U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (center) at the Wisconsin State Capitol Thursday Oct 23 with Sen. John Jagler (L) and Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R). Republicans scolded State Superintendent Jill Underly for not appearing at a hearing prompted by a Cap Times investigation of teacher sexual misconduct. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the leading Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, held a press conference on the steps of the state Capitol Thursday to declare his outrage over a Cap Times investigation that tracked more than 200 cases of alleged child sexual abuse by Wisconsin teachers and suggested a lack of accountability and transparency by the state Department of Public Instruction. 

Bolstering Tiffany’s case, State Superintendent Jill Underly decided to skip Thursday’s Senate hearing on the controversy. Instead, Underly traveled to Indiana to accept an award from her alma mater, leaving DPI staff to endure questioning by members of a state Senate committee eager to hang child sex abuse allegations around the necks of DPI, Gov. Tony Evers and other Democrats.

Recognizing an opportunity, Tiffany parachuted in to add his voice to the chorus. “You will never have to wonder if I will show up,” Tiffany declared. “I will always be there for Wisconsin and our children, even when state Democrat leaders fail to do so.” He drew a tenuous connection between the accusation that DPI has provided insufficient oversight of predatory teachers to bashing the state agency for “lower standards” in schools and for embracing diversity, equity and inclusion. ”DPI spent two hours a week creating a DEI plan, but couldn’t find the time to investigate these cases,” Tiffany declared. He promised that if he’s elected governor he will ensure proper misconduct investigations of teachers and create a public dashboard showing why they lost their licenses, “most of all,” he added, “we’re going to educate kids, not indoctrinate.” 

As soon as Tiffany finished converting the story about abuse by teachers into red meat for his campaign, state Democrats jumped into the mosh pit, accusing him of hypocrisy because he voted against releasing the Epstein files. 

None of this mud-slinging sheds any light on what’s happening to kids in Wisconsin schools or how the state can better protect them.

Several of my daughters’ friends at Madison East High School were targeted by David Krutchen, a popular teacher who had close relationships with many of his students and who, it turned out, spent years spying on girls during overnight field trips, placing hidden cameras in hotel bathrooms and bedrooms. The Krutchen case took a heavy toll on those kids and their families. It was a shocking, disgusting betrayal of the students by a trusted adult. For years the court hearings dragged on, and traumatized students had to keep showing up to testify. Finally, Krutchen went to prison.

According to the Cap Times story, which includes interviews with some of Krutchen’s victims, DPI “shielded” more than 200 cases of teacher sexual misconduct from the public. That frame could lead you to believe that DPI was protecting pedophile teachers the same way the Catholic Church spent years shuffling pedophile priests around to avoid accountability and bad press. But that’s not the impression I got from DPI’s testimony. In a video Underly posted on Facebook, and in her deputies’ testimony to legislators, the agency insisted that allowing teachers to voluntarily give up their licenses is not a “loophole” to end embarrassing investigations but ensures teachers who face misconduct charges are entered into a national database that can be accessed by other state education departments.

The Cap Times story, aided by a successful open records request, does give the sense that DPI has a slipshod system for keeping track of misconduct investigations, with just two staff people in charge of hundreds of cases, information stored on a Google spreadsheet, and 20% of cases where it’s unclear what type of misconduct was investigated. 

In its defense, DPI points out that the Legislature cut the agency’s budget by millions of dollars and they are doing their best. That point would have sounded better coming from Underly herself, instead of her deputies who had to fill in because she couldn’t bother to appear in person to demonstrate she actually cares about these horrible cases. 

Underly’s failure to show up and address the repercussions of the story is inexcusable. As the top educator in the state, she needs to reassure students and their parents that she cares about them and is on their side.

But the Republicans rushing to connect Underly’s weak leadership to all of their talking points about schools are equally unhelpful.

Ever since former Gov. Scott Walker began heaping scorn on teachers, painting them as lazy, overpaid and incompetent while ramming through his explosively controversial union-busting Act 10 law, the GOP has weaponized divisive distrust of teachers and public schools. Aided by a powerful private school choice lobby, they’ve hammered away on the idea that private schools are better and siphoned millions of dollars in taxpayer support for public education out of public classrooms and into the private sphere.

“We are going to make sure that Wisconsin goes back to the top of the game,” Tiffany declared Thursday, adding, “We are behind Mississippi in educational attainment. Less than one in three kids can read at grade level in the fourth grade in the state of Wisconsin. Is that not a disaster? That will not be the case if I’m elected as governor, we will have accountability and we will have higher standards.”

But the defunding of Wisconsin public schools that began under Walker and continues today is directly tied to the decline in quality. It’s not laziness or pedophilia that plague our school system. It’s deliberate neglect.

Republican calls for “higher standards” and “accountability” have, over the past two decades, been accompanied by disinvestment and the steady expansion of a publicly funded private voucher school system.

Ironically, the private schools Republicans champion in the school choice program have no teacher licensing requirements and DPI has no way to oversee or investigate their employees. Nor are private schools subject to Wisconsin’s open records laws. We will never get to see how they handle cases of employee misconduct.

There’s a reason it’s a big story when adults abuse the trust of children. It’s despicable behavior. Politicians who ignore or capitalize on that crime for political gain do us no good.

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Note: This article contains descriptions of sexual misconduct and grooming behavior toward children.

This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• The state Department of Public Instruction investigated more than 200 Wisconsin teachers, aides, substitutes and administrators from 2018 to 2023 who were accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students — information previously unknown to the public.  

• The department is dedicating scant resources to investigate educator misconduct, raising questions about the quality of its oversight and protection of children. 

• Licensing officials also allow educators under investigation to forfeit their credentials in exchange for avoiding in-depth probes.

After Shawn Umland took a group of his students on a field trip to Florida, licensing regulators at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction started investigating him. The inquiry followed a media report alleging Umland touched the tops of a student’s breasts during the trip while applying sunburn treatment in a hotel room, the agency’s records show. 

That was in 2019. Umland had previously been disciplined in 2005 for his behavior in a hotel room with a female student on a school trip, according to the department’s records. 

Umland, who worked at Lakeland Union High School in Minocqua, resigned in lieu of being fired. But he kept his Wisconsin teaching license. Officials at the Department of Public Instruction concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to revoke it, citing inconsistencies in witness statements. 

Michael Igl similarly resigned from the White Lake School District in northern Wisconsin but kept his license in exchange for taking a course on maintaining appropriate boundaries. The Department of Public Instruction opened an inquiry into allegations that he made sexual comments to students, communicated with students inappropriately on social media and gave them rides home unsupervised, department records show. 

Michael Hanson kept his license after he resigned from teaching in the Baraboo School District. School administrators concluded Hanson “did not recognize appropriate student-teacher boundaries and his behavior with two students constituted grooming,” licensing regulators wrote in their case notes. 

The notes say Hanson texted female students “excessively” and often visited their homes unannounced, to the point one student considered a restraining order against him. Again, officials at the Department of Public Instruction cited insufficient evidence to revoke Hanson’s teaching license. 

A yearlong investigation by the Cap Times found the state Department of Public Instruction investigated more than 200 Wisconsin teachers, aides, substitutes and administrators from 2018 to 2023 who were accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students — information previously unknown to the public.  

The department’s internal records show these allegations included educators sexually assaulting students, soliciting nude photos from children or initiating sexual relationships immediately after students graduated.  

Licensing officials also investigated educators accused of grooming behaviors like flirting with children, spending non-school time alone and isolated with students, or invading students’ personal space by rubbing their shoulders, thighs and lower backs. 

Child sexual abuse prevention advocates and researchers say these behaviors have lasting psychological effects on children, making it harder for them to succeed in school and have healthy relationships. The Cap Times interviewed seven academics and advocates about how the Department of Public Instruction investigates and documents educator misconduct. Each said the department’s practices are inadequately protecting students. 

“They need to change. That’s insufficient. That’s not going to keep kids safe,” said Charol Shakeshaft, who authored one of the most comprehensive reviews of teacher sexual misconduct for the U.S. Department of Education. 

Best estimates show one in 10 students experiences sexual misconduct from educators during their K-12 schooling, according to that federal report. In Wisconsin, that rate would amount to more than 93,000 school children. 

Sexual misconduct is a spectrum of physical, verbal and electronic behaviors that don’t belong in schools, according to Shakeshaft, a distinguished professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also under contract with the Department of Public Instruction, serving as an expert witness in the agency’s grooming investigations.

Grooming, as Shakeshaft defines it, specifically consists of crossing boundaries to develop trust between the educator and student through gifts, attention, desensitization to touch in ways that appear harmless, as well as discussion of sexual or sensitive topics. 

The Cap Times found at least 44% of the Department of Public Instruction’s over 450 educator license investigations since 2018 have involved sexual misconduct or grooming allegations — a number researchers and advocates say is likely an undercount of these cases. 

“That’s what they’ve investigated. That doesn’t even take into account the full scope of prevalence,” said Shiwali Patel, an attorney with the National Women’s Law Center who focuses on gender and sexual harassment in schools. 

The Cap Times investigation also found: 

• The Department of Public Instruction is dedicating scant resources to investigate educator misconduct, raising questions about the quality of its oversight and protection of children. 
• The department, run by State Superintendent Jill Underly, relies on a rudimentary system to track its investigations, obscuring the scale of misconduct for policymakers and the public.  
• Licensing officials also allow educators under investigation to forfeit their credentials in exchange for avoiding in-depth probes.  
• Unlike a different agency that regulates hundreds of other state-licensed professionals — like nurses and accountants — the Department of Public Instruction doesn’t tell the public why an educator lost their license. Advocates say this lack of transparency makes it easier for educator misconduct to avoid detection and happen again. 
• Out of 461 teachers the state investigated from 2018 to 2023 for all forms of misconduct, 207 kept their credentials and could continue working in schools with children. 

Department of Public Instruction spokesperson Chris Bucher said the agency is always looking for ways to improve and that license misconduct investigations are critical to the safety of children. However, the agency is limited in funding and staffing because state lawmakers consistently cut their operating budget, he said. 

In the current two-year state budget, lawmakers approved a 10% annual reduction, a cut of about $1.3 million, to the department’s general operations from previous funding levels. 

“We do as much as we can with the resources and tools and authority that we have,” Bucher said. “That is an area of need.” 

Underly declined requests for an interview. Discussing the Department of Public Instruction’s investigations would create a “conflict of interest” since Underly oversees educator licenses, Bucher said. 

As state superintendent, Underly is Wisconsin’s highest ranking education official. Voters first elected her to office in 2021 and re-elected her in April to another four-year term. 

Ben Jones, the department’s former head of educator misconduct investigations, also declined requests for an interview, citing attorney-client privilege. Jones ran the department’s Office of Legal Services as the chief legal counsel for six years and left in July after Gov. Tony Evers appointed him to a Dane County judgeship. The department’s new head of legal services is Kyle Olsen, who took over in August.  

Umland, the Minocqua teacher, continues to work in education. He is the president of the Lakeland Union High School Board of Education. It’s unclear whether Igl is still working in education or has left the profession. Hanson has since stopped teaching and works at a private biochemical company in the Madison area. 

Umland didn’t respond to a request for an interview or written questions. In their case notes, licensing officials wrote he “generally denied the allegations.”  

Hanson told the Cap Times that during Baraboo’s investigation, school administrators weaved “a narrative that fit, in my opinion, what they wanted to see and what the parents wanted to see.” He said he resigned from his teaching position because the investigation harmed his reputation and he felt burned out from teaching.  

Igl was unable to be reached by social media, email or phone. In a letter to Department of Public Instruction investigators at the time, he said he “would never consider having inappropriate communication” with a student and resigned feeling he had no other option despite denying the allegations.  

Police also investigated Umland and Igl, according to Department of Public Instruction records, although the state’s online court records indicate neither was criminally charged. Hanson was not criminally charged either. 

Madison East graduate: ‘I stopped going to school’  

Students who are sexually abused, harassed and groomed by teachers, principals or coaches often experience lasting psychological and physiological harm, said Shakeshaft, who authored the book “Organizational Betrayal” on how schools enable sexual misconduct. 

“We see then long-term a sort of maladjustment in the world: drug and alcohol abuse, (self) cutting, failure to have the confidence to go forward and go for new jobs and speak out,” Shakeshaft said.  

The trauma affects children’s ability to succeed in school as well, said Jetta Bernier, executive director of the prevention advocacy group Enough Abuse.  

“Their learning is more difficult. They’re involved in more remedial classes. Their graduation rates are less,” she said.  

Lauren Engle and Sydney Marz each described wanting to avoid school and a deep distrust of teachers and school administrators after experiencing educator sexual misconduct. 

“I stopped going to school, and if I did go to school, I did not go into class,” Engle said. “I went to the student services, and I sat there for the entire day. It was so terrible to be around people who either knew or thought they knew and wanted to know more.” 

Both attended the Madison Metropolitan School District and were students of East High School teacher David Kruchten starting in 2016. Throughout their four years at East, Engle and Marz said they went on multiple overnight field trips with Kruchten.  

Kruchten pleaded guilty in 2021 to federal charges of attempting to produce child sexual abuse material. He had placed surreptitious recording devices in students’ hotel bathrooms and sleeping areas while on school trips, according to federal prosecutors.  

“I was just focused on obviously the criminal case and whatnot, and feeling like a shell of a human being basically and just really weird all the time,” Marz said. “I had a hard time focusing. I was always very stressed out, but also very disengaged.” 

Even if an educator’s conduct never escalates to sexual contact, boundary violations like spending time alone together outside of school, gift-giving and hand-holding are harmful to students, Shakeshaft said. These types of behaviors make students easier targets for exploitation. 

“They’re already groomed that this is normal behavior. This is OK,” she said. 

No consistent tracking, short on details 

Sexual misconduct and grooming by teachers is sometimes called education’s best-kept secret, a moniker Shakeshaft said rings true. A failure to track educators who abuse, harass and groom children allows it to go unchecked, she said. 

In Wisconsin, the state Department of Public Instruction is responsible for teacher licenses but doesn’t track data on how many educators have been investigated following allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming. 

Obtaining that information “would require a good deal of manual work to fulfill,” said Bucher, the department spokesperson. 

The lack of information makes it harder to stop sexual misconduct from happening again, said Billie-Jo Grant, a researcher and the CEO of McGrath Training Solutions, which provides instruction on educator misconduct prevention.  

“When we don’t have numbers for how often something is happening, it’s very difficult for the public and for legislators to understand the magnitude of the problem and to allocate funding and resources to solve the problem,” Grant said. 

The Department of Public Instruction routinely gathers and publishes data on other potential signs of student harm, such as how often students are chronically absent, experience homelessness or feel unsafe at school — but not the frequency of educator misconduct. 

Under Wisconsin open records laws, the Cap Times obtained and reviewed a Google spreadsheet used by the Department of Public Instruction to track its more than 450 misconduct investigations from 2018 through 2023. The Cap Times also obtained the department’s case notes showing summaries of misconduct allegations, investigation practices and outcomes from probes spanning 2019 through part of 2022. 

Over 204 of the investigations involved allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming, a Cap Times analysis of the records found. Another 158 investigations involved allegations of physical assault, drug use or discriminatory comments, among other unethical behavior. 

In almost a fifth of the total cases, the nature of the misconduct allegations is unclear from the records. The spreadsheet and case notes either lack enough detail or contain none at all to categorize. 

Parents would likely be outraged to learn the department isn’t more consistently tracking this information, said Charles Hobson, a professor at Indiana University Northwest and a board member of the advocacy group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation.  

“It’s appalling to me that these kinds of things continue to happen and that otherwise good people turn their back on this issue. I just, I don’t understand it,” Hobson said. 

Bucher said investigators attempted to “modernize our review process and use emerging technology” by implementing case tracking software from 2015 to 2018. But the department stopped using it. 

“The software did not work as well as we hoped and was expensive,” Bucher said. 

The current spreadsheet has worked well to serve the department’s investigation purposes, Bucher said. He did not specify any plans to change or update to a more comprehensive software. 

Over 100 investigations a year for two DPI employees 

The Department of Public Instruction faces challenges while investigating educator sexual misconduct and grooming, Bucher said. The state needs to ensure sensitivity toward victims while it deals with limited information in redacted police reports, reluctant witnesses, delays in reporting incidents and a lack of clear intent behind alleged inappropriate behavior, he said. 

The department has one full-time and one part-time investigator, which Bucher said isn’t enough staff to handle the 113 investigations opened on average each year. That figure includes misconduct investigations and additional background screenings for license applicants. Both employees also have other job duties outside of license investigations, Bucher said. 

Grant, the misconduct prevention trainer, called the department’s staffing levels “woefully inadequate” given the caseload size.  

“Doing an investigation requires time,” Grant said. “That means interviewing multiple parties and witnesses, and gathering information, and writing a report on how you know what you know, to know if you should (revoke) that license.” 

Bucher said one of the department’s investigations has contributed to a criminal case that put an abuser behind bars, underscoring the importance of their work. He blamed state lawmakers for underfunding the department rather than pointing to Underly or other agency leaders, who oversee how state funding is used internally. 

“The Legislature has consistently cut DPI agency operations instead of funding more staff to work on things such as educator misconduct investigations,” Bucher said.  

In Underly’s most recent state budget request, she sought over $600,000 for modernizing the agency’s online background checks and licensing platform.  

The proposal was rejected by lawmakers. 

Underly requested no additional funding specifically for educator misconduct investigations. 

Surrendering licenses to avoid investigation 

Glenn Buelow and Paul J. Mleziva are among more than 80 Wisconsin educators since 2018 who have given up their teaching licenses after the Department of Public Instruction opened investigations into allegations they had engaged in sexual misconduct or grooming. 

The department’s case notes show a colleague reported they caught Buelow “making out” with a student. Investigators wrote that Buelow also admitted to sending inappropriate images to the student, such as a meme saying, “Elmo loves anal.” 

Licensing investigators wrote Mleziva sent sexual text messages to a student and told her after she graduated that “he wanted to have a sexual relationship,” according to Department of Public Instruction records.  

In both of these investigations, the educators resigned from their jobs and voluntarily surrendered their teaching licenses. Mleziva denied any wrongdoing to licensing investigators, while Buelow did not respond to the department’s investigation notice.  

Buelow worked for the Racine Unified School District until 2019 and Mleziva for the Two Rivers Public School District until 2020. Neither was criminally charged. 

Reached by phone Sept. 24 for comment on the Department of Public Instruction’s investigation, Buelow confirmed he had kissed a Racine student while he was a teacher, but said the student started the interaction.  

“It was taken totally out of context and it was not initiated by me,” he said.   

Also reached by phone, Mleziva said Sept. 24 that his messages with a Two Rivers student were “borderline at best” when asked if the messages were sexual in nature. Mleziva said the student misinterpreted his conversation after she graduated and that it wasn’t about initiating a sexual relationship.  

Voluntary license surrender is the most common way Wisconsin educators lose their teaching credentials across all types of misconduct, including physical assault, financial impropriety and criminal convictions, the Cap Times found.  

Department of Public Instruction investigators offer every educator the ability to surrender their teaching credentials at the start of a case to “resolve the matter,” Bucher said. Educators are also given other opportunities throughout the process.  

State investigators have written in some case notes that “no meaningful DPI investigation” happened because the educator surrendered their credentials. 

When licenses are forfeited, the department closes the investigation without an official finding of wrongdoing. On the Department of Public Instruction’s website showing the status of an educator’s license, no information is provided on why the credential was surrendered.  

Not publishing the circumstances of a surrendered license contributes to a culture of secrecy around educator grooming and sexual misconduct, said Hobson, the Indiana professor. 

“The harassers know that system inside and out. They know that it’s not reported. They know how to game the system,” he said.  

Making the information publicly available is important in case the former educator tries to work with children again, Grant added. 

“You only need a license to teach, but you can serve in other roles in a school or a youth-serving organization and not require a license,” Grant said. “By having information publicly about why your license was … revoked, it can help to deter youth-serving organizations from hiring someone that has a history of misconduct.” 

Bernier, the advocate with Enough Abuse, said public accountability is needed for educators who lose their credentials for misconduct. Officials at the Department of Public Instruction have to make a choice, she said. 

“They can either protect those who would abuse our children, or they can protect the children. But they can’t do both,” Bernier said.  

For hundreds of other state-licensed professions, disciplinary histories are published online by the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. Misconduct records for doctors, accountants, manicurists and others are more publicly accessible than similar records for teachers.  

“I think that to kind of single out teachers and to not require that information to be available, especially given that they’re surrounded by kids and the high prevalence of … sexual misconduct, I mean that is concerning,” said Patel, the attorney.  

The Department of Public Instruction has tried to make the information available in the past but its licensing software isn’t equipped for that purpose, Bucher said. The agency would need new software, which would require funding.   

Hobson, an educator himself, said the fundamental mission of teachers is to safeguard the children under their care from harm. Despite that duty, educator sexual misconduct and grooming continues to happen.  

“My God, this is a flawed system, and it’s not protecting our children,” Hobson said.  

Hundreds of Wisconsin teacher misconduct cases shielded from public is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.