N.J. schools flout law intended to prevent bad teachers from getting hired, report says

A state law intended to stop teachers with histories of sexual misconduct or child abuse from finding jobs in other school districts has systemic flaws and is easily manipulated by both child predators and schools avoiding accountability, state investigators say in a new report.

In one instance, school officials investigated a teacher for watching girls bend over to pick up items he had dropped, but kept their findings secret from the school that later hired him. In another, multiple students complained about a teacher’s inappropriate sexual comments to them, but school officials did not alert another school district when the teacher applied there. A charter school hired a teacher after he hid from them that he had been the subject of two sexual abuse investigations and had resigned from a prior job at a school district amid allegations of sexual abuse.

Prior to the enactment of the law — known as “pass the trash,” and signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2018 — critics said it was too easy for teachers who were fired from one district for inappropriate behavior to find another teaching job in the state.

But the State Commission of Investigation’s 24-page report, released Tuesday, says educators and school districts easily take advantage of the law’s loopholes and the state’s lack of oversight. The law relies too heavily on teachers to report their own past misconduct to employers, according to the report, and school districts flout the law by continuing to enter into confidential settlements with teachers investigated for inappropriate behavior.

“We see people ignore laws all the time, but in an area that’s so sensitive, with individuals who are supposed to have kids’ best interest at heart, it was disappointing to see the several anecdotes SCI uncovered,” Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-Morris), who helped author the law, said in an interview.

The law put in place new provisions for background checks for teachers, like requiring employers to reach out to former employers, forcing applicants to provide contact information for previous employers dating back 20 years, mandating a questionnaire that asks whether applicants have been the subject of child abuse or sexual misconduct, and requiring districts to disclose whether an educator resigned amid or because of an investigation into their misconduct.

The law also prohibits schools from entering into agreements that suppress information regarding sexual misconduct or sexual abuse allegations, and it protects districts from legal challenges for sharing that information with potential employers.

The State Commission of Investigation probe was launched after reports that the law was being circumvented. Now, the commission wants the Legislature to revisit the law to focus on closing loopholes and addressing other missing factors in the current law.

“The common sense reforms proposed by the SCI will go a long way in meeting the law’s overarching goal of keeping New Jersey students safe from sexual predators and abuse by school employees,” said Tiffany Williams Brewer, the commission’s chair.

The commission notes there is neither a standardized process for investigating school employees accused of misconduct, nor one to collect or verify information on employees with substantiated investigations of misconduct. Instead, each of the state’s nearly 600 districts has its own method for collecting, verifying, and reporting the information, according to the report.

“Without outside oversight or auditing by County or State officials, schools have no assurances that the information provided by applicants or prior employers is accurate, nor if such information is routinely disseminated to successor employer school districts to keep them from hiring a suspected child predator,” the commission wrote.

Weber said drafting a new measure to address some of the report’s major concerns is his “top priority.” The new legislation would likely strengthen penalties against applicants and schools defying the law and could give the Department of Education enforcement powers.

An analysis of some districts’ record keeping confirmed the spotty compliance with the law, since all the districts had missing forms or incomplete information, the report states.

A former superintendent interviewed for the report conceded that districts don’t take the law seriously, and regularly hire people who don’t provide a full employment history. And the law’s requirement for applicants to file a “pass the trash” form on their history and whether they’ve been accused of sexual misconduct wasn’t followed either, the report states. In Paterson, handwritten notes were kept instead of the state’s official form because the law gives districts the option to develop their own form, the report says.

The report details several examples of teachers accused of sexual misconduct or harassment of students who didn’t report their past misdeeds on the “pass the trash” forms, and of districts ignoring the law’s provisions.

In Warren County, a school district entered into a settlement agreement with a teacher who faced investigations into his conduct in 2015, 2017, and 2020, including allegations of dropping items in view of girls so they would bend down to pick them and claims of speaking to students about his sex life, according to the report. He was hired by a Bergen County school district unaware of his background because the Warren County school agreed not to disclose his conduct — something the law was meant to prevent, the report states.

The commission said examples like this “raise significant questions about how many other school employers are ignoring the prohibition on the use of confidential agreements with teachers investigated or found to have engaged in sexual misconduct with students,” one of the central practices the law was supposed to prevent.

And the report notes that even though the state is going through a teacher shortage and looking for ways to expedite people getting into classrooms, the law still needs to be taken seriously to protect students.

The commission provided a list of recommendations to lawmakers, including:

• Putting the Department of Education in charge of overseeing and enforcing the law, including conducting audits of school districts to ensure compliance.
• Creating a database to keep track of school employees with histories of child abuse or sexual misconduct with students.
• Mandating standardized “pass the trash” forms for every school district and uniform procedures for child abuse and sexual misconduct investigations.
• Creating a new mechanism so reports of child abuse, sexual misconduct, or harassment are filed with the Department of Education instead of only the school.
• Lifting the 20-year limit on an employee’s work history so employers can conduct a more expansive background check.
• Increasing penalties for applicants who fill out their “pass the trash” form inaccurately or incompletely. Currently, it stands at a $500 penalty with no clear jurisdiction for enforcement, but the commission recommends something similar to Pennsylvania’s $10,000 fine and authority for the state to revoke a teacher’s certificate.