By Adam Clark and Jessica Remo

NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The little girls would hold his hand and sit on his lap.

They would kiss their first-grade teacher, and he would kiss them back.

Keep it a secret, he warned the 5- and 6-year olds. Otherwise, he said, they could get into trouble.

This alarming behavior, according to court documents, was no secret to Montville Township school administrators, who warned the teacher, Jason Fennes, to stop having physical contact with the children. Fennes' "inappropriate interactions with students" even cost him a raise.

Five years after the first documented complaints, Montville suspended Fennes and he resigned. But when a private school 40 minutes away called to confirm Fennes' employment dates, Montville school officials were bound by a separation agreement. They could make no mention of the kisses, the hand-holding or parents' complaints that the first-grade teacher touched their little girls too often.

With that agreement muting his former employer, Fennes got the new job — and subsequently sexually assaulted a first-grade girl less than a year after leaving Montville. It was the culmination of a string of sexual assaults he since admitted, including six victims in the Montville and Butler school districts and at Cedar Hill Preparatory School in Somerset.

"The consequences of that molestation are made ever the more egregious by the fact that they were known to (Montville) school officials," Somerset County Judge Robert Reed said when he sentenced Fennes to prison earlier this year. "How could they fail to report or address this conduct other than passing the pedophile to the next school?"

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How?

It's called "passing the trash," a reckless cycle enabled by school administrators who fear litigation and shy away from controversy. The practice — eerily similar to scandals in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church — allows teachers suspected or accused of misconduct with students to move seamlessly from job to job.

Interviews with school administrators and a review of dozens of district, police and court records by NJ Advance Media reveal the damning pattern continues on, decades after its tragic faults were exposed, while a law proposed to stop it languishes on the desks of New Jersey lawmakers.

Teachers aren't being trained to look for signs of abuse, schools don't properly vet candidates and reports of questionable behavior aren't thoroughly investigated, said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Charol Shakeshaft, who has spent years studying the sex abuse of children by teachers. And there's no federal data on teacher sex abuse cases, Shakeshaft said, "even though we know the number of reindeer in Alaska."

Most alarming, experts say, is the lack of action from school officials who accept resignations or retirements from men and women who have shown questionable or even potentially criminal behavior and yet do nothing to stop them from teaching elsewhere.

Even as documented cases mount, a state law proposed this year that would require school districts to share information about teachers suspected of child abuse or sexual misconduct and grant school officials legal immunity has gone nowhere in the Legislature.

"This is not controversial. This is a simple fix," said Rush Russell, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey, an advocacy group that supports the legislation. "It's unfathomable to me to know why it can't pass."

We are not honest with each other when we do reference checks.

— Ron Bolandi, retired superintendent

In the absence of rigorous scrutiny, Fennes and others have moved back into classrooms after allegations of misconduct or abuse.

Art teacher Shawn Cier left three jobs under a cloud of controversy in 10 years. He continues to teach in a Newark charter school despite a past that includes an arrest, late-night texting with a student and the discovery of pornography on his school computer, according to police records and interviews with former school administrators.

Former Elizabeth teacher Robert Goodlin, charged in September with sexually assaulting a teenage student, had retired after reported misconduct only to work in two new districts as a substitute teacher, according court documents and to district records.

And Robert Cain and Jinwoo Seong, two teachers banished from New York City schools for allegations of sexual contact with students, quickly found work in New Jersey schools, according to district documents.

"We know the problem with the system," said Assemblyman Jay Webber, R-Morris. "We know there are creeps who are gaming it, and we are doing nothing to stop the creeps."

In response to Fennes' case, Webber and other Republican lawmakers proposed strict rules, modeled after laws already adopted in a handful of other states, for vetting school employees. The rules would protect students while also ensuring one false allegation doesn't ruin a teacher's career, Webber said.

But Democrats who control the Legislature have yet to act on the bill, and the state's largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, hasn't taken a formal position on the proposal. The inaction leaves students vulnerable, said Ron Bolandi, a retired superintendent.

"We are not honest with each other when we do reference checks," said Bolandi, who led six districts over his 40-year career. "We don't terminate enough. We let people go, whether it's academic or misconduct. A lot of people will get pissed at me for saying that, but I've seen it time and time again.

"We don't protect the kids enough in our field. We protect the adults."

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Still teaching

The damning words were plastered next to Shawn Cier's face.

On June 20, 2009, the first day of summer break for Hightstown High School students, a photo of Cier, then 34, appeared on the cover of the Trentonian newspaper.

"Cops: Teacher played porn for kids," the headline read in giant type.

The photo of Cier's arched eyebrows and dimpled chin landing on doorsteps across Central Jersey isn't where his story begins.

Or where it ends.

Over the past decade, Cier has taught art in four districts and a charter school, despite leaving three jobs where he was accused of misconduct, getting arrested and cultivating a social media presence replete with lewd comments and compliments about former students' physical appearance, according to police documents and interviews with former school officials.

Today, he teaches high school students at Marion P. Thomas Charter School in Newark.

"I'm surprised he's still teaching," said Bolandi, the superintendent in Hightstown during Cier's tenure.

Reached at his home in Sayreville in October, Cier declined to answer questions and dismissed the complaints against him as "hearsay."

"I just feel like, that you're on a witch hunt, basically," he said.

Before Hightstown, Cier was a popular art teacher at Bridgewater-Raritan High School from 2005 to 2007. In his early 30s at the time, Cier had a reputation as a fun teacher who wore sneakers with wheels and rolled down the hallways, a former colleague recalled.

"Like a kid," the former teacher said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of Cier's controversial departure from the school. "He fit right in with the teenagers."

He apparently talked to students like a teenager, too.

In the final weeks of the 2006-07 school year, the mother of a high school senior said she complained to school officials. Cier was texting her daughter at all hours of the day, from 6:45 a.m. to 11:45 p.m., she told NJ Advance Media, which is not naming the woman at her request.

The district investigated Cier, who had not yet earned tenure, and told him his contract would not be renewed, according to three former school officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters.

"There was not enough to do legal action," one former school official said, "but the superintendent and the board definitely felt they needed to terminate that contract."

Bridgewater never got the chance. Cier resigned, former school officials said, and had a job in Roselle Public Schools by the time the next school year began.

A teacher may do something that isn’t criminal, wouldn’t put them in prison, but it’s still not acceptable teacher behavior.

— Charol Shakeshaft, teacher misconduct expert

Former Roselle superintendent Elnardo Webster insisted the district wouldn't have hired Cier if officials had known Bridgewater wanted him gone. Districts, however, are often in the dark about why teachers resign from a job.

In an effort to minimize legal blowback, school districts, like many employers, follow the advice of lawyers and provide minimal information – good, bad or indifferent -- during reference checks, said David Rubin, a long time school board attorney in New Jersey.

Dates of service. Salary. Courses taught. That's about it, Rubin said.

Cier resigned from Roselle in good standing after less than a year, according to the district. He then found a job at Hightstown High School in September 2008, thanks in part to what the district considered an "excellent" recommendation from a colleague in Bridgewater, Bolandi said.

But less than a year later, in June 2009, Cier was under fire again when two female students came to school officials with a bombshell: They said Cier showed them a pornographic video on his cell phone, Bolandi said.

"I could have easily said to Shawn, 'Go ahead and resign,'" Bolandi said. Instead, "I had him arrested."

Cier, also accused of making numerous sexually suggestive comments, was fired from Hightstown and charged with child abuse, harassment and knowingly exhibiting obscene material to a minor, according to media reports.

But, state records show, the criminal charges were "administratively dismissed," a catch-all term used when cases fall apart for a variety of reasons, such as problems with evidence or an uncooperative victim, law enforcement experts said.

The charges no longer appear in criminal history records, an indication they were expunged.

Fewer than 15 months after his arrest, Cier began working at Keansburg High School, despite the fact a Google search for his name yields the Trentonian article branding him "an artistic perv."

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Bolandi, who retired from the district shortly after firing Cier, said he was flummoxed. How could Cier get another job, less than an hour away, after he had been fired and had his name and face on the front page of the newspaper?

"I don't know how they couldn't have found that out," Bolandi said. "Why would you hire someone who was terminated? Someone gets terminated, the red flag goes up. You're dealing with kids here."

Former and current Keansburg officials are short on explanations but said the district would have done its due diligence.

In vetting teachers, though, there's a common fear among district officials that learning too much about an applicant's personal life comes with a legal risk, such as claims of discrimination, Rubin said.

"Sometimes, there's such a thing as knowing too much," Rubin said. "You have to be careful about knowing too much."

If Cier was worried about what employers might find online, he didn't show it on social media accounts he used around the time he began working at Keansburg.

On spring.me, a social networking site where users communicate through a question-and-answer format, a user identified himself as a teacher named Mr. Cier who lived in Bedminster.

Cier, who did not deny the account was his when asked, participated in numerous vulgar, sexually charged forums on the site and referenced oral sex, sex toys and "hot girls."

Throughout his tenure at Keansburg, Cier used also Facebook to comment on photos of former female students, often describing their appearance as "beautiful" or "cute."

After receiving a tip about Cier in 2015, NJ Advance Media approached then-Keansburg superintendent Gerald North, who arrived in the district a year after Cier was hired.

Told of the texting in Bridgewater, the arrest in Hightstown and the explicit, sexual posts online, North said Cier had a legitimate teaching certificate and cleared a criminal background check when he was hired.

The spring.me posts weren't from the current school year and it wasn't clear whether Cier was communicating with minors, North said.

"We're not going to pursue anything," the superintendent said.

The following year, a student given permission to use Cier's district-owned computer for a project stumbled upon several photos of naked women while retrieving an item from the trash folder, the student told NJ Advance Media, an account confirmed through police records.

That student, along with another student who also saw the computer screen, reported the photos to a principal. North and Bolger Middle School Principal John Niesz called police, according to Keansburg police records.

Investigators reviewed the photos, along with two short videos of a woman performing oral sex, but the women in the pictures appeared to be at least 18 years old and were not Keansburg students, according to the incident report.

Cier was not charged, and the district, which had already suspended him, was left to handle the incident internally, according to the report.

The following month, Cier resigned.

"We followed exactly what we are supposed to do from a legal standpoint," said North, now the superintendent of Plumsted Township School District.

North added that he's limited in what he can legally discuss.

Since the fall of 2016, Cier has been teaching art at Marion P. Thomas Charter School in Newark, according to state records. When told of Cier's problems in three previous jobs, officials at the charter school said they could not be interviewed about personnel matters.

In a statement, they said the school runs criminal background checks and requires three recommendations from former employers. The school also gives employees a chance to address any issues that may surface after they have been hired, according to the statement.

After leaving three jobs where he was accused of misconduct, Shawn Cier was hired at Marian P. Thomas Charter School in Newark. (Alexandra Pais | For NJ Advance Media)

"As a district that is based in an urban community with a student body that is predominately African American and Latino, we understand what it means to be accused of a crime or inappropriate behavior and later be found innocent or not be charged," the school said.

Though Cier's employer has not taken action, the Monmouth County Prosecutor's office has, said David Saenz, a spokesman for the Department of Education.

In 2016, after the pornography was discovered on Cier's computer, the prosecutor's office notified the state Board of Examiners of its investigation.

In November, the board voted to begin the lengthy process of considering whether to revoke Cier's teaching license. He has until mid-January to respond to claims made against him.

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Finally facing charges

Thirteen years after he left his Elizabeth classroom, Robert Goodlin stood handcuffed in a courtroom in the same city.

Goodlin, 75, was arrested this fall and charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy numerous times in the 1990s. The incidents, which the former student alleged happened more than 100 times, occurred during Goodlin's 11-year tenure as an industrial arts and special education teacher at Battin Middle School.

Depositions and school documents allege Goodlin demonstrated what experts call some of the most obvious signs a teacher could be grooming students for abuse, prompting reports from concerned teachers and calls to the Union County prosecutor's office.

Despite the red flags, Goodlin was never removed from the classroom for more than a few days. Instead, in 2004, he was allowed to retire.

Nine months later, Goodlin was at the front of a classroom again as a substitute teacher in another district.

"Those who worked with Goodlin should be ashamed," said Brian Schiller, the accuser's attorney. "They protected themselves and Goodlin, rather than the vulnerable and innocent children."

Just months before Goodlin's arrest, the Elizabeth school board settled a civil lawsuit with Schiller's client for $600,000. Questioned by lawyers in the civil case, Goodlin maintained his innocence.

Pat Politano, a spokesman for the district, said it would be inappropriate to comment because Goodlin is currently facing charges. He added that none of the current board members nor the superintendent were in their positions when Goodlin worked in Elizabeth.

Goodlin and his attorney, Ralph Ferrara, also declined to comment.

Goodlin, who came to Elizabeth in 1993 after teaching in Secaucus and Montville, was a well-liked teacher who would joke around "like one of the kids" and encourage students to call him "Bob," said Alex, 37, the accuser in Goodlin's criminal case.

In a locker-room atmosphere, Goodlin would often accuse the boys of looking at porn or ask if they "spanked their monkey," said Alex, who asked his name be changed to protect his identity.

Robert Goodlin, a former middle school teacher in Elizabeth, was arrested this fall and charged with sexually assaulting a teenager student in the 1990s. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Sexual talk in the classroom is a clear warning sign a teacher could be engaging in misconduct with students, said Shakeshaft, who was commissioned by the federal government to study sexual abuse by teachers.

"The idea is to get the talk going," she said, "and then students start to talk about themselves."

Goodlin did more than just talk, according to authorities. The teacher would touch Alex's shoulder, rub his leg or grab a muscle and compliment his "strong" physique.

Alex said Goodlin began to offer him rides home and one day masturbated him while they were parked outside Alex's house. The acts progressed to oral sex and took place in Alex's house, in Goodlin's car and at the teacher's lake house in West Milford, according to the criminal complaint.

In New Jersey, anyone who believes a child has been abused should immediately report it, according to the state's mandatory reporting law, and those who do so in good faith are immune from criminal or civil liability. Teachers should be trained to be vigilant for typical signs of grooming, such as constant attention, favoritism, gift-giving or having students call them by first name, experts said.

Other teachers and school staff often saw Alex alone with Goodlin, including leaving with the teacher at the end of the day, he said.

"And they didn't do anything," Alex said.

However, Elizabeth police tailed Goodlin during the 1990s, according to a former city police officer who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Then in August 2003, school officials received a damning report, which wasn't the first complaint against Goodlin, according to court documents.

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A parent called the central office to complain about Goodlin's "ongoing conduct" with her son, saying the teacher "expressed both an interest and the propensity to engage in sexual activity with adolescent boys," according to a district document in Goodlin's personnel file.

The complaint was reported to what was then the state's Division of Youth and Family Services, which called the county prosecutor's office, the district document shows. Yet school officials cleared Goodlin to return to the classroom on Sept. 4, according to another memo written by an administrator.

Later that fall, Goodlin announced he would retire after the school year. But, before the school year ended, a teacher spotted him with two students in his car in February 2004.

DYFS officials described the situation as "troubling given prior allegations," but said there was "no evidence of unlawful activity," according to school records.

"If a teacher violated school policy by having youngsters in his vehicle, it should be dealt with by the district," a DYFS representative wrote.

How did Elizabeth deal with it? The principal warned Goodlin that he needed to drive home at 3 p.m. each day, reminded him he had submitted his intention to retire and "urged him this should happen without further incident," according to a district memo.

Robert Goodlin taught at Elizabeth's Battin Middle School for 11 years. (Alexandra Pais | For NJ Advance Media)

After retiring from Elizabeth, Goodlin worked as a substitute teacher for four months in Secaucus and then two years in Wood-Ridge.

New Jersey requires substitute teachers to pass a criminal history review, but the positions often come with less vetting, Shakeshaft said.

"Yet the risk is still the same," she added.

After Goodlin's arrest, more allegations surfaced. A 50-year-old man who was a student at Secaucus High School in the 1980s filed a tort claim notice in October, alleging Goodlin showed him porn and masturbated in front of him during a trip to the Ramapo Valley Reservation and tried to grope him another time.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a retired Secaucus administrator confirmed Goodlin ran the school's "Angler's Club" and took the kids on fishing trips as the lone chaperone. He knew of no issues with Goodlin during his time in Secaucus, though, he said.

Goodlin was released on house arrest in September as his case heads to a grand jury.

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Hidden history

Robert Cain figured he would never teach again.

Initially, the New York City high school teacher denied a student's claims the two had sex for two months both inside and outside of school, according to a report by New York City schools' special commissioner of investigation.

But when confronted by investigators with surveillance video of him accompanying the student up the stairs of a hotel in 2013, Cain grew quiet and then began to ramble, investigators noted.

"So what if I took (her)," Cain said, according to the report. "It doesn't matter anymore. I'm not a tenured teacher, and I won't get a job teaching anywhere. I might as well resign."

But Cain did teach again, landing a job at Bergen Arts and Science Charter School in Hackensack for one year beginning in August 2014.

Shortly after Cain came from New York, Jinwoo Seong got hired at Paterson's Don Bosco Technical Academy after complaints he touched a student sexually and investigators determined he had "no place in New York City public schools," according to a district document.

Neither teacher was criminally charged, both passed background checks and their new schools never learned of the allegations until they were revealed in reports by the New York Post, school officials said. Both former teachers declined to comment, and Seong resigned from Don Bosco Tech after the allegations surfaced.

Prosecuting alleged abuse of a child is especially difficult, said Louis Raveson, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers Law School, and many parents don't want their children cross-examined in court.

Lacking criminal charges, districts face the costly and time-consuming process of trying to fire a tenured teacher with no guarantee of winning.

Too often, districts feel powerless and worry about smearing a teacher's reputation, experts in classroom misconduct said.

"A teacher may do something that isn't criminal, wouldn't put them in prison, but is still not acceptable for teacher behavior," Shakeshaft said. "A lot of times school districts get confused on that and think they can't do anything about certain behaviors unless it somehow is prosecuted and the case is won."

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Reason for change

When he sentenced Jason Fennes for sexually assaulting a first-grader, Judge Robert Reed wanted to send Montville School District officials to prison along with him, he said.

"Evil begins in the minds and the conduct of evil men," Reed fumed during a blistering castigation of school officials earlier this year. "But it is allowed to continue. It is, indeed, encouraged when the consequences of that conduct are hidden from public view by the very people who are supposed to protect our children from it.

"The conduct of those who remain silent when they have a duty to act, whether that duty is legal or moral, make their conduct and their silence only slightly less despicable than yours."

Fennes’ case is a shocking story of passing the trash, complete with complicit silence, unspeakable acts and irreparable emotional damage, the families of his victims said. He confessed to sexually assaulting six girls over the course of 15 years, including first-graders he taught and befriended in his classroom and a teenager he coached and had sex with in the 1990s, according to court documents.

Now serving 14 years in prison for crimes in two counties, Fennes continued teaching long after the first disturbing warning signs and moved to a new job with the assistance of a legally binding separation agreement, a document that amounted to a gag order for Montville officials.

His abuse sparked cases in both criminal and civil court, where the families of victims blamed school officials for not taking action when complaints were raised.

God forbid [Fennes] hurts a child in the future.

— A warning Montville received from a parent

"In many ways, this is a story of failure at many different levels," the father of one victim said during an emotional courtroom statement.

In Montville, where Fennes was hired to teach first grade at William Mason Elementary School in 1998, school officials were aware of allegations as early as 2005, according to court documents. He remained in the classroom another five years.

Fennes was kissing students, holding hands with them and allowing them to touch his legs, thighs and butt, according to an appellate court ruling in a civil case filed against the district. Warned several times to stop, he argued he was an affectionate person who couldn't quit "cold turkey."

He didn't quit, period. Not after a principal warned him to stop having physical contact with students in September 2008 or after the same principal walked into his classroom eight months later and saw three little girls sitting on his lap, according to the court ruling.

Montville school officials reported Fennes to DYFS, sent him a letter of reprimand and even withheld a scheduled raise because he wouldn't stop touching children, the judges in the appellate case wrote. But they didn't pull him from the classroom until March 2010 — after a parent complained about his continued physical contact with students and implored the district to investigate immediately.

With Fennes suspended, the investigation turned up new complaints from multiple parents, a grandparent and several staff members about Fennes' inappropriate touching of students, the court records show. A teenager also said her younger sister had visited Fennes' house.

"God forbid [Fennes] hurts a child in the future," one parent warned the district during the investigation, according to court documents. "The entire school system will have charges pressed against them for not taking the appropriate actions in seeing [Fennes] removed from the classroom."

Administrators at William Mason Elementary School in Montville warned Jason Fennes to stop having inappropriate physical contact with his students. (Justin Zaremba | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Montville officials had to decide whether to fire Fennes, return him to the classroom or ask him to resign.

"If I were superintendent of the district, I would have gone for the throat without any hesitation," said Salvatore Illuzzi, a retired superintendent who led districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for three decades. "Because I have to look at myself in the mirror in the morning."

On May 14, 2010, Montville entered into a separation agreement — signed and approved by the district board of education — a common method used to negotiate clean breaks.

In exchange for Fennes' resignation and promise never to apply in Montville again, the district agreed to tell future employers his dates of employment, positions held and "no further information." The district agreed not to report Fennes to the state since Montville was not pursing tenure charges.

After leaving Montville, Fennes applied at Cedar Hill Preparatory School, a private K-8 school in Somerset County.

The school obtained Fennes' references, confirmed his dates of employment and hired him without questioning why he didn't list a single reference working in the district where he was employed for the previous 12 years, the judges wrote in the civil court decision.

A month into the school year, Cedar Hill Prep received a tip about the allegations against Fennes and the fact he resigned to avoid potential termination, according to documents. The school double checked his criminal history but didn't call Montville to ask for more information and allowed him to keep his job, the court record reveals.

Seven years later, the father of a girl Fennes abused at Cedar Hill Prep stood in a courtroom wondering why school officials didn't stop the teacher before he got to his daughter, his "lovely girl."

"I wish they could be in this courtroom, and I wish they could be going to jail," he said. "Because that's where they all belong. They all had a hand in allowing this to happen."

Montville Superintendent Rene Rovtar, who was not in the district during Fennes' tenure, declined to comment, citing a pending civil lawsuit. But Board of Education President Matthew Kayne defended Montville's handling of Fennes, calling the judge's comments "defamatory and entirely out of line" in a statement read at a February school board meeting.

School officials did their part by reporting the initial complaints about Fennes to DYFS, which concluded the allegations were unfounded, Kayne said, according to the board's meeting minutes. The school board was never aware of and never discovered any substantiated allegations of child abuse against Fennes, he added.

"In 2010, neither school board officials, nor the board, nor anyone else was aware of the information about Mr. Fennes that became available years later," Kayne said.

The parents of a victim at Cedar Hill Prep sued the Montville district, claiming its negligence led to her sexual abuse.

A state Superior Court judge dismissed all claims, saying the plaintiffs failed to establish the link between Montville's actions and Fennes' abuse at Cedar Hill Prep. But an appeals court later ruled that Montville did have a responsibility to report the final complaints about Fennes to DYFS as well as to the state Board of Examiners, which could have suspended or revoked Fennes' teaching license for unbecoming conduct.

However, Montville officials had no responsibility to report the allegations to Cedar Hill Prep because the private school never asked for information beyond his dates of employment, the judges determined.

Cedar Hill Prep ran a criminal background check on Fennes, and he was thoroughly vetted with "no adverse comments" received, said Anthony Pasquarelli, the school's attorney.

Even if Montville wasn't able to reveal the complaints against Fennes under the terms of his separation agreement, Cedar Hill Prep should have seen the red flags and asked the right questions, said Jack Vlasac, the attorney representing the victim in the lawsuit against the school.

A tenured teacher leaving a job after 12 years. No references from his previous employer. A warning he had acted inappropriately at his previous job.

"Does it smell like trash?" Vlasac asked. "If it does, keep it out of the school."

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Legislation at a standstill

If even one dangerous teacher slips through the cracks in New Jersey, it's one too many, said Nancy Munoz, a Republican state assemblywoman from Union County.

Munoz, a mother of five, quickly threw her support behind proposed legislation that would forbid districts from keeping child abuse or sexual misconduct investigations secret unless the allegations were proven false or unfounded.

The proposal would also require prospective school employees to disclose in writing if they were ever disciplined, had a contract non-renewed or were asked to resign during a child abuse or sexual misconduct investigation.

And, perhaps most importantly, districts would have to directly ask previous employers if a teacher was under investigation when they resigned, and those districts would be immune from liability for providing information.

Separation agreements, like the one between Fennes and Montville, would be banned.

"Keeping information secret doesn't help anybody," Munoz said. "To me, it was a no-brainer."

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania agreed. Three years ago, legislators unanimously approved its "Pass the Trash" law.

The bill gained support after a high school assistant principal was charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student. The principal's personnel file in his previous district contained several red flags, according to published reports.

Over the past 15 years, about a half-dozen states have passed laws aimed at preventing teachers accused of misconduct from moving to a new district without proper scrutiny, according to Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation, or SESAME, a national advocacy group that helped draft the Pennsylvania law.

And, in 2015, after decades of failed attempts to better protect children, Congress passed a law calling on states to stop schools from helping a teacher get a new job if there's probable cause he or she engaged in sexual misconduct with a student. The federal law does not mandate specific measures, leaving those decisions to state lawmakers.

"It is very important that those who are given the responsibility of taking care of our children are held to a higher, not lower, standard," said state Sen. Joe Pennacchio, R-Morris, a sponsor of the New Jersey bill.

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Some concerns have been raised, however.

As written, the bill doesn't apply to private schools, which have had numerous high-profile cases of sexual abuse, said Teri Miller, SESAME's board president.

Its requirement that districts question all of a job candidates' previous employers might be too difficult for small school districts, especially when hiring veteran employees, said Rovtar, the current Montville superintendent.

And the proposal also leaves a potential loophole: Unsubstantiated complaints of sexual misconduct.

Even if the bill passes, superintendents are likely to err on the side of caution when asked for information because of the litigious nature of society, said North, the former Keansburg school chief.

Neither the NJEA nor the New Jersey School Boards Association has formally endorsed the proposal, though both groups say they support the intent behind any effort to ensure the safety of students.

The NJEA has had discussions with the bill's sponsors about the best way to protect children without causing any unintended consequences, union spokesman Steve Baker said, adding that any law must also protect due process for school employees.

"We have already fairly strong protections in place to make sure that we know who is working in our schools," Baker said.

Currently, all potential school employees who would have contact with children are required to have a criminal history records check, and applicants with convictions for child or sexual abuse are barred from public schools.

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney and outgoing Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, the two highest ranking Democrats in the Legislature, are reviewing the proposed law, which was introduced in January, according to spokesmen.

The bill may not be perfect, experts said, but it would break a culture of silence and force potential school employees to answer questions about their pasts.

For Fennes' victims, any legislation to address a broken system comes too late. One victim, now in high school, stood in court in January and faced her former teacher at his sentencing.

"I hate reading the countless articles on the internet about you and what justice has happened and what justice will come," she said. "I feel so small when I'm written about in these articles, as if my fellow victims and I only add up to a pile of statistics.

"I know inside we are much more than this."

Mark Mueller contributed to this report.

Jessica Remo may be reached at jremo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaRemoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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