My first year teaching middle school was in Gonzales, California, a rural farm town known for its high winds and great Mexican food. I was attending a two-day conference in Los Angeles and had arranged for one of our regular substitute teachers to cover my classes. Subs who are willing to take on middle school students are hard to come by, so I was glad to have “Mr. Raul.” When I returned from the conference, three of my sixth-grade girls, who were my classroom TAs, pulled me aside. They were visibly disturbed and told me that Mr. Raul had pornography displayed on his laptop, and some students could see it. They also said this wasn’t the first time they had seen this happen in classrooms where he was subbing.
I immediately called the vice principal, who removed the girls from class. Later that day, my vice principal informed me I was not allowed to speak with the students further because there was still an open investigation. She also said she believed the girls had made it up. Just a week earlier, another teacher in the district had been accused of letting fifth-grade girls sit on his lap. The district clearly did not want more controversy.
From that point on, it was out of my hands. It was also out of the parents’ hands. The district alone would decide whether Mr. Raul was guilty. I never heard another word about it, except that the girls were told they weren’t allowed to hang out together in class anymore, and Mr. Raul continued teaching at our school. I didn’t believe the girls were lying. They had told their parents first, the behavior had happened more than once, and the district had every reason to suppress another scandal.
This is just one story among many. In another district where I worked, a coach was given a 30-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting three underage girls. In the same district, a well-liked school counselor hid a video camera in his office and secretly recorded sexual acts between students. Police later found 13 videos involving 11 students. At this point, it’s rare to find a school district that hasn’t dealt with at least one teacher found guilty of sexual misconduct.
Common misconduct
Too often, schools delay action, dismiss complaints, or downplay abuse to protect their reputations. As the numbers climb, it’s clear this crisis isn’t just growing; it’s being tolerated.
Sexual misconduct by educators in public schools is becoming disturbingly more common. A U.S. Department of Education report showed that incidents of sexual violence in K–12 schools rose by over 50 percent in just two years, from 9,649 in 2015–16 to nearly 15,000 by 2017–18. In 2022 alone, 269 educators were arrested on child sex-related charges, including grooming, exploitation, and assault, and the year wasn’t even finished when this was reported. And according to the nonprofit Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME), an estimated one in 10 students will experience sexual misconduct by a school employee before graduation.
It’s important to note that the last comprehensive study on this was done in 2004. It’s time for an update. These aren’t isolated scandals; they are symptoms of a systemwide failure. Too often, schools delay action, dismiss complaints, or downplay abuse to protect their reputations. As the numbers climb, it’s clear this crisis isn’t just growing; it’s being tolerated.
One recent shocking example was the case of Jacqueline Ma, a sixth-grade teacher in California who was previously named teacher of the year. In 2023, she was arrested for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old student. She was convicted and sentenced this year to 30 years in prison. What’s even more disturbing is that during sentencing, the judge noted Ma’s accolades may have “shielded her from scrutiny” and allowed her abuse to go undetected for longer. The fact that someone so highly praised and publicly celebrated could carry out this kind of abuse is a grim reminder that titles and awards often blind school systems to serious red flags. It also raises the question: How many other abusers are protected by the reputation they have carefully built within their districts?
According to the San Francisco Standard, at least 19 teachers accused of sexual misconduct in the San Francisco Unified School District were allowed to resign or retire quietly rather than face public termination. Among them was a high school athletic director who repeatedly pulled girls from their classes using fake hall passes to abuse them sexually. This behavior continued unchecked for over four years, even though complaints were being raised. Instead of firing the employee or alerting law enforcement, the district shielded itself from scandal, allowing abuse to persist and more children to be victimized. This practice, sometimes dubbed “passing the trash,” allows bad actors to transfer to new schools, new districts, and new unsuspecting students. And it’s happening far beyond California.
A 2016 USA Today investigation revealed that school districts across the country routinely let accused sexual predators resign quietly, often providing glowing letters of recommendation. They would do this instead of going through the costly, time-consuming process of termination. One case cited in the investigation out of Texas shows just how broken the system is. Kip McFarlin was allowed to quietly resign from Orangefield ISD after making inappropriate comments to students. Instead of reporting the incident, district officials followed their attorney’s advice to give him a “neutral or positive recommendation.” When Port Arthur ISD hired McFarlin, administrators there were told he was simply leaving due to “a divorce in the family.” Within weeks, he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old student. McFarlin was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison, but the administrators who covered for him faced no penalties.
Why does this keep happening? One significant reason is that teachers unions often negotiate contracts that require school districts to keep a teacher employed during an investigation, and the process of firing a teacher can be lengthy, bureaucratic, and expensive. Because of this, districts often negotiate separation agreements with accused teachers. These agreements often include nondisclosure clauses and do not involve a formal finding of wrongdoing or criminal investigations. These agreements tend to shield the institution from embarrassment and liability. In doing so, they also feed a system that recycles predators and silences victims.
The union and bureaucracy shields
Many states fail to report teacher misconduct to national databases.
Teachers unions, including the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), claim to defend educators’ rights. But in practice, they often end up shielding abusers from consequences. Like I mentioned before, union contracts in many districts make it very difficult to fire even teachers credibly accused of abuse.
In New York City, the infamous “rubber rooms” exposed just how broken the teacher disciplinary system could be. Teachers accused of misconduct, including sexual abuse, were reassigned to these centers and collected full salaries and benefits while doing no actual work. Some remained in these rubber rooms for months or even years as their cases dragged on, protected by union contracts and bureaucratic red tape. These reassignment centers became an expensive symbol of a system that prioritized adult job security over student safety and accountability. Eventually, the public outcry and publicity of these rooms led to teachers being reassigned to administrative tasks that include no contact with students during these lengthy proceedings. They may not all be reading newspapers in a room together while on the clock, but taxpayers are still paying them to sit outside the classroom.
The use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) also helps shield bad actors. In some cases, when a teacher is accused of serious misconduct, school districts will settle the matter quietly, sometimes under pressure from union lawyers. The teacher agrees to resign or retire, often with a clean record, and in return both sides sign an NDA. This legally binds the district to not disclose the details of the misconduct to future employers or the public. And because unions are involved in negotiating many of these exit agreements, they effectively become complicit in keeping parents and future schools in the dark.
It is not just unions; the bureaucratic maze of district human resources departments and credentialing boards also shares the blame. Many states fail to report teacher misconduct to national databases. The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC) runs the Educator Identification Clearinghouse, which tracks educator disciplinary actions across states. But NASDTEC is a nonprofit membership organization, not a government agency, participation in the database is voluntary, and reporting is wildly inconsistent. In fact, NASDTEC has acknowledged that thousands of serious cases have gone unreported. That means a teacher who resigns under suspicion in one state can easily move to another, apply for a license, and start teaching again. Background checks would raise no red flags if their allegations and abuses were handled internally and not tried criminally.
Victims left behind
In district after district, millions of taxpayer dollars are being shelled out to keep misconduct out of the headlines and away from voters.
While the system bends over backward to protect the accused, the students are often silenced or pushed aside. Schools frequently try to keep things “in-house” to avoid bad press. Some parents are even pressured to stay quiet.
One of the most damning examples of school officials protecting predators comes from Loudoun County, Virginia, where a male student wearing a skirt sexually assaulted a female student in a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021. The district never reported the attack to the public and instead quietly transferred the student to Broad Run High School, where he sexually assaulted another girl just months later. A special grand jury report revealed that school administrators downplayed or ignored warning signs and failed to document the initial assault properly. Worse, the victim’s father was arrested and publicly villainized after he confronted the school board about the cover-up.
The school board, meanwhile, claimed ignorance even though emails showed they had been informed about the incident. Superintendent Scott Ziegler not only denied that the assault occurred during a public meeting but was later indicted and fired for his role in concealing the attacks. In the grand jury report, Loudoun County Public Schools showed a “lack of transparency, accountability, and urgency,” prioritizing left-leaning narratives about trans students using restrooms that align with their chosen gender identity over student safety. This case is not just about one predator but also about an entire system that enabled him.
While many public schools claim they’re too underfunded to fix leaky ceilings or hire more counselors, there always seems to be room in the budget to quietly settle with victims of sexual abuse. In district after district, millions of taxpayer dollars are being shelled out to keep misconduct out of the headlines and away from voters.
For example, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in a 2018 investigation revealed that the district repeatedly failed to protect students from sexual abuse from teachers in the district and from other students. The report, triggered by dozens of allegations, exposed that CPS often ignored or mishandled abuse complaints, allowing predators to remain in classrooms. At the time, they also had “more pending federal sexual violence investigations than any other K–12 grade district in the country.” The fallout was so severe that CPS lost millions in state funding and was forced to overhaul its entire system for handling abuse claims.
In Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), one of the largest school districts in the country, officials failed to remove a teacher who had been repeatedly reported for disturbing behavior. Mark Berndt, a third-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary, was accused of molesting dozens of students over a span of years. There were clear red flags, including complaints from fellow staff members and parents, as well as photo lab employees alerting police to Berndt’s disturbing images. Despite this, district officials allowed him to remain in the classroom. Berndt was eventually convicted on 23 counts of lewd conduct involving students as young as seven. LAUSD ultimately paid out a staggering $170 million in legal settlements to victims and their families. This was not a case from the 1980s or some pre-background-check era. This criminal case wrapped up in 2013, and the settlements were finalized just a few years later. District leaders didn’t just drop the ball, they actively ignored it, proving once again that the real priority was avoiding bad press, not protecting children.
I wish these were rare exceptions, but they are the inevitable result of a system that prioritizes institutional reputation over child safety. Instead of firing predators and sounding the alarm, schools write checks and issue PR statements. At the same time, unions protect their own interests, and the cycle repeats itself.
In a deeply alarming shift in public education, abusive behavior is now being masked by so-called “inclusive” policies. Under the banner of diversity and gender affirmation, many schools have adopted rules that deliberately sideline parents from vital conversations. This is definitely a loophole that predators can and will exploit. In California, the secrecy around gender identity in schools is no longer just unofficial—it is now policy. California legislation makes it clear that school staff should not inform parents if a student identifies as transgender or uses different pronouns unless the student gives explicit permission. Teachers are told to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns at school but to switch back to the student’s legal name and biological sex whenever communicating with parents. This creates a disturbing system that intentionally excludes parents from critical conversations about their own children. According to a CalMatters report, state officials have doubled down on this guidance, even as local school districts face lawsuits or recall efforts for adopting parental notification policies. What this really creates is a pipeline of secrecy that gives activist teachers privileged emotional access to children behind their parents’ backs.
And who’s backing these policies? Teachers unions. Both the NEA and AFT have publicly supported guidelines that keep parents in the dark under the guise of protecting student privacy. These are the same unions that claim to advocate for student safety while fighting tooth and nail to keep schools closed, lower academic standards, and now shield school staff from transparency.
A report titled “‘Grooming Grounds’: How a Statewide Network Seeks to Sexualize Students” from Texas Scorecard exposed how some Gender and Sexuality Alliance clubs operate under a veil of secrecy using confidentiality agreements and pushing explicit “queer sex” discussions, even in elementary school settings. These clubs are marketed as “safe spaces,” but the report warns that they can also serve as grooming grounds. Grooming is not always physical. It often starts with emotional manipulation and isolating kids from their parents and with these clubs in particular reframing identity as oppression that only these untrained adult advisors feel entitled to handle. Without accountability, these clubs become prime environments for inappropriate influence masked as inclusion.
This is not an argument against LGBTQ students and their right to feel safe like all students. It’s a call to stop using inclusivity as a smokescreen for violating boundaries, undermining parental rights, and giving cover to potential predators. There’s a difference between supporting students and encouraging secrecy, and abusers know exactly where that line blurs.
Solutions
There are real solutions that could stop this cycle, but they face powerful resistance. First, districts must be legally required to report substantiated misconduct to a national, mandatory database, regardless of whether the teacher has been tried criminally or not. The practice of quietly moving abusers from school to school must end. Reforming union contracts is also essential. Teachers credibly accused of serious wrongdoing should not be shielded by endless appeals or protected through arbitration that drags on for years. Mandatory reporting laws need to be strengthened so that all school staff are required to report suspected abuse directly to law enforcement. Schools should also be required to install cameras in classrooms where abuse is harder to detect. While controversial, classroom cameras can provide a much-needed measure of accountability. They help verify or disprove allegations, protect good teachers from false accusations, and deter misconduct. Parents already expect this level of oversight in daycares, school buses, and police departments. So why not classrooms?
But efforts like these are routinely blocked by teachers unions. Both the NEA and AFT have fought legislation aimed at increasing transparency around teacher misconduct, claiming it would violate educators’ due process rights. The NEA has even labeled classroom cameras as “Big Brother” surveillance and a threat to teacher privacy.
Protecting teachers’ rights matters, but not at the expense of student safety. In my own classroom, I witnessed how quickly a serious allegation was minimized and ultimately ignored. The three sixth-grade girls who spoke up were silenced. I was silenced, while the accused substitute continued teaching. In Jacqueline Ma’s case, the judge himself acknowledged that her title as “Teacher of the Year” may have shielded her from scrutiny, allowing her abuse to go unnoticed.
This is not just a policy failure; it’s a moral failure. The current system of bureaucratic delays, union interference, and administrative fear enables predators to remain in the classroom far too long. Most teachers are good people trying to do the right thing. However, even one predator protected by these flawed systems is one too many.
