“Individual’s right to work” vs. students’ welfare? AZ Charter Board goes with the individual, not the students.

by David Safier

I thought I would never have to write about this one charter school principal again. But a news story from KPHO Phoenix let me know the principal, who should never have been allowed to be around students after what she did in 2005, is back in the news for doing more damage at another school. Worse, the same thing could happen all over again with the same principal because of what I have to call outrageous negligence on the part of the Arizona Charter School Board.

Here's a summary of the the original story, which I posted about at length in December, 2008. Carolyn Kennedy, an Arizona charter school principal, failed to report a case of molestation by a teacher in her school in 2005, even though the student told her about it. It wasn't until 3 girls went to the police that the teacher was arrested on suspicion of child molestation. The teacher was the principal's son.  Even though the principal failed to report a possible case of child abuse, the Charter School Board said it couldn't remove her. The reason was, she didn't have a teaching certificate (neither did her son, by the way), so the investigative unit of the state Board of Education had no jurisdiction over her. Kennedy stayed on as principal. The school finally closed in June, 2008, not because of a ruling from the Charter Board, but because enrollment was dwindling and the school was no longer viable.

People like the principal and her son will always be around, unfortunately. It's the job of those who are in charge to make sure the opportunities for people to harm children are minimized, and once they have been found out, they are never allowed to work with children again. Instead, the Charter School Board, which is part of the AZ Department of Education, shrugged its shoulders and allowed Carolyn Kennedy to stay on as principal. No matter what excuse you give, that's simply wrong.

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I thought that was the last I would hear of Carolyn Kennedy. Not so.

Recently, according to the KPHO story, Kennedy was principal of New Samaritan Charter School — like her first school, this one is in the Phoenix area — where a number of students were given graduation diplomas without having enough credits. One "graduate" only learned of the problem after a semester at a school in Santa Barbara, when the school told her it still didn't have her high school transcripts. She found she was 5 1/2 credits short of graduation and couldn't return until she completed high school.

Wait. It gets worse. Here's what the new principal, the one who replaced Kennedy, said.

“We found the records were not kept … There were taxes that were owed from second term, people were paid sporadically, vendors, and it was just kind of a mess.”

In addition to the organizational chaos, someone from the previous administration sabotaged the computer system, erasing all the student records from the 2009 school year. [bold face added]

No, I'm not through yet. It turns out, before she moved to Arizona,

Kennedy and her husband were arrested in California on suspicion of filing false tax returns and not reporting money from a charter school the husband ran.

And when Kennedy bailed out her son when he was in jail on the child molestation charge (he skipped bail, by the way, but that's a different story), she stayed true to her sleazy reputation.

Carolyn Kennedy and three family members are accused of laundering his bond money.

In the video on the KPHO website, the reporter sits down with DeAnna Rowe, Executive Director of the Charter School Board, and asks when the Board will "step in and say enough is enough." Rowe replies, since Kennedy hasn't been convicted of a crime, she has the right to keep her fingerprint clearance card, which allows her to work at an Arizona public school, district or charter.

The reporter presses Rowe further on the subject. Here is Rowe's mouth-dropping reply.

"I don't believe the Board has the authority to prohibit or restrict an individual's right to work beyond what the statute permits."

I hold the Charter Board responsible for letting Carolyn Kennedy keep her first job after failing to report her son's molestation of a student, then allowing her to get her next job at New Samaritan Charter School. If she gets another job at a government-funded school, the responsibility for any damage she causes will rest firmly on the Board's shoulders.

If someone has willfully damaged students again and again, it is the duty of the state to do everything possible keep that person away from children. If there is no easy legal remedy, you brainstorm to see if there's some legal avenue you've missed, or you find a way to alert everyone to the danger that person poses to students. Then you lobby for a change in the law to close whatever loophole allows this situation to continue.

You do not sit idly by when children's welfare is at stake.