The Kansas State Board of Education (KSBOE)voted 8-0, with one abstention and one member absent, to allow a teacher who had admitted to inappropriate behavior with a student to retain his license at the board’s July meeting.
According to documentation shared with state school board members and obtained by The Sentinel, a teacher with the Shawnee Mission School District admitted that he “engaged in a pattern of inappropriate and overly personal and intimate conduct toward or focus on a student” during the 2022-2023 school year.
The inappropriate conduct included, but was not limited to:
- Exchanging over 200 emails for personal, non-educational purposes with Student,
- Sharing personal information with Student about his own personal relationship(s), \
- Sharing overly flattering messages via email and texts with Student about how much he loved talking and listening to Student,
- Telling Student how excited he is to not be her teacher anymore (after she graduates) so he can “just be some dude,”
- Inviting Student to meet outside of school after she stopped attending high school but before Student officially graduated
- Giving Student his personal cell phone number to keep in touch after Student graduated, without “having to worry about getting in trouble” and how after doing so “everything will be easier,” and;
- Exchanging friendly dialogue via over 600 text messages with Student for personal, non-educational purposes starting the day after she stopped attending high school and continued between that day and the day she graduated and continued after graduation.
Shawnee Mission allowed the teacher — whose name is redacted — to resign rather than be fired for inappropriate conduct with a student, which could have resulted in the loss of his license.
He has since moved on to teach math and be an assistant forensics coach at the Rock Hill district.
According to KSBOE General Counsel Scott Gordon, after discussions with the student’s family and with their consent, the case was “paused” for a year.
“So I came to him and his attorneys the next morning and said, ‘This is a one-time, very limited offer that I’m somewhat terrified to even suggest,'” Gordon said at the board meeting. “The offer was, ‘We are going to pause the proceedings for a year. It’s going to be somewhat of a term of probation.’ They agreed to that. The [Professional Practices Commission] signed off on that.”
Probation for inappropriate conduct with a student
Dr. Mischel Miller, executive director of the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute, served as the “probation officer” for the teacher.
“My first step was to meet with the candidate, have a conversation with the candidate. We did that via Zoom,” Miller said. “We discussed what the process moving forward would look like. We discussed the paper that the candidate would be asked to write, the reflection, and the things that were important in that paper were a title page, introduction, APA format.
“But more more importantly, the meat of the paper was to acknowledge the incident, take responsibility for the incident, reflect a bit on the impact of the incident, some writing on the lessons learned, and again another major piece was to plan for a repair and regrowth and growth, which would include concrete actions moving forward, all based in research.”
With all that, the board was asked to allow the teacher to keep his license despite his admitting to inappropriate conduct with a student.
Gordon said the teacher in this case “went through a, I’ll say, a non-direct or non-traditional teacher preparation program. There was no mention of the Kansas Code of Conduct. There was no discussions. There was no true integration of any kind of ethical decision making in that program.”
While there were no accusations of sexual contact in this case, Gordon admitted that the sort of grooming in this case is how it starts.
“I can’t tell you how many grooming cases I’ve investigated over the past 13-plus years,” he said. “Every single one of those cases, this is how they started.
“And I kid you not. When my stomach was turning as I’m typing up the settlement agreement on this case, because I didn’t know, are we doing the right thing?”
Board Member Connie O’Brien wanted to know if there was a similar process for principals or superintendents “because I know of a principal that did lose their teaching license, but is there …. any other recourse to someone that behaves in an inappropriate manner?”
Gordon said there is currently no such process in place.
“This is the only time this has ever been done, like ever, for Kansas,” Gordon said. “Whether this will be done again, don’t know. The process, would, I would anticipate, should be exactly the same, whether you are a first-year teacher or a 15th-year teacher or you are a building administrator. The process itself should be the same, and I think it’s fair to say that this was also this individual’s first year of teaching. That played a large role in it. Consider the expertise or lack of expertise in someone’s first year of teaching versus their 15th.”
Board Member Betty Arnold, prior to moving to allow the teacher to keep his license — with a public censure — said she liked the idea of being “humanistic” because “you know there are exceptions.”
Member Melanie Haas seconded. Hopkins, Beryl New, Danny Zeck, O’Brien, Haas, Jim Porter, Arnold, and Dennis Hershberger all voted in favor. Michelle Dombrosky was not present, and Debby Potter abstained.
