Audit finds board lax on tracking educators’ court cases

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

Nearly two years ago, Clark County substitute teacher Robert G. Stevenson pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy and was sent to prison.

On Saturday the State Board of Education finally got around to barring him from returning to the classroom.

"That is appalling," board member Gary Waters said. "I don't care if his (Stevenson's) license is suspended, I don't care if he's locked up. We've got to take licenses away from these guys in a timely fashion."

Legislative auditors and lawmakers agree.

A recent audit by the Legislative Counsel Bureau uncovered a lack of policies and procedures to track criminal cases involving educators.

The general, departmentwide audit also found:

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, who heads the Legislature's interim audit committee, said the Education Department deserves praise for acknowledging its shortcomings.

"That department is so refreshing because at least it admits its mistakes," Leslie, D-Reno, said.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, said he concurred with the audit's findings, including the lack of annual evaluations.

New employees are evaluated three times in their first year, Rheault said. But once the probationary hurdles are cleared, evaluations are rare, he said. And he's one to know.

"I've been with the department 21 years and never had a formal evaluation," Rheault said. "There's been a long-standing practice of noncompliance. We'll get back on track and get it done."

In fact, since the audit was released in August, the department has completed 90 percent of the evaluation backlog, Rheault said.

Leslie said she was confident the department would meet the 60-day deadline to submit a corrective action plan for each of the various deficiencies. The committee is most concerned about teacher licensing oversight, she said.

State education officials say they often learn of teacher arrests from newspaper articles. That was the case with the most recent teacher to lose his license, Stevenson.

"We can't be relying on news reports as the reason to start investigating," Leslie said. "There needs to be a requirement for school districts to notify them (state education officials) as soon as there's any indication of a problem. Right now, they're left in the dark unless they happen to hear about it, and that's unacceptable."

Leslie is considering authoring legislation that would mandate a notification process, as well as a formal tracking system for teachers who face criminal complaints.

The Education Department plans to create a database to track criminal cases involving teachers. But other areas requiring increased oversight - such as auditing class-size reduction programs in the state's 17 school districts - will require more staff, Rheault said.

Part of the problem in monitoring the licenses of teachers facing potential discipline is that the Education Department has only one person assigned to the task. She is Diana Hollander, who said she currently has 10 "serious" cases on her desk, the majority of which involve Clark County teachers.

As for the delay between Stevenson's conviction and the scheduling of the revocation hearing, Hollander said she's working as fast as she can. Stevenson's license was suspended immediately after news of his arrest reached state officials. Hollander said a backlog of cases kept Stevenson's revocation hearing on the back burner, a source of frustration to her.

"My goal is to keep predators out of classrooms and keep bad teachers from coming in from other states," Hollander said. "I take my job responsibilities very seriously. I've talked to enough kids who have been assaulted by their teachers. I know the damage that can be done to them."

During the last legislative session lawmakers expanded the Education Department's teacher-licensing authority. Rheault can revoke a provisional license within 120 days of receiving FBI background check results that reveal a criminal history. Prior to 2005, that authority rested with the Board of Education and required both a public hearing and a vote.

Rheault plans to ask the 2007 Legislature to fund additional staff to address the shortfalls identified in the audit. In the meantime, he's planning to reassign some of Hollander's job duties to other staff to give her more time to work on license investigations.

Ten years ago, when Rheault first began working with the licensing department, about 20 FBI reports came back with "hits," which indicate either a criminal history or red flags that require more investigation by her. That number is now in the hundreds annually. Last year the state Board of Education revoked four teachers' licenses, three for sex-related offenses.

"Unfortunately, this isn't a problem that's going away," Rheault said. "We need to have better systems in place to handle the workload."