Kentucky must tighten training, close legal loopholes, to stop sexual abuse by educators.

Kentucky has some of the highest child abuse and neglect rates in the country. This week — as reporters Beth Musgrave and Valarie Honeycutt Spears masterfully documented — we’ve learned that some of that abuse is happening where children ought to feel safe: in schools.

They spent a year reviewing documents and interviewing people to find that of 194 teachers whose teaching license was surrendered, suspended or revoked by the state Education Professional Standards Board from 2016 to 2021, 61% were related to sexual misconduct. Furthermore, some of these cases were never punished and some of the perpetrators were passed onto to other school districts.

What’s most shocking is that Kentucky appears to have lax rules about training educators and a patchwork of punishment that is filled with loopholes. Although it might appear obvious to many of us that teachers should not begin to text or date their students, a few of them apparently need to be told explicitly to both recognize the problem and stop such inappropriate relationships and abuse in their tracks.

Because of a lack of communication between state agencies, some teachers may be able to change districts without investigations following them there. In addition, numerous teachers who were found guilty of sexual relations with their students ended up with little punishment. Musgrave and Spears found two cases where teacher received shock probation, even though it’s not clear they were eligible for it.

National child advocacy groups have five recommendations for laws that states should adapt to fight teacher sexual abuse, including specific training for school personnel on educator sex abuse, better screening to stop perpetrators from changing districts or moving across state lines, and child sexual abuse task forces that continue to examine the issue and decide what is most needed.

Kentucky has changed its statute so that the age of consent is not a loophole for someone in a position of trust or authority. Kentucky also has a law — KRS 156.094 (*) —that requires all school personnel to receive training in recognizing child abuse or neglect and reporting it every two years. But it does not explicitly require teachers, administrators and staff to be trained on how to recognize and stop educator abuse.

Some districts, including Fayette County, voluntarily provide some training on spotting sexual abuse and appropriate boundaries for teachers and students. The training provided to Fayette County Public School employees is part of an online training course.

Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, has become one of the state’s most effective legislators in fighting Kentucky’s child abuse and neglect statistics, which she calls a “multi-faceted problem.” In 2017, for example, she passed Senate Bill 236, which expanded background checks for child care providers and counselors, including allowing parents access to child abuse and neglect registry records when employing a child care provider.

“One of the frustrating things is that we have passed a lot of legislation, but sometimes the administrations don’t choose to implement it,” she told the Herald-Leader. She thinks it’s clear that the Kentucky Department of Education could expand the current law on child abuse training to include specific educator abuse.

“I am prepared and committed to tackling the dynamic and complex child abuse issues that occur in our state through public discourse or by updating state statute,” she said.

But she thinks the current statute should be read to include training on all kinds of sexual abuse, including that by educators.

“The Kentucky Department of Education is not complying with Kentucky law and they must start immediately,” Raque Adams said. “If they are not prepared to do what is right for our children upon their own initiative, the General Assembly will when we convene in January.”

KDE spokeswoman Toni Konz said KDE is following the current law and would be cautious about adding more for an issue that is one of morality and common sense.

“We would recommend making any additional training regarding proper student-teacher relationships a requirement of initial licensure and relicensure, not something every teacher has to do every year,” she said.

Teachers are experiencing burnout, and all the required training “which is not revisited to see if they have outlived their usefulness takes valuable time away from actually teaching their students.”

KDE would like to see a coordinated system between it, the Education Professional Standards Board, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and law enforcement agencies across the state.

“When CHFS does a child abuse investigation, it would ping us. When EPSB does a teacher abuse investigation, it pings CHFS and law enforcement, etc.,” Konz said. This kind of system would require legislation to allow the agencies to share information to flag and stop problem educators.

“From our standpoint, the most helpful immediate advancement would be the court systems’ and CHFS timely enforcing the laws that already exist,” Konz said.

Konz also suggested the creation of of a Uniform Teacher Application that all districts could use, which would include a question asking if that applicant is currently under investigation for a crime.

There are many ways that cooperation and closed loopholes would make our children safer, and we hope state officials will work together instead of arguing to find the best ways to do so. In an ideal world, adults educators would know without being told that the students in their care are absolutely off limits sexually. Sadly, they don’t. And so Kentucky needs to build a better system to prevent them.