Crooks & Liars found this story from Tennessee in Law & Crime about the principal of a Christian school who has been arrested twice for allegations of sex with minors.
This is of interest because Governor Bill Lee has made it a priority to bring charter schools and vouchers to his state, which would reduce public oversight of school employees. In the case of vouchers,there are typically no state regulations for certification or background checks.
Law&Crime reports:
A 47-year-old principal at a Christian private school in Tennessee was arrested for the second time in less than a year over allegations that he engaged in illegal sexual activity with multiple minors. Jason Kennedy was taken into custody last week and charged with four counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child, one count of aggravated sexual battery, and one count of solicitation of a minor to observe sexual conduct, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Kennedy was the principal and a teacher at Liberty Christian School when he was initially arrested in August and charged with two counts of sexual assault by an authority figure and one count of solicitation of a minor.
Brittney Branham, a 28-year-old secretary and homeschool coordinator at Liberty, was also arrested in August and charged with one count of solicitation of a minor in connection with the same series of incidents that allegedly took place inside Kennedy’s home, where Branham was also a resident, according to a report from Knoxville NBC affiliate WBIR-TV.
It really is better for all if teachers and principals are educated, certified, and subject to background checks.
Numerous states controlled by Republicans want to “let the money follow the child” to any place, without regulation or oversight or accountability. This is not in the best interest of children, society, or education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No problem he spoke with lord and was forgiven. He promised to not get caught the next time .
The surprising story would be about one of these fundamentalist leaders NOT hiding an ironic or horrific secret.
I know that it’s stereotyping, but I have come to expect that these people are watching Mommy have sex with the pool boy, spending collections at Thai brothels, or much, much worse.
IMO, the “much worse”, because it rejects democracy in favor of authoritarian theocracy, is the decisions of the SCOTUS conservative religious. Justice doesn’t wear a blindfold in a theocracy. History shows us the plague that conservative religion is on all people.
A plague. Excellent analogy.
Bob
What are your thoughts about the Pope’s recent opinion regarding homosexuality?
Not answering for Bob, but I’ve thought about this a lot. It is another illustration of how religious doctrine of any kind should not have any impact on the public policy of governing, especially when that governing is based on informed views of an engaged, educated electorate. They are fundamentally incompatible. Now if we as a society can agree on a range of ethical behavior to govern our public and private lives, we can talk.
It also points out how devout followers and policymakers of religions, regardless of their public rhetoric, will never see anyone not like them as true political equals. Whatever praise or acceptance they proclaim, it is alway tinged with an underlying, unspoken pity and dissension from them.
I’m glad he makes such noises from time to time. But my thought is that he has as much moral actual moral authority as does the guy trimming the hedge outside or my bicycle repair person, maybe less, given the rivers of blood that his Church has left throughout history.
The Pope and/or the Catholic hierarchy live off of gifts of money mainly from rich right wingers and, from the taxes of an unwitting middle class. The Pope’s “church” demands reproductive rights be forfeited by the people who have unlimited responsibility to pay for the choice made by the right wing church.
American Bishops denouncing Republican despots…never going to happen.
It’s past time to tax religious institutions.
In addition to the fact that the Pope’s decisions should be irrelevant, the state Catholic Conferences’s influence is an anathema.
Meanwhile, there is conclusive evidence of widespread sexual abuse of students in the Chicago public school system. To their credit, internal investigators found and publicly disclosed this problem. But not a word on this blog about it – it’s not the preferred narrative.
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/638582935-i-m-ready-to-f-right-now-i-m-not-gonna-be-gentle-either-oig-report-details-cps-teachers-sexual-grooming-assaults-of-their-students
Josh,
There have been many scandals in all kinds of schools that I have not written about: public schools, charter schools, religious schools, elite boarding schools.
When politicians want to give parents public money to attend religious schools, when the principal of a religious school is arrested twice for abusing students, when it’s reported in national media, that’s interesting.
See my analysis below. Not “widespread” at all.
If I read this correctly, you are upset with Diane having posted about a factual story and not for doing the same with a vicious fictional one? Did I get that on the money?
Unfortunately, as we all know, when people read and process these headlines, they only see what they want to see and ignore the rest. They never bother to fact-check anything because the facts would cause cognitive dissonance that hurts their brain.
Truly depraved. Why wasn’t this predator put away before this?
Well, it is a religious school and they are not regulated by the state.
Maybe the authorities will give him another chance.
So let’s look into that purported “widespread” sexual abuse in CPS peddled by all the usual right-wing media outlets. Is it really widespread? Of course not, but that’s what all those screaming headlines would have you believe if you jumped in the Daily Caller or Chicago City Wire. It wasn’t easy to find a site that had not already amplified the so-called teacher “grooming” behavior, but after perusing several right-wing sites (because that’s where the story landed) I held my nose and chose Fox News. Here are the numbers: 600 complaints, 70 substantiated allegations for 20-21, “policy violations” found in 300 investigations over 4 years. CCW gave misleading information around “substantiating over half of them”, because quoting “hundreds” makes a scarier headline. Those 300 substantiations happened over 4 years, not one year. Not sure what the definition of “policy violation” even is or how many were even considered a criminal offense. Number of employees in CPS: 40,000, equating to 0.175% of employees for 70 substantiations. Any conduct that potentially harms a student is evil and wrong, but it is typical of these sites say anything to paint teachers as scary, lefty, Marxist, grooming deviants. Pathetic.
We should none ignore the misogynistic intent in the attacks against public schools. Teaching has lifted the most women into financial independence.
Diane’s recent post about the arrest of Charles McGonigal includes an an analysis that reminds us that anti-woman bias is part of the foundation of right wing politics.
Adding- state Catholic Conferences which were set up for the purpose of political influence, campaign for school choice. Some have cohosted school choice rallies with the Koch’s AFP.
Catholic women are denied top clergy positions in the church. In a relatively recent development, the Southern Baptist Convention followed the Catholic pattern, and barred women from clergy positions.
It’s not misogynistic, it’s stupid! Oh, wait a second. Now I see what you mean. Was a bit slow there, sorry.
Greg,
You’re never slow.
I think this principal may be a MAGA RINO Republican. After all, laws don’t count for them. To them, only “liberals” have to be held accountable.
What a pathetic group of people on this blog. Internal investigators for the Chicago Public Schools did the right thing and disclosed their findings of sexual predation on hundreds of kids. This isn’t a right-wing deal – CPS staff, to their great credit, brought these findings to public attention. But this blog’s commenters blithely dismiss it. Anything to defend everything in the traditional public schools. Solidarity forever.
The following is a report about one religion which, presumably, the church paid for.
From a study conducted for the USCCB- on average, between 1950 and 2002, there were credible accusations that Catholic priests and deacons sexually victimized 205 children per year (10,667 in total).
Six percent of the children were under 7, 16% were 8-10, 51% were 11-14 and 27% were 15-17. The victims were overwhelmingly male.
To support your inference, Jill, you’d need to collect data about the percentage of total students enrolled in public institutions who were victimized. A characterization of victimization in school-equivalent religious situations, would need to be developed. Total student count and total victim count aggregated from all religious schools would be needed and reasonable assumptions about underreporting would be required for analysis. Many other variables would also need to be examined.
An interesting line of inquiry could focus on whether right wing religious sects include more perpetrators of sexual abuse against children than liberal religious sects.
Everyone who participates in this blog does so precisely because the majority of them have put children’s welfare at the very center of their personal and professional lives. The very definition of a calling. People like me are here because I consider people like them to be the best arbiters of what is good for our children. So leave that crap at the door.
You, on the other hand, were brought here after reading your hypnosis trigger word: groom. Next time it will be “gain of function” or “Faucigate.” You could care less about education, children or the future of this nation as one that strives to create opportunity for all. You want to create a mirage of an issue, that there is an organized movement among people you hate and to tar them with the most vicious of innuendos that have nothing to do with the truth. You take individual actions that any human being would condemn and make them a political cudgel for lies and to cover up for your hate for some “other” you need to blame to explain your world to yourself.
In the highscool part, tuition is $20K.
Click to access LCS23-24Tuition.pdf
Voucher would give $8K, so the parent would have to come up with $12K to pay the tuition in this school. That is $1K a month.
Uh, wrong school’s webpage. I couldn’t find a webpage for the one in Athens, TN. According to this webpage, the schools has only 50 students, and except 3, they are white.
https://high-schools.com/directory/tn/cities/athens/liberty-christian-school/a9703242/#section-1
I seem to recall that the town or city of McMinn school board started the recent spate of book banning by banning the graphic book MAUS, about the Holocaust.
I also notice from the website that Liberty Christian has seen a sharp drop in enrollment since 2011. From about 140 to 49.