The president of Santa Monica's school board said Thursday that a "breakdown in communication" prevented the board from fully examining a 2006 complaint against a teacher who was charged this week with molesting five of his female students.
Oscar de la Torre, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board, said he and other board members learned about the 2006 complaint only this week after Lincoln Middle School teacher Thomas Arthur Beltran, 60, was arrested. De la Torre said then-Principal Kathy Scott, who reported the allegations to police, is no longer with the district.
"There was a transition in leadership, and I think the communication [channels] suffered a breakdown," De la Torre said. "The school board was never alerted to the allegations in 2006."
As a result, De la Torre said he still wasn't clear on whether Beltran was temporarily moved out of the classroom after the complaint was made and on what basis the principal decided to let him continue teaching. No mention of the complaint was found in Beltran's personnel file, De la Torre said.
District officials said prosecutors found insufficient evidence at the time to pursue a criminal case against Beltran after a police investigation. The student was removed from his class and Beltran, who said at the time that his actions were "misinterpreted," was warned not to touch female students.
De la Torre said that at the board's meeting May 15 the district superintendent would present a report on new protocols and policies regarding potential child abuse cases. He said the policies might include interviewing a sample of students, informing parents when such an incident is reported and instituting a districtwide open-door policy when students are alone with teachers.
He said that informing the board about such allegations against a teacher and including that information in the personnel file would ensure that it did not fall through the cracks.
"The important thing here is to protect students first and foremost, and to think of a reasonable plan that will do that without setting up a scenario where it's very easy for someone to retaliate against a teacher they do not like with malicious intent," De la Torre said. "That's the hard part."
On Thursday, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said police were questioning at least five additional people who alleged they were sexually molested by Beltran, perhaps as far back as 1998.
