School Priority Number One: Not Student Safety

DAISY PROM
Opinions Editor

Pennsylvania State University assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, accused of 52 accounts of child sex abuse over a 15-year period, was arrested just last year. Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested early January despite a 5-year streak of lewd act reports. The media is littered with stories of cases like these: sexual predators served justice years too late, years after the victims understand that their cries mean nothing in the shadow of reputation.
Berndt, a third grade teacher, was a favorite among students and was known to reward his pupils with cookies. One day, two girls reported instances of fondling–the assaulter, Berndt. However, the investigation did not follow through because of lack of evidence. Two young girls had built up the courage to confess but were brushed away because their words were inefficient. Maybe there was a lack of evidence, but not taking their claims seriously shows that student safety is not a top priority—which it should be.
It’s true that Miramonte has been receiving negative press attention for the past year, after a teacher apparently committed suicide after reading his statistical teacher ratings published in the Los Angeles Times. In an already overcrowded and underfunded public school, how could administrators deal with the unflattering spotlight? Despite having test scores gradually increase over the years, Miramonte’s success was dampened with this bit of press coverage. They did, after all, have reason to celebrate their staff rather than shame them.
Soon, the amount of parent complaints regarding Berndt’s suspicious behavior increased. As the pile of complaints grew, it became too difficult to keep all of it concealed.
It’s admittedly difficult for a parent to understand the motives of a school attempting to protect its reputation rather than their children. The mother of the ten-year-old boy involved in the Penn State molestation case made the report herself, but still, it wasn’t until that child saw his twentieth birthday last year that he was able to see the man responsible brought to justice. It was handled almost as if to remind the boy that his well-being was important, but not as important as the career of an assistant coach of a major college football team.
It was when these cases and others recently and suddenly spilled out of their confines that the law took dramatic steps to show the nation that no one disturbs the safety of our children and gets away with it. But these steps taken were dramatic indeed: the entire Miramonte staff was replaced with a new one, to reinforce the fact that the old one was probably contaminated with Berndt’s deviance. Quite the show, throwing away an entire staff to distract the mobs of angry parents, but it would have never been needed if the reports were handled properly the first time around, when those reports were made seven years ago.
The same goes with Penn State. If the word of the victim’s mother did not go unheeded, the well-being of other children would not have been traded in for the well-being of a school’s reputation. If the job was handled promptly, with regard for the safety of our children, there might not have been such a powerful reaction from everyone involved. No amount of positive public relations for the school can relieve these children from their trauma. And that is the tragedy of the problem—that acting too late really does result in too little.