Baltimore County Public School?s communication?s staff last week told The Examiner that it regularly withholds teacher records from potential school systems “as policy.”
The stated reason: Potential lawsuits from teachers. What about the risk of lawsuits from students victimized by predators knowingly moved from school system to school system?
That policy of covering for predators and putting students at risk allowed Timothy Nicholas Gounaris, 50, a former Baltimore County middle school teacher charged recently with sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, to switch school systems with ease. After resigning last year from the county school system, Baltimore City Public Schools hired Gounaris to teach eighth grade at Chinquapin Middle School for the 2006-07 school year.
Worse, Baltimore County hired him from Harford County Schools, where a family complained about him abusing a girl there.
Since when is a “potential” lawsuit more important than protecting real live children in the school system?s care? At a moral and legal level, it is much as the Catholic Church shuffled sexual abusers from parish to parish without informing the new victim pool. However public school officials have a third, even higher level of responsibility: Public trust.
All public school employees are bound to hold as their highest priority the safety of our children ? all of them.
Baltimore and Harford county school officials obviously saw Gounaris as a threat to their own children. They let him move on and, in the case of Baltimore County, removed him from the classroom and placed him in a warehouse position last January. A school employee did the right thing ? as all citizens are required to do in every case ? and notified police.
He resigned in June and police arrested him Nov. 30.
According to John Smeallie, Maryland?s assistant state superintendent for certification and accreditation, school systems must request a revocation of a teaching license if there is an offense or a resignation. The county filed a request, but not until August ? two months after Gounaris resigned ? said Smeallie.
Why did the county school officials wait? By filing in August it meant that the Baltimore City school system could not find out about a revocation based on an offense until after the school year started ? and after Gounaris had been hired.
New technology in place since the beginning of the school year, unlike the previous system, flags teachers with pending revocations, said Smeallie.
That is good news.
But the fact that the county not only withheld information from Baltimore City but also withheld filing for a revocation of Gounaris? license until two months after he resigned shows technology can assist, but not provide a foolproof means to check someone?s record.
That requires a good faith evaluation of a candidate.
Legal experts have told The Examiner that the county would have nothing to fear from providing an accurate account of Gounaris? employment and that Maryland offers employers stronger protection against defamation relative to other states.
But the bigger issues are moral obligation, public duty, legal responsibility and, ultimately, the safety of children entrusted to public schools.
The Baltimore County Public School System must immediately revoke its “policy” of cowardly self-preservation and begin sharing teacher records with other school systems. Only then can parents trust their children will be safe in its care.
If they donot, we the people are entitled to ask: Why shouldn?t they be charged with aiding and abetting crimes against children?
