Washington schools chief seeks policy changes after teacher sexual misconduct reporting

Washington’s K-12 education oversight agency is proposing a series of policy changes to improve the state’s handling of teacher misconduct allegations.

In a letter sent to the state’s Professional Educator Standards Board on July 13, Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, wrote that current policies limit the ability of his agency to provide adequate oversight of K-12 school districts across the state. The 12-member governor-appointed standards board establishes the rules that OSPI is charged with implementing and enforcing.

The changes, if adopted by the board, would update and expand key definitions in state law, such as who is considered a student and what constitutes improper digital communication between a student and an educator. 

Other changes include expanding OSPI’s authority to initiate investigations against teachers if a district fails to report alleged misconduct; establishing a 30-day deadline for schools to report potential misconduct to the state agency; and allowing OSPI to put emergency limits on a teacher’s K-12 license while they are under investigation.

“By adjusting these rules, we can ensure that school districts have clear guidelines for forwarding information to OSPI, and that our office possesses the requisite authority to thoroughly investigate matters of student safety and public concern,” wrote Reykdal, who served as a state lawmaker before becoming the leader of the state agency in 2017. 

The changes come in the wake of investigations by InvestigateWest and other media outlets that have highlighted oversight gaps and systemic failures in how school leaders, law enforcement and the state’s education oversight agency have handled reports of teacher sexual misconduct — shortcomings that have allowed accused teachers to quietly resign and move on to other jobs. 

Katy Payne, the chief strategy officer at OSPI, said the education oversight agency hadn’t requested a policy update like this in at least a decade. But some changes were initiated by the standards board in 2021, she said.

Payne said that OSPI plans to ask lawmakers and the governor this September to fund additional investigators to enable them to investigate more cases and decrease their turnaround time.

The most notable recommendation, if adopted, would allow the state to initiate an investigation into alleged misconduct if a school district fails to notify them. 

Currently, the state can only open an investigation if they receive a formal complaint from either a school district superintendent, an educational service district superintendent, or a chief administrative officer of a private or charter school. But because of current standards that districts or school officials have to meet before filing a complaint, state investigations can be delayed, said Monique Malson, the state agency’s deputy chief legal and civil rights officer who oversees the Office of Professional Practices division. If a district thinks the misconduct might lead to formal disciplinary action against an educator, the school has more time to report it to the state.

“We could just be waiting for the complaint for years,” Malson said.

Under the proposed rules, OSPI would require school districts to communicate with the state within 30 days of establishing that an educator likely engaged in professional misconduct such as sexual harassment, inappropriate communication with students or falsifying records. If a district takes disciplinary action, such as placing a teacher on administrative leave, it must act more quickly and make a report within 10 days.

The proposed rules remain vague about what would constitute sufficient information for the state to step in without a formal complaint. 

“We are looking for something that’s more than just a rumor or something that’s unsubstantiated,” Malson explained. “If they can’t articulate it to us, it’s also not likely that we’re going to be able to open a complaint and get to any remedy, even if we investigate.” 

“It’s hard to say where the line is,” she added.

Under current rules, it’s a violation of professional conduct for a certified superintendent or administrator to fail to report alleged misconduct that’s been brought to their attention. But the language of the rule only allows OSPI to take action when the failure was “intentional or knowing,” which can be difficult to prove.

The proposed changes would “make our authority a little firmer on that,” by lifting restrictions on when the state can investigate a school leader for failing to report alleged physical or sexual abuse by an educator, said Darryl Colman, chief legal and civil rights officer, during a call with InvestigateWest. While the changes don’t explicitly lay out repercussions OSPI could pursue regarding school leaders that fail to report, the rule change would speed up the investigative process, “getting at the underlying alleged misconduct much sooner and more directly,” Payne wrote in response to a follow-up question.

Colman said that OSPI has never taken formal action against a school administrator for failing to report misconduct. The agency investigated one superintendent in the past but did not move forward with discipline, he said.

The agency is also asking the standards board to expand the state’s emergency authority when misconduct allegations arise, including the ability to temporarily restrict or limit a teacher’s license until after an administrative investigation is complete. This would help remove a teacher from the classroom sooner and lessen the likelihood of them getting hired in a different district while under investigation because their license would be flagged in Washington’s internal teaching and credentialing system that school administrators have access to.

Another recommendation seeks to clarify that the state’s education oversight agency may deny a teacher’s request to voluntarily surrender their K-12 teaching license. The agency’s leaders are unsure whether it already has the authority to do so, and want to make sure it’s crystal clear in the state rules. Once a teacher voluntarily surrenders their license, OSPI no longer has the authority to investigate them.

“If we check and there is something that actually could be the type of violation that could lead to a mandatory revocation, we wouldn’t want to accept a voluntary surrender in that situation,” Malson said.

Payne said in an email that the state agency has, on a few occasions, not accepted a voluntary surrender request from a teacher “but also not formally rejected them.”

The agency can also suggest a teacher voluntarily surrender their license. Recently, the state offered a voluntary surrender to a teacher accused of misconduct, InvestigateWest and The Daily Herald reported. 

Emails show that an investigator with OSPI suggested that Everett Public Schools physics teacher Kevin Kukla surrender his K-12 teaching license in order to halt the state’s investigation. The school district had found that Kukla engaged in “substantial boundary invasion, inappropriate digital communication and sexual harassment of a female student that is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it limited a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from our educational programs.” 

Asked broadly why a teacher accused of misconduct would be offered a voluntary surrender, Malson said: “Each case is going to be different.” If the agency couldn’t prove the misconduct, and they receive nominal consequences, they might remain in a classroom, putting students at risk, she said. A voluntary surrender would at least remove them from the classroom.

But a voluntary surrender wouldn’t stop an accused teacher from being hired at a private or charter school, where a K-12 teaching certificate is not always required. A teacher could also seek employment at a higher education institution, which was the case with Kukla, who was hired by Shoreline Community College. 

Voluntary surrenders also shield the allegations from being disclosed in OSPI’s public-facing teacher misconduct database. In February 2025, InvestigateWest found that nearly 45% of all teachers who appear in the database since 2015 voluntarily surrendered their licenses, shielding details of their cases from the public in the process. In Seattle Public Schools, all but four of the 15 educators recorded in the database voluntarily surrendered their licenses. 

The proposed changes would also expand the definition of “student” to include any minor who attends or participates in a program at any public, private, or charter school in Washington, and would include former students over age 18 who were enrolled within the previous 12 months. A former student would also include students who dropped out, graduated or transferred to other schools. Currently, a student is considered someone under the “supervision, direction, or control of the educational practitioner.” 

Another change would allow OSPI to take similar disciplinary action against an educator based on a previous investigation, allowing Washington to take faster action after learning about misconduct that occurred over state lines. 

 “We wouldn’t have to start from zero,” Malson said.

The proposal would also better define what digital communication is acceptable between educators and students, explicitly prohibiting nonacademic communication such as calling, texting, emailing, instant messaging, blogging or communicating via social media. 

The standards board’s interim executive director, Ron Jacobson, told InvestigateWest that the agency tentatively plans to discuss the proposed changes during its Sept. 24-25 board meeting in Spokane.