District sues state credential group

Deepa Bharath

The school district last week filed a lawsuit against a state

commission that licenses teachers to find out if one of its teachers

lied on his job application by withholding that he had been accused

of molesting female students at a previous job.

Craig Kinder, who taught industrial arts at Costa Mesa High School

for two years, was found not guilty of the charges in Missouri about

seven years ago.

But the Newport-Mesa Unified School District wants details of an

investigation into the charges conducted by the California Commission

of Teacher Credentialing, said Steven Montanez, the attorney

representing the school district.

Kinder was specifically asked in his job application if he had

ever quit or been forced to resign from a previous job, and he

answered no, Montanez said.

“The school district has an obligation to students and their

parents to find out the truth,” he said.

Montanez said Kinder was accused of inappropriately touching

underage girls and cleared of the charges. Kinder had also entered

into a settlement agreement with that school district, he said.

“The commission has a copy of that agreement, and that’s the

information we need,” Montanez said.

Those documents can only be obtained through a court order, which

spurred this lawsuit, he said.

Kinder, who has had a clean record with Newport-Mesa Unified, was

placed on unpaid leave in 2001 after the commission withdrew his

teaching credential.

“That was when the school district got wind of the earlier

charges,” Montanez said.

But Kinder is fighting the commission to get his license back. A

three-member panel will decide his fate when it hears the case on

Sept. 29, Montanez said.

Neither Kinder nor his attorney, Mark Primo, could be reached for

comment on Monday. Commission officials, based in Sacramento, did not

return phone calls.

Montanez said the main issue is whether Kinder “possibly lied to

us.”

“We believe he should be terminated,” he said.

But if the panel determines that Kinder should continue, the

school district will have to comply, Montanez said.

The school district is more concerned about the caliber of

teachers it hires, said Lorri McCune, assistant superintendent of

human resources.

“It’s important we have high-quality teachers in our classrooms,”

she said. “The kind of teachers we want teaching our own children.”