"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