Cda Seeks New Code For Teachers’ Conduct School Board Says Idaho Rules Are Vague, Have Omissions

The Coeur d’Alene School Board wants the state of Idaho to clarify its code of conduct for teachers.

At Monday’s board meeting, Superintendent David Rawls unveiled a resolution calling for the state’s professional code of conduct to be overhauled.

North Idaho’s Region I school district representatives is expected to vote on Rawls’ resolution next Monday before it is forwarded to the Idaho Board of Education.

Rawls said the code is vague, and littered with ambiguities and omissions.

He cited examples of misconduct by teachers that the code doesn’t consider to be ethics violations:

Mishandling of public funds.

Sexual contact with a student or sexual abuse of children.

Consumption of alcohol on school grounds or furnishing alcohol or controlled substances to children.

There’s also nothing requiring a teacher have “good moral character,” the superintendent said in his resolution.

Without legal clarity, school boards around the state are hesitant to crack down on problem teachers, Rawls said, since it’s more a matter of subjective judgment than policy.

The code is difficult to enforce because it “fails to clearly define violations,” Rawls wrote.

Fewer loopholes in the code could have helped the Coeur d’Alene School District last year as it grappled with how to handle molestation allegations by five girls against former Canfield Middle School teacher Paul T. Mather.

Although Mather admitted having sex with a 16-year-old Post Falls girl in 1989, he was acquitted last January of sexually abusing the Canfield Middle School students.

The school district and its insurance company later paid Mather $47,000 for his resignation and promise not to sue, and passed the matter on to the Professional Standards Commission, where it is still unresolved.

The commission, which will decide whether to allow Mather to continue teaching, has delayed a decision in the case for months.

“I’d like to encourage the Professional Standards Commission to take a more timely approach to reviewing such matters,” board member Vern Newby said Monday night, referring generally to ethics cases. Rawls agreed.

“There’s nothing in the code that says how long they can take to make a decision, how they will respond, when they should meet,” he said. “That should be highlighted to be more specific than it is.”

Showing his willingness to dabble in state politics, Rawls said his resolution was prompted by differences he noticed between the Idaho and Washington codes. Rawls was previously a district superintendent in Moses Lake, Wash.

In 1989, Washington’s board of education adopted a code of conduct for teachers that among other things, enables administrators to punish educators who give a reference on a teacher that leaves out important information - like the fact that a teacher was fired.

School districts wary of being sued are growing more cautious about firing teachers. When they do, they sometimes don’t tell other districts of that teacher’s administrative history. Instead, they pass a problem teacher on to a new district with a good reference.

, DataTimes