Herald-Leader series on abusive teachers caused ‘damage, mistrust’ for public schools

On Sunday, Oct. 2, the Lexington Herald Leader ran a full front page article on alleged sexual abuse by Kentucky teachers. There not being enough harm done, the Herald continued their defamation on page two and three of that edition and the following Monday and Tuesday with additional misinformation and blame. This article no doubt scared parents sending their child to public schools and made teachers suspect of inappropriate education practices and down right “predatory” actions toward innocent children.

As if teachers and public education in general don’t have enough problems to worry about, the Herald chose to hurt the system even more. The public, of course, has a right to know about their public school system and the teachers employed by taxpayer funds but to hurt and cause more damage and mistrust in the system in this way is unconscionable and just plain wrong. It begs the question why here, now, and why in such a defaming public way?

I am a retired public school Kentucky teacher and of course after 30 years in the system I have a lot of expertise in the way public school teachers are educated in this area of sexual harassment. I also know the heart, soul and outstanding character of my colleagues. My friends, fellow teachers, and I were horrified, angry, and deeply offended after reading the misinformation in the Herald.

Allow me to set a few facts straight. The article suggested that Kentucky educators are not instructed in sexual harassment or required to report it. That is just not true. Every year Kentucky teachers must take online instruction for professional credit in all types of sexual misconduct in a school setting. We are required by state law to report any instance of purported misconduct and we do. I wonder if the authors thought to check out the number of abuse cases reported and the number of children rescued from abuse that is directly reported by caring professionals in their schools.

Let me be perfectly clear. No sexual misconduct should even be allowed or over looked in a public school setting. There should be and is zero tolerance and I would support teacher licenses being revoked if there is sufficient proof.

In my personal experience of 30 years, there were only two cases that I knew about. Both cases were investigated thoroughly by the school system and appropriate measures taken. The article reported that from 2016 to 2021, 194 teachers licenses were revoked, surrendered or suspended related to misconduct. Of those 61% were for alleged sexual misconduct which the article reported as the “vast majority.” Forty-four of these cases were not prosecuted, probably because of no proof. In the United States we are still innocent until proven guilty, the last time I checked. Many of the other cases were just dismissed or got probation. There were around 42,500 public school teachers in Kentucky during those years. Do the math. That is about 50 reports each year divided by 42,500 teachers. It comes out to .0015. A very, very small percentage, in fact statically insignificant.

So why did the Herald-Leader, without pointing out how rarely this occurs, choose to make this front page, deliberately large, article for three days running? I have a few ideas... perhaps they wanted to hurt public education when it is fighting for its life and reputation. Perhaps the writers of this article have a larger agenda to undermine faith and trust in public education and thereby destroy an important fundamental right of our democracy. Maybe they just wanted to sell papers with an “alarming” headline. Whatever the reason, if you are going to trash and damage public school teachers with outrageous reports then let other professions take the same abuse. Lets see some articles about Catholic priests, Southern Baptist ministers, gymnastic coaches, lawyers, . . .. The list is very long.

Lexington Herald Leader, I am deeply ashamed of you!!!

Kathy Shewmaker is a retired Kentucky teacher.