recommended order in such cases, must now vote on whether to reinstate him.

Firing Florida teachers: Two cases

In Florida, as in many other states, getting rid of teachers can prove a tough slog. Sarasota officials are finding that out the hard way.

The Herald-Tribune reports that an employment arbitrator isn't letting Sarasota fire a special education teacher accused of hitting, kicking, pushing and otherwise abusing her students. The district didn't properly warn Diana O'Neill of its concerns about her performance, the arbitrator said, and so she should keep her $80,000-a-year job.

"We were disappointed in the results," superintendent Lori White told the Herald-Tribune. But "you agree to abide by the decision."

Now the district just has to deal with parents who fear the teacher's return to the classroom.

Over in Seminole, meanwhile, superintendent Bill Vogel is having an easier time getting rid of a brand new teacher over much less serious charges.

My Fox Orlando reports that Vogel is pushing to remove first-year television and film teacher John Wolfe over things he wrote on his personal blog before he was ever hired. District officials deemed the content and language inappropriate for a teacher, the TV station reports.

Wolfe told My Fox Orlando that he was shocked and didn't understand what he did wrong.

So here's the rub. You can fire a teacher over personal comments made online during nonwork hours, but you can't fire a teacher who beat students in class. Anyone else see something wrong here?

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'The battle over New York City's worst teachers'

From today's New Yorker:

In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: "Children are fragile. Handle with care." It's a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

These fifteen teachers, along with six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city's five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.

Moonlighting Seminole High teacher asks for a hearing

Amie Dunn, the Pinellas teacher accused of working at her second job when she was supposed to be teaching in her classroom at Seminole High, has asked the district for an administrative hearing.

Her request postponed action this morning on superintendent Julie Janssen’s recommendation to fire her. Instead, the board agreed to suspend her without pay effective Aug. 17.

Seminole High teacher: The mortgage made me do it

Pinellas School Board members are scheduled to vote Tuesday on a recommendation to fire a Seminole High teacher accused of working at her second job on school time and then falsifying her time card.

When school officials noticed that Amie Dunn was frequently absent from work, they asked the district’s Office of Professional Standards to investigate. OPS confirmed that Dunn also works as an instructor at St. Petersburg College, and as part of her duties there, is required to conduct intern observations in various Pinellas elementary schools.

Unfortunately for Dunn, the elementary day coincides with the high school day.

An OPS administrator compared Seminole's staff sign-out roster to the sign-in sheets used at each elementary school and found that on 10 occasions, Dunn had called in sick but had signed in at an elementary school to conduct her observations. On some of those days, district documents show, she collected sick pay.

Records also show that on three occasions, Dunn conducted observations at elementary schools at times she should have been teaching but did not inform her supervisors she had left campus.

In a meeting with her lawyer and an OPS official, Dunn said she was having financial difficulties and was just trying to earn enough money to pay her mortgage. She added that her students at Seminole High were not cheated out of their education because she always had her class covered and left excellent lesson plans.

Donna Winchester, Pinellas education reporter

Judges often side with teachers

Pinellas teacher Porsha Call – who Superintendent Julie Janssen wants to fire for incompetence – has elected to roll the dice and take her case to an administrative law judge.

The legal odds suggest she made a smart move.

Since 2004, administrative judges have sided with teachers and other school employees in 27 of 65 cases, or 42 percent of the time, according to the teacher cases currently listed on the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings Web site.

Most cases – 84 of 149 by our count – were settled, dismissed or withdrawn before a judge made a decision. Another 55 are in the pipeline.

All of them could use a closer look.

Pinellas considers firing teacher after a decade of problems

Next week, the Pinellas school board will consider whether to fire elementary school teacher Porsha Call for incompetence and insubordination. According to district records (starting on page 259 here), Call – a 10-year veteran making $41,120 a year - got checkered evaluations in each of her first four years on the job and in each of her last four years. In fall 2008, she was put on a success plan. In early 2009, she was put on probation. Since 2001, she has been reprimanded for a DUI, suspended for one day for disparaging remarks, written up once for excessive tardiness and another three times for “uncorrected job deficiencies.”

Is it fair for parents to wonder: What took so long?

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Poll: Shoplifting teachers

Is the penalty of probation strong enough for Florida teachers caught shopflifting?
Yes, everyone makes mistakes
No, teachers should be positive role models

Pasco teacher who tried to commit suicide at school can keep her job

It's now official. Pasco reading teacher Patti Withers can remain teaching Florida schools.

The Florida Education Practices Commission upheld the recommendations of a state administrative law judge by agreeing to place Withers on two years of probation rather than canceling her teaching certificate. Withers also will have a letter placed in her file, and must attend a counseling program.

Pasco superintendent Heather Fiorentino tried to fire Withers three years ago after Withers attempted suicide in her portable classroom at Pasco High School. The School Board rejected that move, saying Withers needed help instead.

While awaiting final disposition on her case, Withers has been teaching at Wiregrass Ranch High School, where she will remain in the fall.

Florida Keys superintendent arrested on misconduct charges

This just in from the Miami Herald:

Monroe County School District superintendent Randy Acevedo (left) was arrested Thursday morning on a charge of official misconduct. He faces five years in prison if convicted.

State Attorney Dennis Ward said the decision was made to arrest Acevedo based on testimony given to a grand jury, which indicted Acevedo Wednesday night.

Ward wouldn't elaborate on the charge, which is officially listed as obstruction of justice in Acevedo's booking information on the Monroe Sheriff's Office Web site.

For more details, see the Herald's full report.

UPDATE: Gov. Crist has suspended Acevedo from office. See his executive order.

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How should state punish shoplifting teachers?

It's a no-brainer that teachers who sleep with students should be permanently booted from the profession. But what's a fair punishment for lesser crimes?

Six of the 23 Tampa Bay cases headed to the state's teacher sanctioning board this week involve shoplifting charges. One Hillsborough teacher reportedly tried to sneak a Porterhouse steak out of a Publix. Another reportedly stole two pairs of shoes, then returned them the following day to get credit, then returned the day after that to try to steal another pair.

Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith is proposing two years of probation for the alleged shoe thief. He’s recommending letters of reprimands for the other five. Sound fair to you?

Ron Matus, State Education Reporter

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Florida teachers in the news: Why are so many female teachers sleeping with their students?

Once again Florida teachers aren't looking so good to the rest of the nation. A story on teacher sex cases in Florida is currently the most popular story on Time.com with a catchy headline, A Florida epidemic: Female teachers sleeping with their students.

It begins: "If you're the parent of a teen-aged boy in Florida, you probably muttered "not again" while reading your morning newspaper this week. There on the front page was yet another case of an adult female teacher being arrested for admitting to having had sex with an underage male student. This time the alleged perp was Maria Guzman Hernandez, a 32-year-old instructor at the private Our Lady of Charity school in Hialeah; her victim was 15."

Why such a high number teacher sex cases in Florida? Read the full story here, then share your thoughts.

Armwood kids' pitch to crack down on teacher sexual misconduct passes House

The students of Armwood High School scored a victory today against sexual misconduct by teachers.

Their runner-up entry in Rep. Kevin Ambler's "Ought to Be a Law" bill-drafting competition turned into a bill sponsored by Rep. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, and it passed the House today on a 110-3 vote.

HB 659 reclassifies the felony degree of a sexual offense if the offense is committed by an authority figure at an educational institution against a student.

Stargel, who has five children, was a judge at the competition and said the issue is a big concern to her. 

"We need to send a strong signal to our educational people in authority over these kids that this is not acceptable and there are lines that you can't cross," Stargel said earlier this month when the bill passed committee.

The students' original pitch was to have mandatory minimums, but Stargel said that after talking with lawyers they went with reclassifing felonies.

"They had PowerPoints, they talked specifically about the one teacher ... who was too pretty to go to jail," Stargel said, referring to Debra Lafave. "The kids saw this as problem." 

Police: Hernando sub hit student

SPRING HILL -- Substitute teacher Chandra Christine Bennington may have just failed the classroom management portion of her teacher certification bid.

She's facing misdemeanor battery charges, after Hernando County Sheriff's Office deputies say she slapped a 12-year-old student hard on the face during a March 13 class at Explorer K-8.

Report suggests teacher was drunk; Pasco County schools investigating

LAND O'LAKES - The Pasco County school district is interviewing students this morning to learn more details about the behavior of a teacher who was escorted from campus Wednesday by sheriff's deputies.

Rushe Middle School administrators contacted their school resource officer about language arts teacher Kylene Nelson, 42, early Wednesday. Deputy Joseph Stimac wrote in his incident report that Nelson had "the odor commonly associated with alcohol."

"Kylene's speech was slurred and she was having trouble talking," Stimac wrote. "Kylene told me she was two years sober and had not been drinking."

About three hours later, Stimac learned that assistant principal Ron Michalak had taken Nelson to a clinic that tests employees for drugs and alcohol and had just returned. Ten minutes after their return, Nelson - whose blood-alcohol content was reported at 0.26 - ran off campus to a nearby recreation center, where she passed out, the report states.

'I believe students still have that trust in us'

The mother of the 14-year-old who reportedly exchanged nude photos with a 32-year-old Pinellas middle school teacher is distraught but does not blame the school, said the school's principal, who talked with the mother Monday.

"She's distraught as any mother would be," Azalea Middle School principal Teresa Anderson told the Gradebook. "She just said she did not blame the school. … She just thought that sometimes people need help, and obviously this is a person who needs help, is basically what she said."

Anderson said her school was doing its best to deal with the situation involving Christy Lynn Martin, who was hired last year to teach computer and life choices classes. Police said Martin, arrested Saturday, admitted she used a cell phone to send photos of herself to the eighth-grader on Feb. 28 and March 1. The student is not being identified.

Cops say teacher, boy exchanged nude pics

A Pinellas County middle school teacher is the latest addition to tampabay.com's special report on teacher sex scandals: Christy Lynn Martin, who teaches at  Azalea Middle School, is accused of using her cell phone to exchange pornographic photos with an eighth-grade boy.

The boy, who is not being identified, told investigators he and Martin had a relationship. Police began their investigation early Saturday, after the boy told an adult relative about his relationship with Martin.

By Saturday afternoon, detectives had tracked down Martin. She admitted to sending the pictures, police said.

Teacher who told student to "go back to Africa" may be suspended by state

If a teacher told a black student to go back to Africa, what would be fair punishment?

The state Department of Education is recommending a one-year suspension of a teaching certificate in just such a case, involving a Pinellas middle school teacher.

According to this administrative complaint, Mark Krieger, a health teacher at Oak Grove Middle, reportedly became angry in September 2006 when a student failed to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Krieger told the student he was in a free country and should respect it, and that if the student didn't he should go back to Africa, the complaint alleges.

The district suspended Krieger for 10 days without pay. In a proposed settlement, Krieger agrees to the one-year suspension, along with two years on probation and a requirement that he take a college-level course on cultural diversity. The settlement says Krieger neither admits nor denies the allegations. The Education Practices Commission, which sanctions Florida teachers for misconduct, will consider the settlement tomorrow.

Pinellas teacher: Pelt me with cotton, please

It's old news that Sharion Thurman, the Gibbs High teacher who's set to be sanctioned by the state this week, reportedly tampered with student ballots in fall 2006 and somehow did not get fired.

But there's more to the story.

Thurman, who's still teaching and making $61,050 a year, continued pushing the envelope even after the plot to get her niece elected homecoming queen was discovered, according to state investigative records just obtained by the Gradebook.

How many chances do teachers get?

We know, we know. We at the Gradebook write variations on this post again and again. But as long as examples continue to surface, what are we supposed to do?

A Pinellas elementary school teacher who allegedly showed up on the first day of school with slurred speech and bloodshot eyes -- and who on "numerous occasions" was reportedly unable to walk in a straight line -- is among 31 Tampa Bay area teachers on the agenda for this week's Education Practices Commission meetings.

Also on the agenda: A Pinellas middle school teacher who, over the course of a single year, was formally counseled about 20 times for inappropriate language and behavior, including throwing a backpack at a student and hitting her with it.

No surprise here

Count Florida Board of Education Chairman T. Willard Fair and Education Trust President Kati Haycock among those not surprised by yesterday's St. Petersburg Times story. A Times review found serious teacher misconduct cases appear to be more often linked to high poverty schools.

"In some ways, it fits with everything else we know about teacher quality and high poverty schools," Haycock told the Gradebook after yesterday's presentation. "Not that there aren't some fabulous teachers there, as you know. Dedicated, high performers, incredible. But these schools have often been a dumping ground for really awful people."

Fair said it's no surprise given a system that knowingly shuffles teachers to high poverty schools after they're deemed "not worthy" of more affluent schools. "We're not going to let them filter up," he said.

Fair also said the issue of teacher equity deserves more scrutiny, and that at some point will gain traction with parents. "Parents, be they white, black or polka-dotted, care about who's surrounding their children," he said. "As soon as they find out, they're going to be upset. They don't know yet."

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Teachers, sex and high-poverty schools

Today's St. Petersburg Times story raises the question of whether high-poverty schools see more cases of teacher misconduct than more affluent schools. But if readers are wondering whether kids are more likely to encounter sexual predators in such schools, the answer is: We don't know.

At least not from reviewing the limited data the Times was able to use. Putting the Pinellas and Hillsborough cases since 2000 together (all of it from the myfloridateacher.com Web site), and breaking them down into categories of misconduct, here's what we found:

Inappropriate relationships -- This is the category that includes Debra Lafave. The tally: 10 cases. Four in high-poverty schools.

Inappropriate behavior and/or language -- By that we mean, behavior or language that is sexually charged, like the Riviera Middle School teacher who referred to girls' breasts with names like "righty" and "lefty." The tally: 11 cases. Seven in high-poverty schools.

Sex crimes off campus -- This would be things like voyeurism. The tally: 10 cases. Eight in high-poverty schools.

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

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Booze, pot, lust and shoplifting

Eight cases of alleged teacher misconduct around the Tampa Bay area are among 43 cases on the agenda of the Education Practices Commission this week. Nothing unusual here: Four involve DUIs, two involve marijuana and one involves shoplifting three shirts from Dillard's.

The eighth one involves a former Palm Harbor University High math teacher who, according to the proposed settlement agreement, allegedly engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a female student by exchanging late-night e-mails and instant messages that were "sexually or romantically suggestive and flirtatious" and "suggested to the student that they would or might have a romantic relationship after the student graduated."

For details, check with the state Department of Education. The case file is 396 pages, so it'll cost you $97.35 for copies and labor.

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

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"Can you meet me by the dumpster tonight?"

Seventeen cases of alleged teacher misconduct around Tampa Bay are on this week's agenda for the Education Practices Commission, including one involving a Pinellas middle school teacher accused of inappropriate behavior on campus and criminal behavior off.

According to this administrative complaint, Roy Scott Sachse, then a PE teacher at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School in Largo, allegedly wrote a note to a female student in December 2006 which said, "Can you meet me by the dumpster tonight?" Earlier that year, Sachse, 48, was arrested for stealing a submarine sandwich, the complaint notes.

Sachse's case goes before the EPC this week. And if it approves this proposed settlement, Sachse will get two years probation.

Who would weed out the bad apples?

Amid the long list of proposed budget cuts, the proposal to trim the Pinellas school district's Office of Professional Standards barely registered. It involved just three jobs, for a potential saving of $275,573 toward a goal of $37-million.

But the three jobs would have come from a department that employs only four people. If district officials hadn't had a change of heart about the recommendation, the office that deals with about 2,000 allegations of employee misconduct a year would have been dismantled shortly after state lawmakers approved an Ethics in Education law that potentially could make the department even more important and busy.

Who would have been charged with the responsibility of investigating cases that deal with everything from possible child abuse to sexual misconduct? Most likely, the job would have fallen to school principals.

Too sexy for her job?

There's a biology teacher in St. Lucie County who suddenly finds herself out of work. The school district says it released her because of frequent absences. She says her dismissal had less to do with her job performance than her after-school performance.

See, Tiffany Shepherd (left) also has a second job as a "bikini mate" aboard a fishing charter, the Palm Beach Post reports. The main job requirement is to look "hot" in a bikini, and Shepherd contends that her participation (and the suggestive online photos of her on the boat) got her fired.

District officials acknowledged to the Post that the photos could have undermined her effectiveness, though they insist they weren't the cause of Shepherd's termination.

It brings up a salient point, though, one that's getting a more thorough look these days as teacher conduct in and out of the classroom comes under increasing scrutiny.

People expect certain behavior from teachers because they are molding children's future. They don't expect them to misbehave with children (as we've seen all too frequently lately), and they also prefer that teachers don't misbehave without students around, too. And that definition of "misbehave" varies.

Over the years, the Gradebook reporters have seen some teachers leave town even to have a beer. Some teachers choose to live miles, even counties, away from their campuses to avoid running into students and parents in the grocery store.

The Internet opens a whole new world where "misbehavior" can take place for everyone to see. And young teachers like Shepherd often end up there, to varying responses. First-year Duval teacher Timothy Huber has resigned his job, for instance, after parents saw him mocking a student on a YouTube video, the Florida Times-Union reports.

The Washington Post recently ran a story on this topic. Makes you wonder where public life ends and private life begins, doesn't it?

Teachers, sex, problems

Stephanie Ragusa isn't on myfloridateacher.com. But more than 30 other local teachers accused of sexual wrongdoing in some form or fashion are.

As a Sunday St. Petersburg Times story  pointed out, the state's Web site on teacher misconduct lists all types of cases, not just those involving inappropriate or allegedly inappropriate relationships with students. But given the persistent wave of such cases around Tampa Bay – Ms. Ragusa, for example, made headlines again today  – the Gradebook decided to cull those involving teachers and sex.

Of 170 local cases posted to date, about 30 fit that description. Some involve students; some do not. Some are recent; some are not. A few made headlines; many did not. There can be a lag of two years or more between the time an incident occurred and when state officials take action on a teacher's teaching certificate, so cases like Ms. Ragusa's may not show up on the state database for a while.

The following list is based solely on records in the state's database. Every case resulted in state sanctions, but some also resulted in settlement agreements in which the teachers neither admitted nor denied allegations.

To read more about the allegations in individual cases, or to see what sanctions were handed down, go to www.myfloridateacher.com.

Is database a deterrent?

We're talking, of course, about the on-line database and Web site that was the main source of information for Sunday's story about teacher misconduct in the St. Petersburg Times. Pinellas union chief Jade Moore (left), who was quoted in the story, told The Gradebook that he initially did not like the Department of Education site, but has since to come to think it might have some positives:

"The more I think about it, if people realized how a minor behavior can wind up becoming a very public thing, it could help control the desire to do it," he said. "This stuff was all secret until about a year ago. You could find out, but it wasn't in-your-face available." Now that it is, "it will have a very chilling effect."

But Moore also offered a cautionary note about some of the listed cases. The state database offers short summaries of allegations and sanctions but not records such as police reports and court files. "Oftentimes what appears on the surface in a snippet isn't all that was there," he said.

In a related development, the Houston Chronicle picked up Sunday's story and readers there have offered a smattering of comments, including this one: "We could sure use this in Texas! Most parents have little or no idea why their children's teachers disappear. I know of several crazy stories that never made the news."
- Ron Matus, state education reporter

90 teacher misconduct cases

Another month. Another meeting of the Education Practices Commission. Another long list of cases involving alleged teacher misconduct.

If you're shocked by the recent wave of teacher sex scandals, then you might want to pay closer attention to what goes on at the EPC, which sits in judgment of teachers accused of serious misconduct, sexual or otherwise, and decides what sanctions should be placed on teaching certificates.

The 17-member panel meets in Tampa Thursday and Friday with a full agenda of 90 cases, including 17 from around the Tampa Bay area. Among them:

* Frances Sepulveda and Bryant Wilburn, teachers at Coleman Middle School in South Tampa who resigned in 2006 after students reported watching through a classroom window while the pair were allegedly having sex.

* William Scales, a teacher at Seminole High in Pinellas who was suspended for five days in July 2006 after being adjudicated guilty of a misdemeanor drunk driving charge.

* Margaret Brady, a teacher at Armwood High in Hillsborough who was removed from her class in November 2005 after students working on her car in an auto body repair class found a loaded .22 caliber handgun in her console.

The meetings begin at 9 a.m. at the Embassy Suites in Tampa, 555 N. Westshore Blvd. They're open to the public. To see past EPC agendas, or to find out what actions it took on past cases, click here.

A weekend interview with ...

... Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer whose company trains schools and businesses on matters including sexual harassment and misconduct. She is considered one of the nation's leading experts on teacher sexual misconduct. McGrath spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek after three recent Tampa Bay area teacher misconduct arrests, which gained national attention. (Photo from California Catholic Daily, 2007)

We're hearing a lot about this now. But is it really any worse now than it has been in the past?

Not in my opinion. I have been aware of this issue since the early '80s in my law practice. I, here in California, was hired by school boards to dismiss incompetent teachers then. At one point I was called by one of the superintendents who said, I've got one that I don't think you can do anything about, but here are the accusations. That was my first acquaintance with a sexual misconduct case. And pretty much the attitude was, well, you can't do anything about it unless you actually catch the teacher in bed with the student. So it was a very high threshold of evidence that was in peoples' way of thinking. So, that was way back when. As I was successful with that case, more and more of them came my way.

Do you think perhaps that as people pay more attention and each one of these cases gets attention, the more people are willing to say something?

Yes. And I think what is vitally important, and we'll see what happens this time, the issue of sexual abuse is cyclical. People pay attention to it, they get upset about it, things start to happen, and then it goes into the background. There is something about, it's almost so intolerable to deal with, that a community can only deal with it for a certain length of time and then it goes back to complacency rather than staying alert that this does go on. Sexual abuse in schools, it's an opportunistic crime. The people who tend to behave this way, they gravitate to schools.

Because there are children there, obviously.

Because there are children there. And we're naive in our thinking in terms of our saying, we send our children to school to be safe and that's that, that's the end of our responsibility. Schools should make the place safe. As long as parents have that kind of attitude, their children are not going to be safe. People need to know that this is an opportunistic crime. People who commit it go to schools. And they fly below the radar for years. So if parents and educators are not alert to the early warning signs, then children are going to continue to get hurt. So it isn't the pedophiles that are going to stop. It's the people in the educational environment, including the parents, including the administrators, including the other teachers and the staff, who have to make it stop.

How can they do that?

How many rotten apples are there?

Is it just a coincidence we've been barraged by teacher sex scandals? Maybe. But there may be more of this going on that we're inclined to believe, according to an exhaustive and award-winning Associated Press series that ran last fall.

The AP found more than 2,500 cases of sexual misconduct involving teachers in the past five years, according to disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. "The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church," the AP wrote on day one of its series. "Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse."

An exaggeration? The AP isn't the only journalism outfit looking into teacher misconduct – and finding lots to report. In its 2003 series, "Coaches Who Prey," the Seattle Times found 159 coaches in Washington state who had been fired or reprimanded over the course of a decade for sexual misconduct. The newspaper found at least 98 of those coaches continued to coach or teach.

Closer to home, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported last year – after a two-year investigation – that more than 300 Florida teachers have been punished in recent years for sexual misconduct and nearly 450 more for physically attacking or verbally terrorizing students. And yet, the Herald Tribune found, more than half of those teachers kept their teaching licenses and at least 150 of them were still teaching in Florida.

Wrote the paper: "The actual number of questionable teachers in Florida schools is likely much larger because more than 70 percent of cases reported to the state are dismissed after a review by investigators who have little or no formal training. Of the cases that don't get dropped, state officials close 9 in 10 with settlement deals that allow teachers to avoid admitting guilt."

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Don't stand so close to me

The stories about local teachers' sexual misconduct with students have been coming so fast and furious these days, you knew it would just be a matter of time before someone would put together a web site dedicated to them all.

That would be tampabay.com. Yes, our own parent web site has created "Wrong Choices: An outbreak of teacher sex scandals," which is dedicated to the topic.

It's got links to all the stories, room for your commentary and even a photo slide show. (Just mug shots. Come on, now. We run a family friendly web site.) And it will be updated regularly, too. Look for new stories on the subject both Saturday and Sunday.

Seminole HS teacher faced trouble over massages before

It looks like former Seminole High coach and teacher Thomas J. Anderson has been in trouble over massages before.

Just one difference - last time, Anderson was the one accused of doing the massaging.

Back in 1999, a student who served as Anderson's assistant filed a complaint against him for rubbing her shoulders and lower back. Anderson denied the charges and kept his job in exchange for a promise that there would be "no touching of any female in any way that could be interpreted as inappropriate."

Anderson resigned earlier this week rather than face dismissal over accusations that that he took a female student home during school hours. He admitted that he took her to his house, but denied the student's allegation that she gave him a massage in his bedroom.

See tomorrow's St. Petersburg Times for more details.

- Donna Winchester, Pinellas education reporter

What's going on?

You knew the question had to come, with three female teachers arrested for on charges of having sex with students in such short order.

"What's going on there?" the Today show asked this morning, to lead into a 2-1/2-minute story on the Tampa area's school sex scandal. (Video here.)

The show talked about Stephanie Ragusa, Mary Jo Spack and Lisa Marinelli (shown above, left to right), not to mention the now infamous Debra Lafave (left).

And so, too, it turns out, are lots of folks around the bay area. Which meant it was only a matter of time before the bad jokes started rolling in.

Thanks to 98Rock for perhaps the most bawdy and irreverent take on the subject. It's begun a contest to see who can guess which school will make headlines next.

The Buckethead Show on 98Rock touts the "school pool" on its web site, complete with photos of Lafave, Marinelli and others. Listeners are asked to pick which high school will be next; whether the next implicated teacher will be a woman or a man (let's not forget Thomas J. Anderson from Seminole High and Michael Aaron Black (right) from Pasco Middle); and what subject they teach.

Winners, the website says, will be given "cash for new school supplies and maybe some 'private tutoring' of your own ;-)."

The idea, Buckethead tells the Gradebook, is just to "have a few laughs" with the situation. Everybody likes to guess what the next one will be, he observes. All joking aside, Buckethead adds, the national notoriety isn't all that: "It's always nice to be known for something. I just don't think this is the thing we want to be known for."

- Ron Matus and Jeff Solochek

Sex, teachers and videotape

TAMPA -- The Hillsborough School Board is not usually a magnet for TV cameras, but no fewer than three packed into a tiny classroom today and suffered through two hours of talk about district goals.

They were waiting for five minutes at the end of meeting, when the discussion turned to what Board member Candy Olson summed up as "sexy teachers, or teachers and sex."

A recent one-two punch -- the arrests of teachers at Freedom High and Davidsen Middle within two weeks of each other -- has Board members using words like epidemic. Four Hillsborough teachers have been arrested in the last five months for inappropriate sexual contact with students. Three of those teachers were women.

Now Board members are calling for a special meeting to discuss what to do the spate of teachers having have sex with students. The meeting is April 15 from 1 to 2 p.m. Special guests include Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober and Public Defender Julianne Holt.

Until then, here's a primer on names of Hillsborough female teachers with sex charges:

March 20, 2008: Mary Jo Spack, a 45-year-old honors English teacher, accused of having sex with a 17-year-old boy after buying liquor and bringing him to a motel.

March 13, 2008: Stephanie Ragusa, a 28-year-old math teacher, arrested and accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Oct. 23, 2007: Christina Butler, a 33-year-old special education teacher at Middleton High School in Tampa, arrested, accused of having sex up to a dozen times with a 16-year-old boy.

Oct. 8, 2007: Former Wharton High School teacher and coach Jaymee Wallace pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student who played on her girls basketball team.

Former Greco Middle School teacher Debra Lafave was sentenced to three years of house arrest and seven years of probation after pleading guilty in 2005 to having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Pasco sub arrested on charges of sex with student

NEW PORT RICHEY — A Pasco County substitute teacher was arrested Monday and charged with having a sexual relationship with an underage male student at Mitchell High School.

Lisa Robyn Marinelli, 40, of 9824 Nicklaus Drive, New Port Richey, had been under investigation by the Pasco Sheriff's Office since late February, after the victim's father reported seeing his son get out of Marinelli's car while pulling up his pants, sheriff's office spokesman Kevin Doll said.

During the course of the investigation, the father turned over records of hundreds of cell phone calls and text messages between the boy, whose name is not being released, and Marinelli. Thirty-five text messages remained in the boy's phone, including one asking, "How about a quickie 2morrow afternoon?" and another inviting the boy to Marinelli's home "because real men only need 20 minutes."

Doll said the boy showed deputies that he had a pair of Marinelli's underwear, which she gave to him as a memento of their sexual relationship.

More in tomorrow's St. Petersburg Times and on tampabay.com. (Photo from Pasco County Sheriff's Office)

Pinellas School Board to decide teacher's fate

It appears another teacher has crossed the line with a student, this time a male teacher in Pinellas County.

School superintendent Clayton Wilcox has recommended that Thomas J. Anderson, the girls varsity basketball coach at Seminole High School, be fired for having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old female student.

According to School Board documents, Anderson, 59, told the school secretary on Feb. 7 that he was not feeling well and was leaving for a doctor’s appointment. After driving a short distance, Anderson picked up the girl and took her to his home, the record states.

Anderson told district officials that he saw the student walking off campus, stopped to talk to her, and took her to his house because he knew she was having personal problems. But the student told investigators with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department that Anderson had suggested she skip her fourth-period class and leave campus ahead of him to avoid being seen on school security cameras.

After arriving at Anderson’s house, the girl told investigators, Anderson took off his shirt and she gave him a back massage in his bedroom. Anderson denied receiving a back massage. He told investigators he dropped the student off a block from her home so that her parents would not find out she had skipped school.

Anderson, who has been a social studies teacher at Seminole High since 1996, was placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the district’s investigation. The School Board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the recommendation to dismiss him.

Donna Winchester, Times education reporter