Teacher puzzler: Part-time porn star fired, semen-feeder paid off

Jan. 16,2013

By Chris Reed

It turns out that school districts in the state of California can swiftly fire teachers who engage in lewd behavior — but only if it’s a paid part-time job, not incidents in school involving students.

The Smoking Gun website has the details:

“The California teacher who was fired last year after her prior career as a porn actress was discovered by her middle school students has had her appeal unanimously rejected by a state panel that ruled that the online availability of her X-rated work ‘will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague.’

“In a 48-page decision, the Commission on Professional Competence ruled that Stacie Halas, 32, was unfit to continue teaching at the Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard. Halas, a science teacher, began working at the school in 2009, several years after her porn career ended.”

The contrast with the disgusting case of Mark Berndt at Miramonte Elementary School in south Los Angeles could not be more striking. Berndt is very credibly accused of spoon-feeding semen to blindfolded students. So what did L.A. Unified do to get rid of him? It paid him $40,000 to leave after concluding that teacher protections won over the years by United Teachers Los Angeles, a CTA affiliate, prevented his quick ouster.

Subsequently, attempts in the Legislature to make it easier to remove classroom sexual predators were blocked by CTA-allied lawmakers.

What makes this not just politics as usual but appalling is that the CTA’s reflexive justification for all that it does is that “it’s all about the kids.” Keeping sex predators in classrooms? Making it so difficult to fire perverts that they have to be paid off? “It’s all about the kids.”

Amazing. In a pathetic way.