2nd teacher at L.A. school charged with lewd acts

LOS ANGELES - Prosecutors have filed a lewd-acts complaint against the second of two teachers removed from a Los Angeles-area elementary school, and the Board of Education has voted to fire him.

Forty-nine-year-old Martin Springer is charged with committing the acts upon one girl in 2009 and is due in court Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Tom Waldman says the board voted unanimously to terminate Springer and he has 30 days to appeal.

Springer has spent his entire career at Miramonte Elementary School, the same campus where veteran third-grade teacher Mark Berndt is alleged to have committed lewd acts with 23 children between 2005 and 2010.

Berndt was removed from the school in January 2011 and charged last week after months of investigation. Springer was arrested Friday.

The entire staff at a Los Angeles elementary school is being removed while authorities investigate the allegations of sexual abuse by the two teachers. Berndt is accused of blindfolding children, taping their mouths and photographing them in a classroom.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy said Monday night that more than 120 staff members at Miramonte Elementary School - everyone from the principal and teachers to the cafeteria workers - were being replaced because a full investigation of the allegations will be disruptive and staffers will require support to get through the scandal.

[DocD--2008]

I think instead of replacing every staff member, the members of the board of education should all be replaced. After all they are screwing with 120 innocent staff and all the kids. Go after the guilty not the innocent.

[askagain]

Agreed. To remove the whole staff is overkill. How would any of us feel if we were removed from our posistions because of a couple of "rotten apples." Having taught high school for 5 years in the 1970's, it is hard for me to believe that nonone knew if something like this was going on in a public school. Children talk, teachers talk, and the parents talk. Gossip runs rampant and is hard to keep secrets in a public school setting.