A History of Sex With Students

This story reminds me of the infamous one in NYC in which it took EIGHT YEARS to fire a male teacher who'd sent sexually explicit emails to an 8th grade female student.  These extreme cases highlight a MUCH bigger problem: that in many school systems in the U.S., it's virtually impossible to fire any teacher for any reason.

By 23, Diane Cherchio had graduated from college and was a special education teacher at Dr. Walter F. Robinson elementary school. Her intelligence and dedication won the admiration of supervisors and colleagues, who told investigators decades later that they had been stunned to see her pawing at a 13-year-old student named Jorge at an eighth-grade dance.

The school principal at the time, Daniel Doyle, swore in a statement to prosecutors last year that he spoke to a half-dozen teachers and became convinced that she and the student were sexually involved. “Diane has a thing for young boys,” Mr. Doyle recalled being told, according to court records.

Mr. Doyle said in the statement that he wrote to the superintendent asking that Ms. Cherchio be fired, but was startled to learn, upon returning to school in the fall, that she had instead become a guidance counselor at the high school.

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A History of Sex With Students, Unchallenged Over the Years

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Published: October 10, 2006

www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/nyregion/10teacher.html

BAYONNE, N.J. — Many in this gray, insular city are at a loss to explain why Diane Cherchio West was allowed to continue working in the public school system for two decades after she was caught in 1980 kissing and groping a 13-year-old student at an eighth-grade dance.