The SF Standard published a story today about a former high school teacher who resigned last month after being accused of grooming students and having sex with them after graduation.

The allegations against Trueman Bender, a local artist and former special education teacher at June Jordan School for Equity in the city’s Excelsior District, emerged this year after two former students reconnected on social media.

No one is alleging the 34-year-old teacher had sex with students but the former students say it was clear what he wanted and that he was grooming them.

He explicitly expressed his interest in them while they were still students and invited them out, according to the report. He also made no secret that they were his “type,” young Mexican or Latino men, the investigator wrote…

The student said he awoke one morning to a message on Instagram from Bender that said, “I had a wet dream about you.” The student found the message “disgusting” coming from a teacher. He said he replied with, “Ha ha ha.”…

Around graduation time, the student told the investigator, Bender sent him another message on Instagram saying, “I really want to suck your d**k.”…

“I realize now that Mr. Bender was grooming me while I was a student, at a time in my life when I was particularly vulnerable both as an [undocumented] immigrant and as a still-closeted young person,” the report quotes that 2016 graduate as saying.

Police took a report but nothing came of it. The school district says its investigation is closed. Bender was allowed to resign rather than being fired and that’s the end of it.

In March the Standard published a story about another teacher who was working at a Middle School. He was allowed to resign rather than be fired.

A report uncovered by The Standard reveals that a teacher who was accused of kissing and groping a 17-year-old San Bruno girl on multiple occasions was allowed to resign and was later hired at a San Francisco public school, where students accused him of misconduct roughly two decades after the original alleged incidents…

San Francisco officials would come to discover allegations from the 1990s about teacher Anthony Sylvestri only after local students at the city’s Aptos Middle School claimed in 2018 that he made them uncomfortable by calling them pet names, leering at them and touching them for no clear reason.

In 2019, Sylvestri was allowed to resign, this time under what officials for the San Francisco Unified School District call a “release agreement,” after which time administrators did not pursue disciplinary hearings that might have resulted in Sylvestri’s formal firing.

Sylvestri’s case was particularly egregious because he’d been accused before. But this type of release agreement seems to be standard operating procedure in San Francisco:

The athletic director repeatedly called the teenage girl out of class and then escorted her to a locker room, a lawsuit alleges. Later, he would send her back to her class at George Washington High School, a routine that at least one teacher found odd.

These were not legitimate hall passes, but instead repeated episodes of alleged sexual abuse that went on for four years, according to the lawsuit against the San Francisco Unified School District. The girl eventually confided in her college guidance counselor, who called the police. Officials then put Lawrence Young-Yet Chan on leave, the lawsuit said.

But then Chan was allowed to quietly resign.

He wasn’t the only one. Public records obtained by The Standard reveal that, since 2017, at least 19 employees of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) who were accused of sexual misconduct were allowed to resign or retire in lieu of termination.

Is it just me or is the sexual abuse of children being treated like a minor faux pas? These people belong behind bars with a record that indicates they are child abusers. Instead, they are simply allowed to waltz away from their behavior. Why is this the case? The SF Standard strongly suggests we have teachers unions to thank.

A 2010 federal study reported that a school administrator feared it could cost up to $100,000 to fire a teacher—“even with a slam-dunk case”—because investigations, hearings, appeals and other required steps that precede a dismissal take time and require the attention of senior staff. Accommodating an accused abuser with a separation agreement can discreetly curtail what could have been a drawn-out embarrassment for the institution, experts say.

Bottom line: Union contracts make it nigh-impossible to fire anyone, even for something as serious as sexual abuse of a minor. It’s expensive, time consuming and raises attention. So administrators allow people to resign to save themselves the hassle of fighting through the union-made morass of rules about firing someone.

It must be common knowledge among SF teachers that nothing will happen to abusers. And that means it’s probably well know among would-be abusers as well. The worst case scenario is you’ll have to resign. How many of these people have resigned and simply moved on to other teaching jobs where they have access to other children?