Overreaction or right reaction at Miramonte school?

I'm assuming the mass reassignment is to protect the teachers themselves from any violent reprisals by a disgruntled parent who would blame all of the teachers working at that school.

They're two different and completely unrelated stories, David --
the birth control and the Miramonte school problems.

Do you agree with the way the school district is handling this?

In December 2010, investigators from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department came into possession of Berndt's "bondage" photos. The pictures showed children gagged and bound, sometimes with live cockroaches on their faces or about to eat a cookie covered in a clear white liquid. ....

..... the District kept silent for thirteen months as investigators built a criminal case. The prolonged criminal investigation yielded a discarded spoon in Berndt's classroom, which tested positive for his semen. Without this physical evidence, investigators claim, they would have only been able to charge the teacher with a misdemeanor.....

But it seems like the school is overreacting a bit. Reassigning ALL the teachers at the school? Placing psychiatric social workers in ALL the classrooms? Investigators interviewing all current and past students of the school?

Mercado is one of 60 parents who gathered on the lawn of the brightly painted school that’s experienced a lot of darkness in the last week. They protested the district’s decision not to include them in a conversation about what to do next.

"What, our opinion doesn’t matter?" asked Mercado rhetorically, summing of the feelings of many parents. "We don’t count?"

L.A. Unified officials say they’d intended to reassure parents that their children would be safe, especially after many had accused the school system of failing to protect them. But some parents maintained that the abrupt change in personnel will further traumatize students.

And I also suspect that reassigning all the school's teachers is a (much too late & thoroughly misguided) attempt on the part of the school district to create the appearance of having taken strong action. I sounds very much like most of those "reassigned" teachers had absolutely nothing to do with what occurred. I feel very sorry for them being treated like scapegoats.

In a press conference at South Region High School on Monday evening, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy confirmed the decision to relocate Miramonte's 150-member staff to an off-site building, where they will undergo extensive interviews and evaluations in the wake of the arrests of two teachers accused of lewd acts with children.

The superintendent took pains to emphasize that the re-location and evaluations were not "a condemnation of an entire staff." However, the superintendent also acknowledged that the district's investigation could help staff "come to terms about what they may know" about Mark Berndt and Bernard Springer, the two teachers accused of inappropriate behavior. If any new facts were to come to light through the interviews, Deasy added, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department could take over the district's investigation at any time.

"I can't have any more surprises at Miramonte," Deasy said candidly, "but if there are more, then we will have to deal with that."

They aren't being reassigned, though (unless that L.A. Superintendent was misquoted in the HuffPo piece). It almost sounds like he thinks there's more to all this than they've uncovered so far (evidence pointing to the worst offender's crimes going back to 2005 -- how is it no one working at the school saw anything???). He (the superintendent) is quoted as saying that as bad as this is, more surprises at this point would only make things worse.

But my point still is, why no action taken till now, when what happened at the school is in the headlines?