American Greatness By Larry Sand
Due to apathy, incompetence, and crippling union diktats, the number of sexual abuse cases in public schools is shocking.
Some of the egregious cases of teachers sexually abusing their students are well publicized. Perhaps none more so than Mark Berndt, who did terrible things to children for years at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles. Shockingly, he would blindfold his second graders and feed them cookies smeared with his semen. The remedy employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District when Berndt was busted in 2012 was to bar lessons involving blindfolds and classroom-made butter. Seriously.
But the disgusting cookies were far from Berndtâs only misdeed. He had a track record of perversity going back to 1983 when he dropped his pants on a class trip to a museum, blaming it on âbaggy shorts.â In 1992, several students claimed he was masturbating in class, and another student claimed he touched her inappropriately in the classroom. Then in 2010, investigators from the Los Angeles Sheriffâs Department came into possession of some of Berndtâs photos, which showed children gagged and bound, âsometimes with live cockroaches on their faces or about to eat a cookie covered in a clear white liquid.â
Due to apathy, incompetence, and union mandates that make it almost impossible to fire any teacherâno matter how incompetent or perverse they areâthe school district couldnât get rid of Berndt without going through a lengthy appeals process costing over $300,000. So, when his crimes were exposed, Berndt gamed the system by accepting a $40,000 bribe and retiredâbut only after racking up another year of credit toward his pension. The ensuing lawsuits against the Los Angeles Unified School District over Berndt alone cost the district some $200 million. When added to four other sexual abuse cases in Los Angeles, the cost to the district was $300 million…
