A San Lorenzo Valley High School teacher was allowed to voluntarily resign his job after sexual misconduct allegations.
The agreement last month between Eric Kahl and the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District was an effort to avoid the “time, expense and risk involved with administrative proceedings and potential litigation,” the agreement stated. It also states that Kahl will not sue the district for the termination of his employment.
“This was a mutually acceptable separation agreement,” SLUVSD Superintendent Christopher Schiermeyer said in a statement. “We look forward to getting this resolved and moving forward.”
Kahl, a social studies teacher, submitted his resignation request following an internal investigation into his dealings with students at the school. Some former students had accused him of inappropriate actions toward students and an inability to perform basic job functions.
One former student, Leann Anderson, brought these allegations to light in late March. Her letter to the district resulted in the internal investigation of Kahl and another teacher, William Winkler. Both were put on paid leave.
The specific allegations against Winkler, a science teacher, have not been made public.
According to a letter the district sent Anderson, the investigation of Kahl, headed by private investigator Susan Liberati, found he had engaged in both sexual harassment and the predatory grooming of his students and that he was “irresponsible and negligent as a teacher.”
“I was surprised that he actually stepped down and he wasn’t fired,” Anderson told the Sentinel.
She continued: “I don’t understand what the consequence is here. It doesn’t seem like there is one. Essentially it seems like he got paid vacation for almost a year and a chance to walk away from this pretty much free without any consequences.”
Kahl received more than six months of paid leave from the district while under investigation, a product of the district’s attempt at a thorough investigation. His paid leave ended Friday but he will continue to receive medical benefits through the end of the month, according to a formal agreement between Kahl and the district.
Additionally, the district is not allowed to disclose the findings of the investigation to any of Kahl’s prospective future employers. It can share only his dates of employment, salary and positions held, which is standard HR policy, according to Schiermeyer.
However, Schiermeyer noted that Kahl will have to check a box that signifies he left his previous employer while under investigation when applying for jobs at other school districts.
Two other SLV district employees have been accused of sexual misconduct within the last four years.
• In 2017, Ned Hearn, who was assistant superintendent of instruction, was accused of the sexual abuse two decades earlier of a member of the swim team at Dixon High School in Solano County. The school district voted to part ways with Hearn in May. His case is still active within the Solano County Court system.
• In 2019, Michael Henderson, a former computer science teacher at SLVHS, was arrested on suspicion of sexual misconduct with a minor under the age of 14, during the 2016-17 school year. He took a plea deal this year that saw him convicted of felony assault with great bodily injury. Judge Paul Burdick sentenced him to 180 days of jail time, to be served through electronic monitoring, according to Santa Cruz Superior Court filings.
The Santa Cruz County sheriff’s office has not brought charges against Kahl or Winkler but is gathering facts on whether either teacher was involved in inappropriate conduct with a minor, according to sheriff’s spokesperson Ashley Keehn.
At the start of the school year, SLVUSD implemented conduct training for teachers that discusses the “nuances of social media” and how to appropriately navigate a professional relationship with students.
Anderson told district officials that what began as a harmless student-teacher relationship between her and Kahl grew increasingly inappropriate. “I believe that I was groomed by your teacher,” she said.
Grooming, in this context, is an alleged act of building a trusting and emotional relationship, commonly with a minor, for future abuse, often of a sexual nature, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
At the time the allegations were made public, Kahl’s lawyer, Joseph Cisneros, denied them. “Mr. Kahl values his position with the school district, and we will cooperate with the district to address these false allegations in due course,” Cisneros said in an email to the Sentinel.
Other allegations came in the form of social media posts, some of them anonymous, according to SLVUSD’s superintendent at the time.
Anderson said Kahl continued to contact her after her 2019 graduation, reaching out via Instagram messages. She blocked him on social media in February of this year.
“Once the messages started getting creepier and creepier, I was like, ‘This man shouldn’t be around children. I’ve got to do something,’” Anderson said.
She said she collected screenshots of the conversations between her and Kahl during that time and included them in her email to the district.
Source: www.mercurynews.com