Screening key, Idaho experts say

BOISE – Somewhere along the way of teaching fractions and pronouns and how a bill becomes a law, teachers and students build relationships.

Most of those relationships are healthy, supportive and professional, Idaho education leaders say. But sometimes, a teacher crosses the line from authority figure to abuser, and a student gets a lesson in exploitation and betrayal.

It doesn’t happen often in Idaho, said Tama Bergstrand, a middle-school art teacher and the chairwoman of the Professional Standards Commission and ethics committee, charged with disciplining teachers who cross that line. But when it does happen, Bergstrand said, the results are tragic.

“We had one taped interview with a little girl where the interviewer asked why she didn’t tell anyone that she was being abused,” Bergstrand said. “She said, ‘Well, he was a teacher and teachers aren’t supposed to do bad things.’ It broke my heart.”

It’s nearly impossible to measure just how often such cases happen. Many likely go unreported, experts say. But out of roughly 14,800 teachers in grades kindergarten through 12th in Idaho, nine had their teaching licenses revoked, suspended or denied in 2005, according to the State Department of Education. Between 2001 and 2005, the state averaged about seven such discipline cases a year, according to state records, though some years had as many as 13 cases and some years had as few as four.

Roy Einreinhofer, the executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, said it’s a problem with heavy costs.

“Looking at the damage to the school, it means they have to take action against the teacher to get them out of the job and get them replaced with someone who is qualified,” Einreinhofer said. “I think the psychological costs are much higher: Kids don’t feel safe when they go to school, and that’s a terrible thing.”

That’s what happened to Shadra Bruce, a Boise resident who was one of at least three students abused by former Lowell Scott Middle School and Centennial High School science teacher Dan Campbell in the 1980s.

Bruce says Campbell targeted her as an eighth-grader, grooming her over several years and luring her into a sexual relationship when she was a high-school student.

Bruce wasn’t the only student victimized by Campbell. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1991 after pleading guilty to two counts of rape and one count of lewd and lascivious conduct for having sex with at least three students. Three of the victims – including Bruce – ended up pregnant, and all were pressured by Campbell into having abortions, according to court records.

Efforts are made to prevent such crimes, but “it’s difficult to know ahead of time when somebody is going to take that route,” Einreinhofer said. “The better screening job schools do, and the better screening that our education systems do, they’re not going to end up in the classroom. But it’s hard to predict when someone is going to start doing something funny.”

As general counsel for the Idaho Education Association, John Rumel is generally the attorney who defends most sex abuse accusations leveled against teachers in Idaho. He says the key to reducing reports of sexual abuse by teachers is in training new teachers to adhere to professional and ethical standards.

“We’ve tried to do a lot of training about interaction with students so they won’t be engaged in an inappropriate relationship, won’t be perceived as an inappropriate relationship, and won’t be accused of an inappropriate relationship,” Rumel said. “We’ve found over the years that where there frequently can be problems is with young teachers in high school, where the age gap isn’t all that great. Or in the after-school, often competitive program, often in the sports and athletic portions of the job for teachers.”

Those activities generally involve a lot of time away from campus, Rumel said.

“It’s hard to draw any definite conclusion, but with sports there’s a certain physicality to it. I’m not a trained psychologist, but when physical performance is involved, that’s closer to sexuality than in a classroom math teacher.”

Bergstrand says her commission has also made efforts to educate teachers – recently, they created a computer disk that explained the code of ethics for teachers, asking each district to show it during teacher in-service days – but she’s unsure if teachers really pay any attention.

“Everybody gets a copy of the code of ethics, but if you go walk up to a teacher and ask if they’ve read it, I bet only 50 percent of them have,” Bergstrand said. “We try to be preventive, but we can’t cram it down their throats.”