House committee votes to hike penalties for sex abusers in public schools | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is David Bass.

    Public school employees who commit sexual offenses against students would face harsher penalties under a bill passed Feb. 21 by the North Carolina House K-12 Education Committee.

    "Simply put, this bill is about protecting students in public schools," State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt told committee members. "It's about ensuring laws are clear, that they are followed, and that appropriate consequences are outlined and pursued."

    House Bill 142, Protect Our Students Act, is meant to target school personnel who engage in sexual intercourse or other sex acts with students. The measure slaps school personnel offenders with a class G felony. The bill includes teachers with a professional license plus other school employees, including school administrators, student teachers, school safety officers, or coaches.

    The bill also expands the definition of student to include recent high-school graduates up to six months after finishing school. Truitt noted that in some instances, inappropriate relationships begin recently after a student graduates, "relationships that have been clearly preceded by grooming behavior occurring while the student was in school and the teacher as the authority figure."

    Under the bill, school leaders who fail to report misconduct to the N.C. State Board of Education face a class I felony. The State Board is responsible for suspending or revoking professional licenses in these instances.

    Another provision of the bill requires school districts to show a video to students in grades 6th through 12th containing age-appropriate information on sexual abuse.

    Truitt shared that between January 2016 and October 2022, there were 124 instances of sexual misconduct resulting in license suspensions, revocations, or voluntary surrenders related to sexual misconduct among teachers. Those figures don't include offenses by non-licensed school personnel.

poll#164

It has been far too many years since the Woke theology interlaced its canons within the fabric of the Indoctrination Realm, so it is nigh time to ask: Does this Representative Republic continue, as a functioning society of a self-governed people, by contending with the unusual, self absorbed dictates of the Woke, and their vast array of Victimhood scenarios?

  Yes, the Religion of Woke must continue; there are so many groups of underprivileged, underserved, a direct result of unrelenting Inequity; they deserve everything.

  No; the Woke fools must be toppled from their self-anointed pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now.

  I just observe; with this thoughtful observation: What will happen "when the Vikings are breeching our walls;" how do the Woke react?

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