OLYMPIA…Persistence paid off for Senator Don Benton, R-Vancouver, when the governor signed into law a proposal to protect schoolchildren from predatory teachers.

“It is unfortunate that a bill to protect our schoolchildren from the teaching profession’s worst was so difficult to pass through the Legislature this year,” said Benton, a member of the Early Learning, K-12 and Higher Education Committee where the bill originated. “I had a new hurdle to jump every day and was only successful because I didn’t give up – the safety of schoolchildren is far too important. The effort was well worth it as I consider this is my greatest accomplishment of the session.”

Benton’s original proposal, Senate Bill 5677, was bottled up in the Senate Early Learning, K-12 and Higher Education Committee by its chair Rosemary McAuliffe. Ultimately, a deal was made to amend compromise language onto House Bill 2212, a bill regarding teacher certification.

The bill, including Benton’s proposal, requires the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), for a first offense, to revoke or suspend certificates of teachers found intentionally viewing unauthorized sexually explicit material on school grounds. A second offense requires OSPI to permanently revoke a teaching certificate.

Benton’s legislation comes on the heels of allegations that Bethel Junior High School teacher Chad Maughan, 35, engaged in sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old female student. Maughan previously worked as a science teacher at North Thurston High School but resigned after the North Thurston School District filed a complaint with the state alleging that he had accessed Internet pornography from his computer at work. OSPI suspended his teaching certificate for 60 days.

“These are not the kind of people we want to give full and unsupervised access to our schoolchildren, and these are certainly not the kind of people we want to be teaching our children,” Benton added. “Even teachers don’t want these kind of people in the classroom.”

Last year, after reading The Seattle Times series “Coaches who prey,” and learning that Washington state had nearly 100 teachers who had committed sexual acts with students, only to move on to other school districts without as much as a note in their personnel file, Benton worked across the partisan divide with Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, to pass the following legislation to protect schoolchildren:

• Senate Bill 6171 speeds up and requires the conclusions of investigations of school employees;

• Senate Bill 5533 requires school districts to share information regarding school employee misconduct; and

• Senate Bill 6220 outlines and clarifies misconduct reporting requirements.

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For more information contact Tami Davis (360) 786-7519 or davis.tami@leg.wa.gov