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Candis Finan (Photo by Susan Koomar)
By Susan Koomar
MILFORD – The specter of child molestation is a haunting and pervasive presence in the Delaware Valley School District.
In a one-hour interview with the Pike County Press this week, Superintendent Candis Finan answered lingering questions about the case of former Shohola Elementary School teacher Tom Matthews, her role in the highly disturbing scandal and efforts to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
DVSD’s agreement to an out-of-court settlement with the family of a Matthews’ victim was announced January 11.
Finan insists things have changed from the days when administrators issued empty warnings and otherwise ignored Matthews’s classroom perversions. As one bit of evidence, she offered the case of a teacher who was temporarily suspended and investigated just days after the settlement was announced last month.
Two students complained that the way the teacher looked at them made them feel uncomfortable, but the district’s investigation found nothing actionable. Nevertheless, the complaint was taken seriously and the teacher removed until the matter was cleared up.
Finan said that case demonstrates that officials will suspend an employee and ask questions afterwards rather than put students at risk.
Matthews is among a handful of staff members dismissed for misbehavior since Finan became superintendent in 1998. She estimated that there are four or five suspensions a year for various personnel problems.
Complaints about Matthews date back to 1994 but Finan maintains she did not have the information or authority to do anything about them until January 19, 2000 – the day parents told SES Principal Robert Smith that Matthews had groped their daughter. That’s the first time Finan had reason to examine his personnel file, which turned up a pattern of touching students and warnings to stop.
Finan suspended Matthews within hours, banned him from campus and called state police – all despite a potential battle with the teacher’s union and opposition from parents.
“There were people screaming at me that I was unfair to him. He was a very popular teacher,” Finan recalled.
Trouble with Matthews surfaced during the tenure of Smith and Superintendent James Melody. According to Finan, Melody was a dictatorial old-school administrator who did not take Finan into confidence on personnel matters, which were beyond her purview as assistant superintendent. Melody moved out of Pike County after retiring.
Personally, Finan perceived Matthews as having a “dark cloud” lingering over him because of the lack of discipline in his third-grade classroom, where students were permitted to run around and to crawl under desks. She calls it “absolutely inappropriate” that Matthews held students on his lap during class.
Once Matthews was suspended, the situation was still complex. Finan said the teacher’s union played a significant role in the execution of a separation agreement that allowed Mathews to seek work in another school district with DVSD providing verification of past employment. His eventual conviction on criminal charges did not come until 2006. Matthews is now in state prison.
“The wheels of justice were very slow,” said Finan.
Changes in awareness, training and student safety since the 1980s are myriad, said Finan. Students have more professionals that they can confide in including nurses and counselors.
Finan noted her establishment of “walk throughs” – a mandate that every principal visit the class of every teacher at least once per week. The “walk throughs” take place in addition to formal classroom observation as part of job performance evaluations.
“I never ever want to put a child in harm’s way,” said Finan.
Finan also revisited questions about a press release issued in January by DVSD stating district officials did not know about Matthews’s misbehavior. Finan said she had no input on the statement, which was developed and released by attorneys for the district’s insurance company.
