Polytechnic investigation found no evidence of teacher misconduct

A teacher who got a job at Polytechnic School in Pasadena -- shortly after being accused of inappropriate conduct at another private school -- did not engage in sexual harassment or misconduct during his one-year employment at Polytechnic, according to an investigation by a special committee of school board and hired officials.

The teacher resigned from Polytechnic in early July.

The teacher had taught for more than a decade at Marlborough School, a prestigious school for girls in Hancock Park, before moving to Polytechnic after allegations about him surfaced. Marlborough said it had contacted authorities in July, and Los Angeles Police Department officials had said they were looking into the complaints.

The issue arose after Mikaela Gilbert-Lurie, a former Marlborough student who now is in college, published an online essay describing alleged sexual harassment by her English teacher that she said began when she was 16. She did not name the teacher or the school in her article, which appeared in the online magazine xoJane.

Afterward, Gilbert-Lurie, 19, was contacted by nine other current or former students who alleged similar experiences with the same teacher, she said in an interview with The Times.

In a statement that did not identify the student or the teacher, Marlborough officials acknowledged that in 2012 a “student informed administrators about a string of suggestive personal emails sent to her by one of her teachers.”

The school said it immediately conducted a review and meted out appropriate discipline, which it would not disclose. The teacher remained at the campus for another year before resigning in 2013.

In a statement earlier this year, Polytechnic asserted that, for new hires, it “conducts a thorough background investigation, including fingerprinting for criminal history and reference checks.”

“Poly considered a range of information and perspectives when making the decision to have the teacher join our faculty,” according to the statement.

A special committee was formed on July 18, 2014, to investigate the circumstances that led to hiring of the teacher, as well as to look into into any misconduct he might have engaged in while at Polytechnic, school officials said.

The investigation reviewed emails and documents and found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to a letter Monday by the school’s board of trustees.

Some students had reported that the teacher “overly emphasized sexual themes in teaching certain literature, which made some of them uncomfortable, but no student reported feeling sexually harassed or experiencing any sexual misconduct.”

The committee also reviewed every step of the hiring process, which included discussions between the head of Polytechnic at the time, Debbie Reed, and the head of Marlborough.

“The head of Marlborough informed Ms. Reed that Marlborough had investigated the allegations ... and retained outside counsel to advise the school. She reported that Marlborough did not find evidence of a pattern of misconduct” by the teacher, according to Monday’s letter by the school board of trustees. “She further confirmed that Marlborough ... would have hired him again for the 2013-14 school year if Poly had not hired him.”

Polytechnic has hired a lawyer to help develop new hiring policies, which will be presented to the board of trustees later this year, according to the letter.

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