Vashon High School teachers Kara Sears and John Rees, who both recently resigned from VHS following the school district’s conclusion of separate, months-long investigations of misconduct, now face new investigations — this time by the state office charged with certifying teachers.

Catherine Slagle, director of the state Office of Professional Practices (OPP), a department of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), confirmed last week that both teachers are under investigation. OPP launched the investigations, she said, after Slade McSheehy, superintendent of the Vashon Island School District, sent the agency separate letters of complaint about Sears and Rees.

According to its website, OPP is authorized “to investigate individual educators for allegations of unprofessional conduct and allegations of a lack of good moral character and/or personal fitness by certificated educators, and reviews applications for certification when there is any question concerning good moral character/personal fitness and/or criminal history record.” OPP can take a number of actions as a result of its investigations – from dismissing the complaint to suspending or revoking the teacher’s certificate.

When interviewed about the matter in late March and mid-April, McSheehy, declined to directly say if he would file such complaints with OSPI about the recently-resigned teachers, saying only that he would follow state statutes that require superintendents to file written reports with OSPI if they believe that certificated employees are not of good moral character or personally fit, or have committed acts of unprofessional conduct.

McSheehy and other district personnel have not named Sears and Rees as being the subjects of the separate investigations, nor was Sears’ name included in a King County Sheriff’s Office’s report obtained about her case.

Slagle identified both teachers by name. And Sears, in an interview following her resignation, acknowledged that she had been the subject of a district investigation.

Rees did not respond to a request to comment.

Document details Sears complaint

Slagle, the director of OPP, confirmed last week that a document obtained by The Beachcomber pertained to OPP’s recently launched investigation of Sears.

The March 29 document, an internal OPP form, names Sears as its subject. It was written by an OPP staff member in response to their conversation with Amy Sassara, VISD’s director of human resources, following OSPI’s receipt of McSheehy’s March 23 letter of complaint, according to Slagle.

The OPP document contained a brief narrative, recounting the conversation between the OPP staffer and Sassara, detailing the allegations against Sears, which were made by the parent of a 2022 VHS graduate.

According to the narrative, Sears engaged in a romantic relationship with the parent’s child during the summer following the student’s graduation; the parent believed Sears had groomed the recent graduate for this relationship during the school year.

The student had been Sears’ teaching assistant during the 2021-2022 school year, the document said.

The document also said that the district’s investigation of the case had revealed inappropriate and suggestive text messages between Sears and the recently graduated student, which had occurred while the student was a senior at Vashon High School.

“One example of a text message involved the educator texting the student asking, ‘What should I wear to work, perhaps naked,’” the document said.

The document also said that security cameras within the home of the recently graduated student had captured Sears as she entered and departed the former student’s bedroom. The document listed two “code of conduct” categories for the complaint against Sears: disregard/abandonment of standards, and character and fitness.

The Beachcomber has additionally requested, but not yet received, additional school district and OSPI/OPP documents related to the investigations of both Sears and Rees.

Sears investigation

The district announced it was investigating a teacher, now known to be Sears, on Sept. 2, 2022, at which time she was immediately placed on paid administrative leave from the district.

Sears, 40, is a 16-year employee of the district who over the years taught health and sex education classes and served as the high school’s volleyball coach and advisor to various student activities, including the VHS student newspaper, the Riptide, and the Associated Student Body.

The complaint initially led the district to report a suspected sexual relationship between Sears and a former student to the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) on Sept. 1, 2022.

The relationship was thought to have occurred the summer following the student’s graduation from VHS.

While Washington law defines the age of consent as 16, it also specifies that teachers can be charged with felony or misdemeanor charges of sexual misconduct if they engage in sexual activity with enrolled students up to the age of 21 years old.

In late September, KCSO investigators made a decision not to refer the case for criminal charges, saying that anything that happened “in this relationship” had occurred after the student had graduated from VHS, according to KCSO Sgt. M. Corbett Ford.

The school district’s investigation, continuing at that point on a separate track, focused on Sears’ possible violation of a policy that outlines the district’s role in protecting students from a broad range of inappropriate, boundary-crossing behaviors by staff.

The district announced the conclusion of the investigation on March 24, linking the end of the probe to the resignation of a Vashon High School teacher, approved at its March 23 board meeting.

Sears’ resignation, effective Oct. 31, was the only VHS teacher’s resignation included in the board packet at that meeting.

Sears will remain on paid administrative leave until the date her resignation is effective.

In a March 25 interview, Sears said that the investigation of her had not been a fair process, and that her conduct had not been criminal. She declined to say what would come next for her.

Referring to her extended paid leave in the district, she added that the district “will be paying me for a long time, and that is none of Vashon’s business.”

Parent speaks

The parent of the recent graduate involved in the Sears investigation made their first public comments about the case, in interviews on April 12 and 22.

(The Beachcomber is not identifying the names or genders of both the parent and former student to protect their privacy.)

The parent said they were glad to know that Sears was now being investigated by OPP and that the OPP document accurately reflected their accusation that Sears had groomed their teenager during the school year.

The parent’s aim, throughout the investigation, had not changed.

“I don’t have any vengeance,” the parent said. “My goal is that she never teaches again, and for her also to receive mental health therapy.”

The district’s investigation of Sears had been conducted fairly and thoroughly, the parent said, describing it as having included interviews with teachers, parents, former VHS students, and friends of their teenager.

The parent said they had shared significant evidence of Sears’ relationship with their teenager, including a text message sent by Sears to the teenager in August.

(The Beachcomber received the text early in the investigation from another source, but did not report on it because it could not be verified at the time.)

“When we started talking during the school year, we just had a lot in common, saw eye to eye, and liked the same things, and it grew (yes, inappropriately) from there,” Sears wrote in the text.

Sears wrote, in another passage of the text, “Although my heart has steered me differently, my brain knows I acted unethically … and for that I am sorry.”

The parent questioned why the district’s investigation had taken so long to complete, saying they had been told by the investigator, in mid-November, that all interviews had been completed at that time, and that that investigator “would now turn to writing her report.”

While the parent praised former VHS principal Danny Rock for his communication with their family during the investigation, they said that after Rock’s resignation from the district in December, regular communication from the district had ceased.

“I was told initially I would be kept abreast of the cadence of the investigation and when it would be finished, and I was not,” the parent said. “And I was blindsided that [Sears’] resignation was put on the board agenda at the last minute. At that point, I was not privy to the fact that the investigation was even completed.”

The parent also said that they had wanted Sears to be fired, rather than resign.

They said they could not understand what negotiations had taken place that would have allowed her to remain on paid administrative leave through Oct. 31, as they believed the evidence and testimony had shown clearly that Sears had repeatedly violated the school’s code of conduct.

According to the parent, Rock had told them that their complaint to the district was not the first time that parents had brought concerns about Sears’ behavior to the administration.

Previous intervention with Sears

Documents obtained by The Beachcomber have shined some light on Sears’ conduct, prior to the case.

According to the Sept. 1 police report on the case, McSheehy told the reporting deputy that the teacher had “a history of administrative interventions due to inappropriate relationships with students, but nothing to the extent of [the current] allegations.”

The Beachcomber subsequently obtained an April 22, 2022 “non-disciplinary letter of direction,” signed by then-VHS assistant principal John Erickson. In the document, the name of the teacher was redacted.

Erickson’s letter — later confirmed, by Sears, in her interview, to be about her — detailed allegations that Sears had bullied, intimidated and harassed some students and had not maintained professional boundaries with others by discussing employment concerns with them and allowing them to leave campus on errands unrelated to any educational purpose.

In the letter, Erickson emphasized that no disciplinary action would be taken, but directed Sears to “maintain appropriate boundaries with students” and warned that a failure to adhere to the directive “could result in discipline, up to and including termination from the district.”

In her interview with The Beachcomber, Sears called the allegations discussed in the letter a “fishing expedition by the district that there was no evidence for.”

The incident described in the letter, she said, had never happened.

Rees investigation

The district’s investigation of Rees, now identified by OPP’s director, began in October 2022, following a joint complaint by two VHS graduates – one of whom graduated in 2001, the other in 2008. The two graduates charged that they had both been groomed by Rees, as VHS students, for romantic relationships that began shortly after their respective high school graduations.

Rees, 55, has taught English at Vashon High School for 30 years.

In November, Lara Hruska and Jessica Johanson-Kubin, attorneys for the two graduates, provided a statement to The Beachcomber detailing their clients’ accusations.

According to the statement, which did not name Rees, both students were “groomed by the same VHS teacher and manipulated into romantic relationships with that teacher shortly after their respective graduations.”

Both relationships lasted the course of the summer before each graduate left for college, they said.

Their statement also detailed a previous VISD investigation of the teacher in 2008, which occurred after friends of the 2008 graduate reported the relationship to the district.

At that time, the attorneys’ statement said, the 2008 graduate had “minimized what happened and was somewhat uncooperative with the investigation because, despite the fact that she’d experienced the relationship as harmful while it was happening, she wanted to protect the teacher.”

The 2008 investigation determined that no disciplinary action would be taken against the teacher at that time, according to district documents.

In a “Letter of Direction” signed by then-superintendent Terry Lindquist, the teacher was informed that no evidence had been found to substantiate that there had been “a grooming or intimate relationship” with the 2008 graduate while she was a student, as “the conduct” had occurred after she had graduated.

However, Lindquist’s letter also stated that the teacher “had lost the trust and confidence of the District administration” and needed to improve on “recogniz[ing] it is inappropriate to act on romantic feelings with your students or newly graduated students.” It additionally barred the teacher from having “sexual or intimate contact or romantic relationships with any student, or with a former student within two years of their graduation.”

(Lindquist’s letter, obtained through a public disclosure request by the 2008 graduate and then by The Beachcomber, redacted the teacher’s name).

The attorneys for the graduates also detailed, in their statement made in November, how the two graduates met and decided to file their complaints with the district.

“As the 2008 graduate gained an adult perspective on the teacher’s actions, she began to see what had happened as more and more inappropriate, abusive and concerning, and she increasingly worried about the safety of current District students,” the attorneys said.

The 2008 graduate’s concern was deepened, according to the attorneys, by rumors she heard that the same teacher had previously had a romantic relationship with at least one other recently graduated student.

In 2019, those rumors were confirmed when a family friend on the island connected the 2008 graduate and the 2001 graduate.

“Until 2019, the 2001 graduate had never heard of it happening to another student,” the attorneys said. “As an adult looking back, she also saw the teacher’s behavior to her as having been inappropriate and abusive.”

The statement detailed how the lives of both graduates had been deeply affected, in intervening years, by the teacher’s conduct.

“Both graduates feel the experience with the teacher was traumatizing,” the attorneys said. “The long-term emotional impacts continue to affect them to this day. Though they decided that they needed to take action as soon as they met in 2019, it took several years for them to feel ready to undertake the emotionally draining, time-consuming, and potentially re-traumatizing process of filing a formal complaint with the district. Their only goal in coming forward is to hold the teacher accountable, and protect current and future students.”

The district announced that the investigation pertaining to Rees was suspended on April 10, following his resignation, effective Aug. 31, under the same paid administrative leave arrangement as Sears was given.

McSheehy additionally told The Beachcomber that no records would be publicly available, since the investigation had been concluded without a written report to the district.

McSheehy also said that no direct communication about the teacher’s resignation or the suspended investigation had been made to the former VHS students who reported the misconduct or their attorneys.

“It is not our responsibility to notify the people who filed the investigation,” he said.

Attorneys express disappointment … and resolve

The school board is expected to approve Rees’ resignation at its next meeting on April 27.

Hruska, the former VHS students’ attorney, issued a statement following the district’s announcement about the suspension of the investigation.

“Our clients share their frustration with the rest of the Vashon community that this resignation — while overall a heartening development — will pause the school district’s investigation into those allegations before any report has been completed and made public,” she said. “However, we expect that the Office of Professional Conduct for OSPI will complete its own investigation into the unprofessional conduct at issue, and that agency’s final report will be a public record.”

“Accountability can be slow but this is not the end of the process,” Hruska added.

Process of state investigations

Slagle, of OPP, said she could not provide a timeline for the OPP investigations of either Sears or Rees but said the cases will be assigned to an investigator in her office who will begin by interviewing victims, witnesses and the educators.

OPP will also subpoena materials collected in the district’s investigations of the teachers and request them from other sources, too, if necessary. The next step in the process, she said, is for reports to be written on the cases and then forwarded to OPP’s staff attorney, who will determine if OPP has met the burden of proof in the cases and then recommend the appropriate level of discipline to be issued.

OPP has several levels of discipline, she said.

These include a reprimand that does not affect an educator’s certificate, as well as an option to enter into an agreed “letter of concern” with the educator. Such a letter of concern, Slagle said, is non-disciplinary and does not need to be reported when the educator applies for future jobs. OPP can also suspend a certificate for a period of time and require an educator to complete certain conditions prior to its reinstatement.

Most consequentially, OPP can revoke an educator’s certificate, but under the law, the educator can request to have their certificate reinstated after 12 months — but must, at that time, provide clear and convincing evidence that they meet good moral character and fitness to hold an educational certificate.

An individual may also voluntarily surrender their certificate and agree to not seek its reinstatement. Educators who have been convicted of certain crimes can also have their certifications permanently revoked by OPP, without the possibility of requesting their renewal.