Putting kids at risk?
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Teacher abuse case reveals secrecy, flaws
By Jesse Roman
How could former teacher Shaun Bryer allegedly abuse children undetected over a period of years? And how was he so easily able to find another job after being forced to resign in March from Morristown Elementary School?Only the most cynical people might think that school officials, social workers and the state teachers’ union don’t have children’s safety and best interests in mind.
However, they do have separate, sometimes conflicting agendas, and the Bryer case has made that evident.
Bryer, 28, pleaded not guilty last week in Lamoille District Court to 17 counts, 15 of them felony charges. Bryer faces 10 counts of aggravated sexual assault on a minor under age 16, five counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, and two counts of disseminating pornography to a minor.
He is accused of molesting two boys over the span of several years, and police are investigating whether there could be more victims. Bryer could spend the rest of his life in jail.
As the Stowe Reporter reported last week, rumors had swirled for years about Bryer’s behavior with students. Based on documents provided by school officials and other sources, here’s is what’s known:
• Bryer met with then-Morristown Elementary School Principal Frederika French during the 2004-05 school year to review concerns about Bryer’s inappropriate interactions with students.
• Bryer had met with then-Superintendent Alice Angney about concerns that Bryer was acting inappropriately with students.• Bryer met with current Superintendent Tracy Wrend on May 21, 2008, about concerns that Bryer was acting inappropriately with students.
• During a meeting in November 2008, Bryer acknowledged to Wrend he had given two students rides to school on a daily basis, had sleepovers with the two students, had helped them with homework at his house more than once, had driven the students to events unrelated to school, had text-messaged the students, had brought them Chinese food, and showed them other “preferential treatment.”
• Wrend formally reprimanded Bryer in writing on Nov. 10, 2008.
• On Nov. 14, 2008, Wrend submitted a report about Bryer to the Vermont Department for Children and Families, citing inappropriate behavior with the two students.
• The Department of Children and Families wrote back Dec. 1, 2008, stating there was not enough evidence to warrant an investigation.
• Wrend wrote Bryer a letter on March 26, 2009, placing him on administrative leave while an investigation was conducted.
• Wrend and Bryer met April 16, 2009, at which time Bryer evidently offered to resign. The investigation of Bryer was suspended.
• Bryer and Wrend signed an “employment resignation and release agreement” May 11, 2009, in which Bryer agreed to resign, and he and the Morristown School Board jointly pledged, if either made “any public comments on the resignation, that such comments will be positive.” The board also agreed to write Bryer a letter of recommendation, and pay him full salary and benefits until June 30, 2009. The investigation was removed from his personnel file and given to the board’s attorney to be hidden away for six years. Bryer and the board agreed to say Bryer resigned for “personal reasons.”
• On May 19, 2009, Bryer wrote a memo to Morristown officials, trying to clear the air. “There are many rumors circulating throughout the community right now that are simply not true,” he wrote. “My resignation is for personal reasons, not for any wrongdoing.”
• Just before this school year began, the Colchester School District hired Bryer to teach fifth grade. Superintendent Larry Waters has said he didn’t know about the investigation, or about Lamoille South’s concerns with Bryer’s behavior with students.
The key questions
How was all of this allowed to occur?
How did Colchester not know of Bryer’s past problems?
Why did the Department for Children and Families fail look into the school district’s concerns about Bryer?
Why did a Vermont teachers’ union attorney help draft a separation agreement that has built-in provisions to make it difficult for future employers to learn about his troubled past?
Why didn’t Morristown fire Bryer after the second or third time he failed to comply with requests to stop acting inappropriately with students?
Why weren’t school administrators candid with Colchester officials?
Those troubling questions are explored below. However, the answers raise problems of their own, and point to a need to re-examine how the state deals with child-abuse reports and problem teachers.
Agency did little
As a school employee, Lamoille South Superintendent Tracy Wrend is obligated by law to report to the Department for Children and Families anytime child abuse or neglect is suspected.
In November of last year, Wrend called the department to report Bryer’s inappropriate behavior.
“I know my obligation as a legal reporter and I complied with that,” Wrend said in an interview. “We make reports (to DCF) as we become aware of things of concern, and we trust our community partners to do what they can by law.”
In this case, it seems the department did very little.
When a report of suspected abuse or neglect arrives at the department, it is fielded by one of six social workers. They are required to “promptly determine whether it constitutes an allegation of child abuse or neglect as defined” by state law.
“There is a definition of child abuse and neglect,” said Steve Dale, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, an interview. “The dilemma in this situation is there have to be enough facts to cause us to say that there may be a case here for neglect or abuse. If someone calls with a general concern … it’s generally not enough.
“In this instance, the call concerned the nature of a relationship. The school was uncomfortable because the teacher was … alone with kids when (he) was not supposed to be and those kinds of things. Those things are all concerning behaviors, but they are not items identified by the state as grounds to investigate sexual abuse.”
As a result, the person taking the call and a supervisor jointly concluded that the allegations against Bryer did not warrant an investigation.
The department did not contact Bryer, the school district, the parents, or the children about the complaint. After a brief background check into Bryer, the case was simply set aside.
On Dec. 1, the department wrote to Wrend that “this incident does not rise to the level of child abuse/neglect.” The response implies some inquiries were made, but Dale made it clear that no investigation took place — which is not uncommon.
Last year, the department received 13,434 reports from concerned citizens who suspected abuse. Of those, 2,896 —just over 20 percent — were accepted and investigated.
But, as Dale said, “whether we are legally able to follow up on a call … in no way indicates that the behavior is fine. It is still clearly concerning and needs to be addressed.”
House Speaker Shap Smith, a Democratic state legislator from Morrisville, said Tuesday he hadn’t talked to Dale specifically about the Bryer case or his department’s procedures, but “it does raise serious concerns to me if a report was made and no investigation was done. Certainly, I would expect the Legislature to hold a hearing if this is true.”
During the 2007-08 legislative session, the Legislature revised state laws on child-abuse investigations, Dale said.
“I would not be surprised, in light of this situation, that there will be ongoing debate about the statutes,” Dale said. “We need to be careful to not see this as an easy issue. Having the state investigate general concerns with no indication of any abuse is moving to a difficult place with lots of unintended consequences.”
He continued: “It is important not to see government intervention as the only solution. Expanding government roles does not guarantee a certain outcome. But anytime something horrible like this happens, we have to ask ourselves what we can do better. There is no easy answer.”
The state budget, passed by the Legislature in June, cut up to $425,000 in grants and contracts for the Department for Children and Families.
Did the cuts affect the department’s ability to take on cases?
“Absolutely not,” Dale says. “That has nothing to do with it.”
Dale added: “This is one of the most important functions of government, and we should not be deciding child-abuse policy based on tough economic times.”
Teachers tough to fire
Just as state law influenced the decision by the Department for Children and Families not to investigate the Bryer case, it played a role in keeping school officials from firing Bryer when they may have wanted to.
Under the law, once hired, a teacher has a legal right to his or her job, unless the school district can prove he or she doesn’t deserve it.
And not following orders — such as repeatedly disobeying directives to stop having sleepovers — is not necessarily firm legal grounds to fire a teacher, says Bob Luce, attorney for the Morristown School District.
According to Luce, there are only two ways to get rid of a problem teacher. One is to place the teacher on leave, get the school board to vote to fire the teacher, then rely on an arbitrator to deem the firing justified. The second is to ask the teacher to resign, which usually means granting concessions like the sort Bryer received, which includes silence.
Once a school board votes to fire a teacher, the teacher more than likely will appeal, and by contract the teacher has the right to have an arbitrator hear the case. Almost always, a teacher in that situation is represented by a union attorney.
“It is an expensive legal process and the arbitrators typically have a pretty high standard you have to meet before discharging a teacher,” Luce said. “It is a risk to go through the arbitrator. If you lose, you have to reinstate the teacher and it is very expensive. You’re spending money that you could otherwise use to educate kids.”
Luce once represented a school district that tried to fire a teacher who had just been convicted of a third drunken-driving charge. The teacher’s responsibilities at the school included teaching a unit on drug and alcohol abuse.
“The police caught him weaving all over the road, drunk in plain daylight on a Saturday afternoon,” Luce said. “The arbitrator concluded that disciplinary action was warranted, but firing him was too harsh for the behavior, because it did not happen in school.”
The teacher was reinstated and the school district was out a significant sum of money.
A school’s other option is to ask the teacher to resign on his or her own terms. That often includes a separation agreement, which always includes provisions that the school is not allowed to say anything negative about the teacher. If it does, the school becomes susceptible to defamation lawsuits, Luce said, because the teacher has not been allowed to make a defense against the allegations.
“The union will typically require as part of the agreement that the school not discuss the situation that led to the resignation,” Luce said.
So, every school has to weigh its options and decide whether it has a good enough case against a teacher to win an arbitration battle.
If not, as was the case with Bryer, it must settle the matter with the teacher and the union attorney. That approach promotes secrecy, and leaves administrators in the position of speaking in code when discussing past bad employees with each other.
The reference letter
“The administration did and said what it could,” Wrend said in an interview. “We did not support or recommend Shaun’s candidacy” to teach at Colchester. “The letter he received had no evaluative or recommending language, and we notified Colchester of his leave.
“It’s sad that (Colchester) was deceived by Mr. Bryer. I can assure folks … that our process has safeguards in place that allow our district to find out if a teacher has been disciplined in another setting.”
Wrend says it’s standard practice in Lamoille South to ask all potential employees if they have been disciplined, discharged or asked to resign by another school district. If they lie, a provision in the contract allows for immediate termination, Wrend said.
Colchester Superintendent Larry Waters has said he didn’t know Morristown had conducted an internal investigation on Bryer, or that his reference letter had been part of an employment resignation-and-release agreement.
He did admit he knew Bryer did not finish out the school year in Morristown.
According to the Burlington Free Press, Bryer told Waters “he got done early for political reasons because he’s on the select board and he was not in agreement with the district’s direction.”
Waters did not question Bryer’s claim.
Morristown’s staid recommendation letter — which lists Bryer’s responsibilities at the school and is devoid of any adjectives, good or bad — should have been a serious red flag for Colchester, Luce says.
“That letter of reference contains no evaluative terms. It doesn’t say ‘We recommend,’ it doesn’t say anything like that,” Luce said. “When another district calls up and asks ‘What do you think of this teacher,’ you tell them ‘I’m not saying anything other than what’s in the document. You have the letter, you can rely on the letter.’ That is supposed to speak volumes.”
Luce said that, for a forced resignation, Morristown’s handling of the situation was standard procedure for any school district.
“I’ve been practicing law in this state for 30 years and that (kind of reference) is the code every school district looks to,” Luce said. That should have signaled Colchester officials that they needed “to do more investigation on their side. They needed to probe further.”
That raises the question: Do people want school administrators to be legally forced to speak in code to each other about former employees? To make important decisions that affect children without being able to speak honestly?
“I think we need to take a look at this to see if there is anything we can do within the law to allow employers to be more frank and honest about teachers,” Armando Vilaseca, the Vermont commissioner of education, said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re talking about student safety, and that is the most important thing.”
Vilaseca said he plans to meet with human relations employees and top lawyers in the coming days to learn more about the problem and draft informative materials to send to school administrators.
“I think we need to provide the school districts with some guidance,” Vilaseca said.
Documents related to Bryer's dismissal are provided below.
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