A measure to establish a “harm to students registry” of Hawaii school employees and volunteers found to have committed sexual abuse, physical assault or other harassment against children, and to revoke the teaching licenses of educators who resign or retire in lieu of termination, has been advanced by two state Senate committees.

The proposal was supported by several top public school and private school officials who appeared before a joint hearing Monday of the state Senate committees on Education, and Labor and Technology, including state schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi and Philip Bossert of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.

“The establishment of a Harm to Students Registry in Hawaii will close a significant loophole in the hiring of school personnel that allows employees who have harmed students — in particular sexually abusing students — and released from one institution to seek employment at a new school and cause harm once again,” Bossert, executive director of the association representing more than 100 private schools across the islands, said in written testimony that echoed his in-person remarks before lawmakers.

“There are multiple cases of this happening in Hawaii in past years,” Bossert continued. “Unfortunately, it is often the case that an institution, in order to avoid tarnishing its reputation with a sexual abuse incident becoming public, will simply terminate the offending person and not report it to the police. Likewise, parents are often reluctant to put their children through the additional trauma of having to testify in public about a sexual abuse incident that they have been a victim of. Repeat offenders are thus able to move undetected from one school to another and continue to harm students.”

Initiatives have risen in multiple states and the federal government in recent years to close loopholes that have allowed some serial predators to transfer without consequence across schools and states. A 2010 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that on average, one offender passes through three different school districts before being stopped, and in their lifetime can abuse as many as 73 children.

Senate Bill 2475, introduced by 10 state senators, including Senate Education Chair Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani Town-Waipio Gentry­-Royal Kunia), says that “Hawaii’s prekindergarten through grade 12 schools have increasingly served as safe havens for individuals who aim to exploit their positions at schools to carry out acts that harm children, violating the inherent trust in those positions.”

The proposed registry would be maintained by the state Department of Education and cover all Hawaii prekindergarten-­through-grade 12 educational institutions — public, charter and private — to document acts that demonstrate harm to students by school employees or volunteers. The proposal also calls for establishing “qualified immunity for employers who provide good faith information or opinion on a current or former employee’s job performance.”

Hayashi told lawmakers that the bill would “allow for effective cross- sharing of information between public and private educational institutions regarding any ongoing or concluded investigations upon request. This will help strengthen the systems in place so that we can further protect our students from these offenders.”

The bill in its initial form also would require schools to complete any investigation into employees who have pending allegations of harming students, regardless of employment status; consult with the registry before authorizing prospective employees or volunteers to interact with students; and share information on ongoing or concluded investigations of infliction of harm to a student when requested by another institution. It also would establish an appeal process for people who request removal.

The Hawaii Teacher Standards Board would be required under the initial proposal to revoke a teacher’s license “if the person resigns or retires during the pendency of any investigation into allegations of sexual assault or sexual harassment, including criminal and workplace investigations, and the person’s name shall be included on the harm to students registry.”

However, Kidani indicated during the hearing that the bill’s language still needed fine-tuning following numerous recommendations in testimony from the state Attorney General’s Office. Deputy Attorney General Anne Horiuchi noted, for example, that while a criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, listing on the proposed registry would require only an investigation and findings made by an educational institution.

Thirty-three Hawaii public school teachers had their teaching licenses revoked in 2023, but they were for a variety of reasons, such as fraudulent documents and various types of misconduct, a Hawaii Teacher Standards Board official told the committee.

Mike Latham, president of Punahou School and chair of the governance committee of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, also spoke in support of the measure. “I think when parents enroll students at our schools, they are entrusting us with the welfare of their children,” he told lawmakers. “It’s very easy for people who are dismissed for sexual misconduct to move from one institution to another.”

A former Punahou girls basketball coach accused of child-sex crimes, Dwayne Yuen, has been in custody awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

An overlapping measure, Senate Bill 3089, recommends revocation of teacher licenses amid investigations of such crimes. That bill and its companion, House Bill 2400, are part of Gov. Josh Green’s legislative package, and it also passed both committees with amendments. HB 2400 is scheduled to be heard at 10 a.m. Thursday by the Education and Labor and Government Relations committees of the state House.