In 2018 the New Jersey State Legislature passed a law that was supposed to prevent teachers from hiding their misconduct when they try to get jobs in other districts. It is known as the “Pass the Trash” law because everyone knew it was easy for school districts to get careless about checking references and for unscrupulous applicants to lie about past offenses. The regulations attached to the law require all prospective teachers to tell school districts where they had worked for the last 20 years in any position they had contact with students and to state whether they had ever been the subject of any child abuse or sexual misconduct investigation where the case hadn’t been dismissed, been asked to resign because of allegations, or had a license revoked for these offenses. The district or hiring agency then must “conduct its own review by contacting the former employers to verify the applicant’s dates of employment and to inquire about any past incidents of child abuse or sexual misconduct” and requiring former employers to fill out “Pass the Trash” forms.

How is this working out?

According to a scathing new report from the State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, the law is working so poorly that over the last few years it was able to identify 92 verified cases of school staff members who had been convicted of sexual misconduct or abuse but were re-hired anyway. Also, the Commission found a profound lack of oversight from the State Department of Education and the absence of any statewide process to collect information about potential staff members who could potentially endanger students. 

The result? “[S]chool employees were able to obtain jobs at new schools while keeping their past misdeeds quiet, a circumstance the law was enacted to prevent. “

Two examples from the report:

• A teacher who had resigned from two teaching jobs and was caught with pornography on his school laptop answered “no” to all questions asking if he had been the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation by an employer or had been disciplined. He also offered incomplete contact information for the districts he worked for. When the hiring agency that provided substitute teachers contacted five districts, none of them responded to the initial request to complete the “Pass the Trash” forms. He was hired by a Middlesex district but an administrator there googled him and found out his background, which had been reported in the media. (He eventually was fired.)

• A teacher in Gloucester County was accused by a number of female students of making “sexually suggestive comments.” The female student who was the subject of the teacher’s attention reported that she found him “creepy.”  He held her hand and told her “love you” as she walked out of the classroom. One day when she was wearing a short skirt he dropped a pen on the floor and asked her to bend over to pick it up while he watched. The district, instead of complying with the Pass the Trash law, “enabled” the teacher to retire in 2021, where he was promptly hired by a private school.

Some other findings from the report:

• Some current and former superintendents interviewed by the Commission reported that the lack of detailed guidance from DOE left them “unmoored.” According to one district administrator, “[t]here was no training from the state in terms of what you should be looking for or how that should be handled. … I think everybody was left to their [sic] own devices.”

• One former superintendent testified that some districts do not take the law seriously; instead, they hire and allow employees to work in schools without providing a complete employment history. 

• Of the 92 applicants who, according to state records, had a New Jersey work history that included at least one position in a school or in close contact with minor children, approximately 61 percent of the applicants failed to disclose prior employment that seemingly should have been listed on their “Pass the Trash” forms. Of that same group, 39 percent did not disclose the prior employment on their school job applications. 

The report includes recommendations so we can stop passing the trash. These primarily involve requiring the State Department of Education to oversee the “Pass the Trash” law. Currently this oversight is on 593 school districts that have no standard process for not hiring abusive employees.  The Commissioner says the DOE’s oversight should include

• Mandating standardized forms: It’s a wild west out there now. 

• Creating a statewide centralized database to collect “Pass the Trash” information consisting of “information from every school district or school entity related to teachers and other school employees who are the subject of an investigation or have been found to have engaged in child abuse or sexual misconduct involving students. As part of this effort, every school in the state should be required to provide periodic updates to the DOE.”

• Requiring the DOE to conduct Pass the Trash audits to monitor school districts’ performance and “create  an appropriate set of consequences for school districts that fail to follow the law’s requirements.” 

• Requiring the DOE to create a “uniform mechanism at the state level to enable a student, parent or guardian to report a complaint of child abuse, sexual misconduct or other harassment of a student by a teacher to the DOE rather than reporting it only to the school.”

• Make the punitive costs more punitive. Currently the worst that happens to a teacher, district, or agency is a $500 fine. In Pennsylvania fines can range up to $10,000 and the state DOE can revoke teacher licenses. 

The “Pass the Trash” law was supposed to protect schoolchildren from sexual predators and child abuse. But good intentions are worthless without oversight and enforcement. It’s time for the DOE to step up.