An Omaha middle school principal said she believes she correctly handled student complaints about a former teacher who was charged last week with child sexual assault.
Susan Colvin, principal at Nathan Hale Middle School, addressed a school board committee, which voted Monday to keep in place district policies for reporting allegations of sexual harassment and child abuse.
Board member Bambi Bartek asked Colvin if she believed she had done the right thing.
“Without a doubt, definitely,” Colvin said in her first public remarks about the allegations against former Nathan Hale teacher Shad M. Knutson. Colvin declined to comment further after the meeting.
Knutson, 34, who resigned from his teaching position last month, was charged with three felony counts of third-degree sexual assault of a child. The charges stem from allegations made by three female students in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Police began investigating after a parent contacted state officials last October. Omaha Public Schools officials have said they investigated internally and didn't report the allegations to police because they did not have credible evidence to cause suspicion.
Superintendent John Mackiel cautioned the board about approving policies for future use without knowing all the facts of the Knutson case. “I'm worried about policy implications until we can get that,” Mackiel said. “I honestly do not know what is true.”
The school board heard criticism from a former Omaha police officer who said he doesn't trust internal investigations, as well as cautionary remarks from a teachers union representative who asked the board to avoid a “knee-jerk reaction.”
Tariq Al-Amin, a former Omaha police officer, said he wants to be sure something like this doesn't occur again. “I still feel something wrong has happened,” he said.
However, Chris Proulx, president of the Omaha Education Association, the teachers' union for OPS, said that in his first year of teaching, he was the victim of false allegations from two girls who accused him of inappropriately touching them to get out of gym class.
Proulx said student complaints should be looked into, but in a way that maintains the teacher's dignity.
Board vice president Shirley Tyree said such allegations should be handled carefully.
“We need to be very, very careful when we start accusing people of things,” she said. “They never get that portion of their life back.”
The student/community and human resources committee recommended that the full board endorse the district's secondary student code of conduct. The code contains the district's sexual harassment and child abuse reporting policies.
The full board is scheduled to vote on the code at its June 6 meeting.
State law requires those with “reasonable cause to believe that a child has been subjected to child abuse or neglect” to contact the proper law enforcement agency or the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. OPS's policy on reporting child abuse directly references the law.
The district's policy on sexual harassment dictates that an assistant superintendent investigate complaints to determine whether harassment occurred. If that investigation reveals “possible criminal misconduct,” law enforcement is to be contacted.
Board member Justin Wayne, who was the lone dissenter in the 5-1 vote, asked the board to clarify in district policy that two separate investigations should happen when an allegation is brought forward: an internal investigation and a criminal investigation by an outside agency.
The district should let law enforcement experts investigate rather than school officials, he said.
“We are good at educating. That is our expertise,” said Wayne, a labor relations lawyer at Union Pacific. “There needs to be a separate process.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1074, jonathon.braden@owh.com
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