The Department of Education (DOE) launched an investigation into Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) earlier this month for failing to address educator sexual abuse.
The probe involves a concerning settlement agreement between LAUSD and the local teachers union, Unified Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA).
“[The agreement] appears to guarantee that teachers will be reassigned, not terminated or immediately removed from student facing roles while officials investigate, when they are credibly accused of [a variety of sexual offenses],” DOE wrote in a press release.
The settlement, which LAUSD’s superintendent, associate superintendent, executive director and board signed with UTLA in 2024, agrees teachers will only face “reassignment” if they:
- Sexually harassed a student or coworker.
- Engaged in a sexual or romantic relationship with a student or another minor.
- Communicated with students for non-school related purposes.
- Created, sold or used child pornography.
- Showed students pornography or other inappropriate material.
- Engaged in unnecessary physical contact with a student.
- Engaged in physical or non-physical contact with a student motivated by sexual interest.
- Failed to report suspected child abuse.
- Are the subject of an ongoing police investigation.
DOE’s investigation will determine whether LAUSD, the second largest school district in America, violated Title IX, which prohibits public schools from engaging in sex discrimination.
“Under Title IX, schools must respond appropriately and address claims of sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment and assault, in a timely manner, but [LAUSD] seems to be putting the continued employment of sexual predators above the safety of students,” DOE Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey wrote in the department’s press release.
“It is unconscionable that the district would simply ignore Title IX’s procedural requirements to protect teachers who cause life-changing harm to their kids.”
If DOE finds LAUSD violated Title IX, the district could forfeit its more than one billion dollars in annual federal funding.
LAUSD and UTLA categorically deny the department’s allegations, claiming they hinge on a fundamental misunderstanding of the word “reassignment.”
LAUSD policy reviewed by The Hill defines “reassignment” as “the provisional removal of an employee from their regularly assigned workplace for the safety of district students, staff or the workplace.”
This can include:
- Sending the employee home.
- Relocating an employees’ worksite to investigate allegations of wrongdoing.
- Issuing the employee a “stay-away” notice.
- Suspending the employee pending dismissal.
“Reassignment” may not always refer to sending teachers to different schools, but LAUSD and UTLA still warrant investigation.
The district’s lack of specific disciplinary policies gives it unprecedented flexibility over how to treat educators accused of heinous crimes. Teachers credibly accused of selling pornography should not be “reassigned.” They should be suspended pending dismissal. Period.
Lack of specificity makes it difficult to hold LAUSD and UTLA accountable.
Consider the teachers union’s statement to CBS News: “Employees accused of misconduct involving students are reassigned to their homes while LAUSD and/or law enforcement conduct an investigation of the allegation.”
This is a half-truth. “Reassignment” can mean sending teachers accused of wrongdoing home. But, per the district itself, “reassignment” can also involve sending teachers to different work sites, which could presumably include other classrooms or schools.
The teachers union also told CBS, “[Teachers accused of wrongdoing] are not reassigned to another classroom or to any other setting where they would interact with students.”
This is a flat out lie.
The 2024 agreement being investigated by the DOE added to a 445-page collective bargaining agreement established between LAUSD and UTLA in 2022.
The larger agreement does not require teachers accused of child abuse be removed from the classroom. Instead, administrators must disrupt the alleged victim by moving them to a different teacher’s class.
This policy is especially troubling given California law does not require schools notify parents if their child alleges a school employee sexually assaulted them, or if another student makes an allegation of sexual misconduct against their child’s teacher.
Unfortunately, this is far from the only troubling policy the Daily Citizen discovered in LAUSD and UTLA’s most recent collective bargaining agreement.
A teacher can be moved to a different school following an investigation.
If a teacher is to remain in district employment following an investigation into their conduct, the agreement requires LAUSD assess whether the employee be “assigned to his or her previous location.”
The paragraph concludes:
If for any reason that previous assignment is not available or deemed inappropriate, the employee shall be assigned to a comparable position in the same local district as the previous assignment.
The broad language in this paragraph gives LAUSD significant leeway to transfer employees who are not officially guilty of wrongdoing but may consistently receive complaints of misconduct.
Transferring school employees suspected of misconduct rather than firing them is known as “passing the trash.” Policies facilitating and incentivizing this practice often hide in collective bargaining agreements negotiated by teachers unions.
Intradistrict complaints may not be investigated.
The agreement requires LAUSD to investigate any complaint of employee wrongdoing submitted by a member of the public. In the following paragraph, the agreement reads:
If the document came from within district personnel, the investigation required by [the previous] paragraph may not be necessary or appropriate …
Why? Complaints about educator wrongdoing should be investigated equally, regardless of their origins.
No mention of mandatory reporting requirements.
California school employees must legally report all allegations, suspicions or accounts of child sexual abuse to law enforcement within 36 hours. Failure to do so can result in up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
But LAUSD’s 445-page collective bargaining agreement never mentions mandatory reporting laws. The Daily Citizen could find no instance where school employees are instructed to report child abuse to law enforcement prior to or concurrent with alerting the district.
In the collective bargaining agreement, LAUSD and UTLA even agree “factors such as investigations involving outside law enforcement agencies and/or the District Inspector General” may impact the organizations’ mutual desire to conclude investigations in fewer than 90 workdays.
Wouldn’t want the law to get in the way of an open and shut case.
Educators can “work off” offenses.
The agreement allows educators to strike some pre-disciplinary offenses from their record by successfully avoiding similar offenses.
California law prevents such “work off” programs for workplace offenses to do with child abuse or neglect, sexual harassment or egregious financial fraud. Employees are not supposed to be able to conceal these records, regardless of how long ago they occurred.
But LAUSD and UTLA negotiated a work around for this law. The agreement reads:
After achieving that passage of time [four years], if the document is retained by the administrator (as may be required by law), it should be kept in a separate “expired” file and not become a basis, in whole or part, for a subsequent formal disciplinary action.
This paragraph separates important pre-disciplinary documents from alleged offender’s files, in violation of California law, and forbids them from being considered in future disciplinary matters.
But failure to consider patterns of behavior notoriously enables educator sexual abuse.
Less than one month ago, LAUSD paid out $30 million to 19 more alleged victims of convicted child molester Mark Berndt, bringing the district’s total payout to Berndt’s victims to more than $200 million.
Berndt taught third grade at Miramonte Elementary School from 1979 to 2011. Parents began complaining about him as early as 1983, per the LA Times. Police finally arrested him in 2012.
Berndt is far from LAUSD’s only case of educator sexual abuse. Just this year alone, the district has agreed to pay out an additional $250 million to sexual assault victims.
It’s long past time for the Department of Education to investigate educator sexual misconduct. Given the deeply problematic agreement between LAUSD and UTLA, Los Angeles is the perfect place for the federal government to start taking a stand against “passing the trash.”
Additional Articles and Resources
California, America Grapple with ‘Epidemic of Sexual Abuse’ in Schools
Passing the Trash: Here’s What Parents Need to Know About Educator Sexual Misconduct
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