New CA law requires schools to do more to prevent sexual assault

from Carolyn JonesCalMatters

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Facing a mountain of lawsuits, K-12 schools in California will have a system in place starting this year to prevent teachers and other staff from sexually abusing students.

A new law in California creates a set of measures to train school staff, strengthen reporting requirements and stop teachers credibly accused of abuse from finding jobs in other fields.

the law Senate Bill 848effective January 1 and schools must have protocols by July. The law applies to all schools, including private ones.

“I’m proud to see this bill move forward. It was really personal for me,” state senator Sasha Renee Perezthe bill’s author told CalMatters after it passed. “For survivors, this is an important step toward justice.”

An avalanche of lawsuits

The law stems from a previous California law that made it easier for victims to sue school districts and counties. Under AB 218which went into effect in 2020, victims can file a lawsuit up to age 40, or even longer if they don’t remember being abused until later. This led to an avalanche of lawsuits and much greater public awareness of the scope of the problem.

So far, victims have filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against school districts and counties, some resulting in huge payouts. A jury in Riverside County in 2023 awarded Moreno Valley Unified a $135 million verdict for abuse allegations, and Los Angeles Unified faces claims for more than $500 million.

Overall, California schools are facing nearly $3 billion in sexual assault claims from former students, according to the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state agency that helps school districts with financial issues. Some of the incidents occurred decades ago, as far back as the 1940s, and some of the payouts were so large that they bankrupted the districts.

School accountability

While the new law does not address lawsuits, it does introduce measures designed to stop future abuse and hold schools more accountable. It requires schools to write comprehensive policies on appropriate behavior and train students, teachers, coaches and other school personnel to recognize and report misconduct. It also expands the number of employees who are required to report allegations of abuse.

Perhaps the most notable requirement is the creation of a database of teachers credibly accused of violence. The database, which will be administered by the California Commission on Teacher Accreditation, will be available to schools during the hiring process. The goal is to stop teachers who have abused students from leaving and being rehired elsewhere, only to abuse more students. Teachers who are cleared of violations will be removed from the database.

Perez, a Democrat from Alhambra, said she was inspired to write the new law after reading about generations of abuse at Rosemead High School, which is in her district. She too CaMatters said that she was the victim of unwanted attention from a teacher when she was in high school.

“Now there are dollars and cents being attributed to these cases,” she said in September. “It really opened up that conversation about what we can do to better prevent this abuse.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.