Two teachers have been stripped of their licenses and 31 others received 60-day suspensions in the past eight years for looking at Internet porn at work, according to reports in the local news media.
That has provoked legislative action, with state Sen. Donald Benton (R-Vancouver) proposing a tightening of penalties including permanent credential revocation for any teachers caught watching Internet porn on the job.
"If you’re accessing porn at school or bringing it into school, you will have your certificate revoked. Period," Benton said at a news conference. "These people are a black eye when someone like this teaches in our schools."
Chad Denis Maugham is a science teacher accused in January of having sex with a 14-year-old student at the junior high school where he taught. But it turned out that Maugham was suspended for 60 days in 2003 after he was caught looking at Net porn on the job in the school district near Olympia.
The scandal has also turned up news that the state office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has probed 61 such complaints since 1997, when that office first started tracking such cases in a database, with 50 of those complaints said to be serious enough to draw disciplinary action, according to one newspaper.
The suspensions would have been yearlong if the teachers in question had seen the Net porn while students were present. Schools in the state are generally believed to use filtering software programs at minimum, with some said to use data tracking programs as well.
The ramifications also included five teachers surrendering their licenses while the investigation was ongoing and 12 others reprimanded, with six cases thrown out for lack of evidence or for the teachers in question being found innocent, the same newspaper said.
Five cases are reported to be under continuing investigation: two in Kent, one in Kelso, one in Pullman, and one in Bethel, the last of these believed to involve a substitute teacher who no longer teaches in that district.
Maugham pleaded not guilty to two charges of child rape and one charge of second-degree sexual misconduct with a minor, facing up to five years in prison if he's convicted. It was his case particularly that's said to have provoked Benton to legislative action, after Benton learned Bethel officials knew of his previous suspension but hired him regardless.
"If [the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction] had done their job and revoked his license instead of suspending it, he wouldn't have been teaching," the senator said.
Internet porn cases are believed to be only a fraction of the total teacher misconduct cases the state investigates each year, but officials said they still take such charges seriously, including bringing in the police if child porn is involved.
The Benton proposal, however, may run into some opposition from the state's teacher's union. The Washington Education Association is said to be concerned that the bill would be too broad, could injure teachers who find Net porn by accident while doing common research, and could be too nonspecific in defining porn, since one section is believed to say teachers would lose their licenses forever if they have "any" porn at school.
