More Teacher Darwin Awards

Last year I had a post where I looked at the recent data from OSPI's Office of Professional Practices regarding teachers who had their licenses suspended or revoked. I thought it might be interesting to revisit the issue, and one change that I can see right away is that OSPI is updating their list monthly to reflect the most recent actions. I think that's a really good change on their part; it makes it much more relevant. Good work, folks.

Anyhow, here's some of the most recent names to throw themselves out of the teaching profession, along with any relevant links that I could find detailing just where things went wrong.

• First up is license suspension of Matthew Wakabayashi, a story that I blogged about previously. He's the winner who used his school computer to order hard-core porn and used pantyhose. That wasn't thought out very well.
  
• Alfredo Castillo is perhaps the oldest person ever to get their license permanently revoked; he's the 80-year old parapro who fondled a 13-year old girl.
  
• Then there's Ronnie Nash, who lived in Granger, taught high school in Zillah, and got his kicks distributing kiddie porn. His license was revoked.
  
• Rex Whipple was principal of Chimacum High School, until he got arrested for having pictures of a nude 15-year old on his school issued laptop. I'm trying to come up with a good "Please don't squeeze the..." joke, but it's just not happening. It's also worth noting that he was turned in by his daughter-in-law, which would make family reunions interesting. He was convicted last November.
  
• In 2001 Phil McGee was highlighted in the Seattle PI in an article about how PE class has evolved over the years. The article helpfully points out that he's a former police chief in Grand Coulee. In 2005 he was accused of molesting his own grand-daughter, in 2006 he was fired, and in 2007 5 students from his school came forward to say he'd molested them. The article goes on to say that police were looking for McGee, but I can't find any follow-up saying if he'd been arrested or not.

Those are just a few of the names. From October of 2006 to June of this year 37 teachers had their licenses either suspended, revoked, or voluntarily surrendered.

For the prurient, there's a blog that covers teacher misconduct from all different angles. It's not a pretty picture, but it's the story that gets the most press, sadly.