Student Sex Cases Cause Most Teacher License Revocations
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Nicholas Provanzana was the kind of teacher administrators, fellow teachers and students at Washingtonville High School loved – “the coolest teacher alive,” according to one music student’s Internet posting in 2003.
They didn’t know he had pleaded guilty to “offensive touching” of a minor in New Jersey after a night of heavy drinking and sex games in 2000 with two female students, according to New York State records. He served 60 days in jail and was on five years’ probation when he began teaching at Washingtonville, in the Hudson Valley, according to state education records.
Provanzana was among at least 77 male and female school employees, from New York City to the smallest rural districts, who lost their licenses over the past five years for sexual misconduct involving students, according to records obtained under the state freedom of information law.
Beyond brief scandals in local headlines, the records show sex with students and sex-related offenses are by far the most common reason licenses are revoked or denied.
Many of the teachers, principals, aides, and coaches – men and women – abused children for months or years before their licenses were revoked. Rather than one-time sexual assaults, most are termed “sexual relationships” that can last months.
The state records, sought by the Associated Press since April 2004 and finally received in June of this year, mirror the growing concern nationwide about sexual abuse of children in schools. Action against the abuse is hindered by victims’ fear, of not being believed, a bureaucracy that makes enforcement lengthy, uncertain and costly, and, often, fear of scandal.
“We really aren’t uncovering or investigating or aware of the full extent of what is happening,” a professor of Hofstra University, Charol Shakeshaft, said. She has studied educator sexual abuse in New York and last year wrote an analysis of the scant research in the area for the Department of Education. She said the best study found nearly one in 10 students nationwide are targets of “educator sexual misconduct.”
The state records don’t include private schools, which aren’t subject to the same reporting requirements as public schools unless a teacher has a state license.
