Remember that Assistant principal who made news for his alleged kidnapping and rape of a 13-year-old student at Markham Middle School a week ago?
At first we’d heard that the AP, whose name is Steve Thomas Rooney, had been moved from his previous school administration gig at Fremon High School because he’d pulled a gun on parent.
(Gee, at most jobs I know, pointing a firearm at the client or the client’s parents gets you fired. But, hey, I guess LAUSD is a little more flexible.)
Turns out there was more to that story. When the cops investigated the gun charge, they uncovered evidence that Rooney had been having sexual relations with a 17-year-old student for a YEAR. It was the girl’s (understandably angry) step father who was the object of the alleged gun-waving incident.
Because the girl turned 18 during the investigation and declined to press charges, the whole thing went nowhere—-criminally that is. But Rooney went somewhere. He got transferred to another school. With younger kids.
The LA Times has more:
Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to comment Wednesday about how Rooney had been reassigned to Markham last fall, saying they are conducting an internal investigation and citing a policy barring them from speaking publicly about cases under those circumstances.
Yeah, I’ll bet they declined to comment.
LAUSD is notorious for their habit of rotating, not firing, their administrative lemons. (Although the Rooney case takes the proverbial cake). For instance, you may remember the issue with the principal at Santee High School whom I reported on here and at the LA Weekly last summer. (He has since been removed). That principal was bounced from school to school after complaints at each of his jobs postings. (And when word got around that I was writing about him, I got a flood of calls and emails from people who’d worked with the guy at other schools, and they told me some pretty damning stories.) But, knowing all this, the district continued to removed him from one school, and just send him to another until he landed at Santee and finally somebody complained to the press (that would be me).
One of Rooney’s colleagues at Fremont High School where he used to work made an interesting point:
“I can’t believe he was put in another school,” said Jenna Washington, Fremont’s magnet coordinator. “It was hard enough for us at Fremont. In South Los Angeles, the district knows a lot of parents are not going to complain. They wouldn’t have placed him in a West Los Angeles school or a Valley school. Or they’d have parents out there picketing.”
Inexcusable.
UPDATE: The ever-excellent Patt Morrison had this to say (among other pithy comments) on today’s Times Opinion blog:
Where have we heard this management technique before? Let me think … oh yes: from the Catholic Church. Priests accused of molesting young parishioners were often transferred from parish to parish, where all they did was … molest more parishioners.This tactic has cost the Catholic Church hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, and incalculable damage to the church’s reputation.
Yeah, the LAUSD can sure afford to take those kinds of hits.
It’s all public school systems. But, it’s okay to suspend an honor student for buying a bag of Skittles from a friend at school as part of zero tolerance for unhealthy snacks. Zero tolerance should apply to teachers on many counts. The difference is that the kids don’t have a union.
No one threatened to be fired from this public school either: Gay Porn as Required Reading in Ill. High School
These aren’t problems in homeschools.
That’s interesting, Celeste. The yearly waltz of the lemons is a well known phenomena with under performing teachers. Since a challenge to tenure can result in large legal fees for cash strapped districts, invoking a geographic cure for the offender is often seen as the best solution.
Invariably those teachers eventually find their way to the most vulnerable of students in the most vulnerable of schools. All the better to sidestep complaints, you see, and hopefully, if said students and parents are too dispiriting for the offending teacher, the teacher will quit.
Of course, this tactic has been used against some high performing teachers who offend the political sensibilities of the district as well.
I thought the constraints for firing Administrators were less …constraining. Do Administrators qualify for some type of job protection that would require a legal team to fire them? It sure didn’t seem to take much to fire Frank Wells over the Locke High School/Green Dot threat.
Two helpful links from an interview on FOX this morning, just on the wild chance that you missed it.
The Ten Worst
Union-Protected Teachers Contest – http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/
A union watchdog – http://www.unionfacts.com/
Finally, an article about a school board president.
“See, It Was Rape, But Not the Bad Kind of Rape, Not the Rapey Rape” – http://preview.tinyurl.com/2r8882
Apparently, bad teachers don’t get fired. If you remember my comment about my previous bad teachers, there was one who was supposed to teach math and couldn’t, but it turned out that she lied on her resume about a math degree. Her punishment? She was promoted to a higher paying job in administration rather than teaching.
It’s all about the unions.
Yeah, listener, teachers too. But as you said, it didn’t prove to be a problem with Frank Wells. (Although I’m not sure, now that I think about it, if they fired him or removed him then transferred him to administrative Siberia, which is what they did with another principal who annoyed them.)
I always heard the Dance of the Lemons (doesn’t that sound like something that belongs on a Lawrence Welk broadcast?) was for administrators but I’ll let teachers in as well.
As for Mister Rooney carrying I’m sure our regular right wing friends will forgive him that. He’s just a little ahead of the NRA’s promoted policy to have school personal pack heat. Supposed to deter shooters like Virginia Tech and NIU. Either that or make our institutions of learning the OK Corral!
I’m surely going to believe anything that FOX broadcasts!
Are principals in the union ? That seems like a conflict to me.
They have their own union Reg. For Admin types.
Back in the 1980s, Fremont High School had a veteran Coach/Teacher removed and transferred over to South Gate Jr. High School. The alleged allegation were again – sexual.
I was told more than once that this coach loved to stand around and eye ball the cheerleaders in practice. I wonder why?
Then, I’ve personally seen more than one case where a LAUSD High School female student will graduate and ends up dating or marrying their teachers. One female girl had the habit of always eating her lunch behind a teacher’s classroom with the doors closed. Makes you wonder where and when did all the hot hanky panky really start.
But then again, its LAUSD – nothing new, business as always.
Poplock, hanky panky in schools is not unique to LAUSD. I remember back in high school there was a female, hot looking English teacher, about 30 years old who took “special interests” in a few of my wrestling team-mates. We all knew what was happening; there were no allegations of abuse. I only remember those of not chosen were angry we were not the “lucky” ones. Even the gym teachers knew about this, I guess those were the good old days.
I hated her English class and barely passed her class, I’m not sure if it was jealousy of the lucky ones, or I just wasn’t interested in English.