What is going on at Paly with all of these incidents of teacher sexual abuse?

[Portion removed.]. Given how the Teachers Union protects its own, we would be lucky to see the perpetrators given punishments as severe as the Turner case (Sarcasm implied)

Creepy

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WoW - Paly seems to have more than their share of these types of incidents.

Does this go on more at Paly than other HS's?

Perhaps the School Board's strategy of throwing money at the Teachers' Union and administrators (remember Phil Winston?) isn't getting us the best teachers and administrators after all.

Maybe we should spend money on other things.

imagine that - Palo Alto parents against unions? there could be some hope.

public schools don't cut it for a lot of reasons. unions are one reason - stressed out kids another - and now this is the latest.

school choice and vouchers to give kids and parents choice. let the dollars do the walking and everyone will end up better due to competition.

One more reason I am SO glad I invested in a private school for my two kids!

Very unfortunate because he was a really good Chem teacher and really cared! In a weak department, he was a star teacher. Other teachers in his department, I'd say good riddance. Why, oh why, Mr. Farrell?! How could you do this to yourself and strand us with the rest?!

Concerned that you edited this story from its initial publication content. The original, as your know, and now readers don't, included a quote from Ferell from a Verde profile in which he complained about not getting girls in high school and told a sexually suggestive story about asking a teacher for an erasure which he called a rubber. It quoted him as saying it was the last time he asked for a rubber. ' At least from a teacher". The quotes were quite revealing. They should have been left in the article. It is also standard journalistic policy to show the article has been updated or edited. Fail for you.

Editor's note: The referenced content was temporarily removed for further internal review and it has now been re-inserted into the story along with a link to the Verde interview.

Holy Cow, private schools are not immune to these kinds of incidents, not by a long shot. Just take a look at all the recent revelations from so many elite East Coast prep schools (Web Link

such terrible and discouraging news coming out almost every summer from my child's alma mater of... I am saddened beyond words.

Real hits hard when this sort of thing happens with a teacher you've had, and previously respected. It's when people you know are the ones in the PAPD, booking photos, that it sends an ice cold shiver down your spine, as you realize that a seemingly ordinary human being is capable of such a grotesque act.

It really hits you. When its a former teacher, someone you previously respected, commits such a grotesque act. It sends shivers down your spine that someone so seemingly ordinary, is capable of doing such a horrific thing.

Thoughts go out to the victim and their family, for this whole investigation and spotlight must be damaging for her too in addition to what happened.

Based on information contained in the article it appears VERY likely that Señor Farrell committed the acts he is accused of. However, please don't be too quick to convict. As a male teacher (freshly retired) I am very aware of accusations that may, or may not, be based in fact.

I am in no way excusing inappropriate behavior on the part of the teacher. However, at this instant all information is based on the police report and no plea has been entered. Please keep an open mind - for now.

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Let's slow down here, no charges have been filed. I've know Ronnie for many years and I have a very difficult time believing this is anything more than a bad misunderstanding. Please everyone, let the dust settle before the public hanging.

@ LongTimePA_Resident


Really?

With close to thirty years of teaching experience in this district, I find it strange that any male teacher would meet with a female or male student alone, after normal working hours, under any circumstance without a parent present. Every teacher gets this drilled into their learnings long before they even see their first nickel. Blaming a union and a salary increase to this situation makes about as much sense as most of the discussions on this forum.

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What in the world is up with PAUSD that there have been SO many of these cases in the last twenty years???? I have lived in three districts in this country, as well as one each in seven countries. Only in southeastern China did I ever see anything like I have seen in Palo Alto!

Holy Cow, having put two children thru private and private Catholic school, private schools are far from immune to bad choices teachers make, believe me, I know first hand.

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My daughter had Ronnie for science. She liked him. I had exchanges with him both on email and in person, and he seemed likable enough. My daughter was even thinking of being his aide. I guess he told the class that he has past students help him with his classes. Might be interesting to look at the make up of the past students he had helping him.

One thing that I did witness that was odd was some boys were playing soccer on the lacrosse/soccer field after school and Ronnie popped in and started playing with them. One of the boys pushed Ronnie over, pretty hard, and Ronnie didn't even say anything. Then the student took Ronnie's bag and started running away with it. It seemed like an odd interaction between a teacher and students.

Like Kevin Sharp, the English teacher that had the relationship with the past student,and Phil Winston, Ronnie seemed to want to be friends with the students, instead of a role model.

Can't PAUSD establish guidelines for teacher/student communication? No Facebook friends, Twitter follows, etc... and definitely no one on one meetings.

It's sad that students are told that teachers are the "trusted adults" and then stuff like this happens. So, now what do we tell our kids? Do they need to bring a friend with them any time they want to talk to a teacher? We are encouraged to let our kids discuss their schooling with their teachers so that we're not getting involved. Now, I'm not comfortable letting her talk to her teachers unless there are others around.

Paly has a lot of work to do to get the confidence back of the parents and the students.

Maybe the OCR needs to set up an office in the Tower Building.

No way.

We can not allow this.

Hope the student is getting a lot of help from family and school.

respectfully

@ Another - Private schools are definitely not immune from this kind of abuse, but at least they can fire the teachers that do it without fighting through the unions who are more interested in self protection and power than the children they are supposed to serve.

Good for the family for speaking up.

I would love to see self defense taught to every Freshman. Also, the site council at the school must be clear about teachers in rooms alone with kids, kids in classes without teachers and students with keys and or access to buildings. They are really asking for trouble. Students should never , ever be alone in a class with an adult and teachers need to be vigilant about this rule for their own sake also.

Also, at after school events and all the new late night online classes, where are the administrators? They are just trusting that all the teachers and kids will behave They also need to be present, visible and take the lead for student safety nets. Still have not seen them in parking lots after football games at concerts or out and about. NO staff room also makes teachers feel isolated and apparently able to do as they please without comment.

I have a black sheep brother-in-law who was thrown into jail in Los Angeles by a angry women he rebuffed at a night club. She claimed he did something he didn't. We posted bail and a week later, she dropped the charges because she lied. So just because Farrell was arrested, doesn't mean he is convicted. [Portion removed.]

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Hope this teacher is removed quickly.

A big disappointment.

I usually agree about not springing to assumptions of guilt. But people should carefully read the article - the police basically caught him in a sting, acting like the girl conversed with him on social media then agreed to meet with him Wednesday night. They booked him right away on 4 counts - Im sure the conversations were pretty incriminating for such swift action.

If he is guilty of this crime (let's remember that he is presumed to still have rights to due process, which include the presumption of innocence) he should have the book thrown at him. He will have a long path to amend a truly awful crime and betrayal of the trust of the victim, the school community, and his family.

But don't for a minute assume that a private school setting will shield you from this sort of thing. One of our local elite private schools had a well-known-to-insiders case of this sort of criminal behavior from a teacher with high school girls; said teacher was reprimanded but eventually ended up in a leadership position in the school administration. As opposed to having a union protect him, he was protected by higher-ups in the school's administration - this sort of thing goes on a lot more than you might imagine and is hushed up by big money and powerful donors who do not want their school's reputation damaged. Money talks.

The real answer to this dilemma is to teach our students how to stand up for themselves, what is and is not appropriate behavior, and for parents to be aware of what their children are doing on social media. If a male teacher is awful enough to do something like this, the appropriate response from the young lady would be a left hook to the jaw.

Paly administration needs to do a better job of looking out for the students. This is the same school that had James Franco teach a class [portion removed.]

If the school really cared about the student's safety, instead of the bragging rights of having a celebrity on campus, they never would have let Franco near the student body.

Add that to Winston, Sharp and now Farrell, and it's obvious there's a problem with the hiring process and code of conduct for teachers/administrators in the district.

Just received links to cartoon pictures and advice about how to talk to kids after they are assaulted. So glad they fixed the problem.

Maybe NBC's Chris Hansen from To Catch a Predator will end up featuring the PAUHSD in his next trilogy.

Maybe the admin. should take a closer look at their dress code. Girls shorts only cover half their bums and they often just wear bikini type tops alone or under a very loose low cut tank top. Also sponsored at this school is "no pants day" at the end of the year, the girls wear an oxford and their underwear to class. One year a male teacher participated in no pants day as a joke I think but now am not sure.

There is no excuse for misconduct, but why do these girls and their female administrators think this is any part of a safe environment. I think the girls think just boys their age are looking but that is not the case. They really need to consider shorts that have at least a 4 inch inseam and no bikini tops. I am not a prude, but I also hate to see these girls taking the focus away from their intelligence with these really, really skimpy outfits. I am really only talking about no pants day, bikini tops and the shorts that are so short, the front pockets hang out below the hem a few inches.

I in know way think that the girl in this incident was wearing anything like this or would have any blame even if she was. I do think the adults at this school or the adults buying these outfits are not doing any girl any boy or any gender any favor by sending them dressed for academics this way. Walking through the downtown like this might also put a girl at risk. Any school that condones no pants day and allows bikinis in class is going to have more and more sexual abuse arrests and possibly worse. Again, Site council, please look at this, teachers on facebook and alarm systems and better cameras after hours at the school. ( none will fix this problem but may prevent another really sad incident like this)

After all that rant about skimpy clothing, outsider states: "I in know way think that the girl in this incident was wearing anything like this or would have any blame even if she was."

Clothing has nothing to do with this. Clothing might have a factor in the case of a total stranger attacking, but in this case, even a student who dresses in a tee shirt and long jeans is at risk.

The way to stop cases like this from occurring is for parents to be more engaged with their children, and for parents to teach their children to avoid emailing teachers about anything other than academics (although teens may do as they please). Too many parents think that once a child is out of diapers, they no longer need to raise and guide them; they have no idea what their kids are up to on a daily basis and they don't care. There are so many students doing illegal activities (drinking drugs, sex) and their parents have no idea whatsoever. Even those who aren't engaging in such are being ignored by their parents, it's clear, as my daughter has told me stories of the negligent parenting. There are many students who have no lunch money or no lunch. I know some parents expect their teens to make their own lunches so the students skip lunch altogether - this is negligent parenting - give them money for lunch! They are still youths until they turn 18 and many parents don't acknowledge this.

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@outsider: I am sorry but this is your second post that your lead in is the exact same item concerning dress-code-behavior or misbehavior and I am of the opinion that you are trying very hard to flip the spotlight to another area. As a coach (me) or as a teacher or camp counselor - we are all born with god-given "switches" that we know to "flip" whenever a temptation presents itself. Another example are men/women who often use vulgarity or off color words at whim within a very small circle of friends but then are completely in charge of their own "switch" and thus can function in public without using such offensive words.

This part of the article above clearly shows more poor judgement on the teacher.

{Detectives who began investigating the case immediately after the parent's complaint found that Farrell continued corresponding with the victim via social media. He arranged to meet her at Paly on the evening of June 15. Detectives were there to meet him instead and took him into custody without incident, police said in a statement}

Concerned Coach: Well said. Stating an opinion with a disclaimer is a good way to post without risk of deletion, but is transparent.

I often think female victims are partially at fault (such as when they blackout due to alcohol) but in this circumstance, Mr. Ferrell should have avoided such behavior, knowing that teens are immature and possibly naive.

My daughter said that her friends (females) have sent Paly teachers Friend Requests on Facebook but the teachers responded that they cannot accept student Friend Requests until the student has graduated from high school.

coach,

I am looking for easy fixes for better safety realizing of course, even with everything safely in place, bad people will still be able to do bad things. I am so happy there are so many great teachers at this school and wish you all had a staff room so you could encourage good behavior and be able to work together more. I wonder if more red flags would be noticed if all the teachers were not just in their own offices rather than being sectioned off by department. Again, this is just a thought, I am not implying anything else. I do think Site council really needs to step safety for students and teachers.

@ concerned and Editor There seems to be 2 versions of the Verde profile of RF. The link provided by PAD is an 10/15/15 edited version of the original, showing only 1 photo of a mature RF, as a teacher. Whereas the original article which was published in Verde magazine 02/14/14, volume 15, issue 3, page 61 included 3 photos of RF, 2 of which were RF as a much younger self, which is in keeping with the article's title: "Ronnie Farrell: a glimpse into one science teacher's teen years." The 2 youthful RF photos with his pink motorcycle and his [portion removed] embrace of a male associate along with RF's response to Verde Magazine's question re: "advice for his teen self" give a different view of RF's interests than the link to the edited version of the article and the PAD reporter's cut and paste quotes about "rubber." I have no opinion about RF's guilt or innocence re: the current criminal charges. I'm suggesting that if a link to the Verde article is given, it should link to the unedited original version or if it's a link to the edited version, PAD should note it to be an incomplete version of the Verde article. The original Verde article can be viewed via Verde magazine archives. The unedited article content is confirmed in a blog by the student journalist who is named as author in PAD's link.

Web Link

Web Link

WHY was this man allowed to post bail hours after his arrest! Meanwhile all the paly kids and parents live in unrest! [Portion removed.]