California lawmakers are demanding change after a state audit of the commission charged with cracking down on teacher misconduct found numerous flaws that could pose risks to children.

Among the cases cited in the April audit:

• An educator was charged with exposing middle school students to pornography in a case the Commission on Teacher Credentialing became aware of in October 2008. The commission did not request documents from police for 17 months.

• A teacher was arrested on charges for offenses ranging from prostitution to petty theft in 2007 – eventually pleading guilty to misdemeanor prostitution – but was permitted to renew his credential in 2008. It was revoked two years later.

• A substitute teacher urinated in a classroom while students were present and was banned by a judge from teaching for one year or being in the presence of children without adult supervision. The commission did not revoke his credential until six months after the court case ended.

Saying he was "deeply concerned," Senate Present Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, announced this week that legislative staffers are researching possible solutions and that the Joint Legislative Audit Committee will meet on May 10 to consider "numerous areas in need of immediate improvement."

Steinberg said the audit "calls into serious question the commission's commitment and capacity to investigate and act in a manner timely enough to protect the safety and well-being of schoolchildren."

Auditors found flaws in nearly every aspect of the commission's regulatory process, including lapses in launching investigations, updating files, gathering facts, tracking cases and revoking credentials. They also found that in August 2009 there was a three-year backlog of 12,600 arrest or prosecution reports to be entered into commission records.

"It's one of the worst-run organizations we've seen in a long, long time – of any state agency that we've looked at," state Auditor Elaine Howle told The Bee.

Even if school districts remove teachers from classrooms until accusations of misconduct are resolved, failure by the commission to keep timely records could enable offenders to be hired by other districts or states.

Commission Executive Director Dale Janssen, in written comments to The Bee, said the commission is committed to improving and has made numerous changes, including addition of an electronic case-tracking system.

The backlog of entering "lower-level reports of arrest and prosecution" was brought to his attention in July 2009. Immediate steps were taken to eliminate it, Janssen said and that was accomplished in June 2010.

Janssen said that staff inefficiency is unacceptable but that some delays stemmed from lengthy police and court processes or lack of timely notification from school districts.

"The commission has never had a complaint or a report that a delay in processing has caused harm to a student," the commission wrote to Howle in responding to the audit.

Handling times could have been cut in some cases but did not exceed legal limits, the commission said. Statutes of limitation generally stretch for up to four years after an act of misconduct or one year after the agency should have known about it.

Howle said that meeting legal time limits is not good enough – taxpayers deserve quicker action – and that auditors are not convinced that the new computer case-tracking system has solved many problems.

Auditors examined misconduct cases from before and after the system was implemented and found problems in the accuracy and timeliness of actions taken in both, Howle said. "I don't agree that their case management system has fixed the problem," she said.

Howle criticized what she considered an overreliance on court convictions before revoking credentials, saying the commission has the right and responsibility to gather information about misconduct and act on its own.

Steinberg requested the audit at the urging of a whistle-blower, Kathy Carroll, a commission attorney who expressed concern about the office's timeliness and backlog. She was fired while the audit was under way last fall. Her appeal is pending.

Kevin Gordon, a veteran education lobbyist, said the audit tackled a vital issue, because school fiscal and accountability pressures make it more important than ever that dollars be spent wisely.

"The bad teacher in the classroom is rarer than a lot of people think, but if we don't have a meaningful way to address instances among the teacher force, then it makes the education community much more vulnerable to attacks that may be unfounded," he said.

The audit found that in 11 of 29 cases sampled randomly, the commission took more than 80 days to open a case after receiving a report of misconduct – with one case taking nearly two years and another taking almost three years.

Auditors questioned the commission's legal authority to permit staff to open or close cases of teacher misconduct without presenting them to a seven-member committee designed to make recommendations about revoking credentials or taking other punitive action.

The audit found 59 applicants who were granted credentials by staff, without committee review, after failing to disclose misconduct ranging from shoplifting to battery to drug-related offenses.

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Call Jim Sanders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5538.

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