(NewsNation) — A former FBI and CIA agent and teacher in a prestigious Dallas school is warning parents about the dangers of a so-called “Pass the Trash” practice that allows problematic teachers to move from district to district, unbeknownst to parents.
Tracy Walder, who is a paid NewsNation contributor, first detailed her complaints in a 2020 story in D Magazine. She spoke about her daughter allegedly enduring abuse at The Hockaday School’s Child Development Center at the hands of her teacher, Jason Baldwin.
Baldwin was charged in 2020 with child pornography and admitted to purchasing videos featuring young boys and girls performing sex acts on themselves, other children and men, according to D Magazine. He allegedly used a PayPal account tied to his Hockaday email address to pay for the illicit content.
He was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.
Walder taught at Hockaday for about a decade and says her warnings to administration about Baldwin’s abuse toward her daughter — not sexual in nature — did not result in any action. It began on the playground in August 2018, when her daughter suffered a broken arm as Baldwin was pushing her too high on a swing and she fell off.
According to a lawsuit filed by Walder, Baldwin told school officials the then-3-year-old had fallen off the swing on her own as she was trying to climb onto it. The doctors treating the girl disputed that claim.
Walder also alleged her daughter was then retaliated against for almost getting Baldwin in trouble. She claimed in the lawsuit that her daughter said Baldwin would lock her in a bathroom with the lights off for crying too much.
Walder raised complaints with school administration to no avail. She resigned in 2019 and, determined to help other children and their families, began doing research on teachers nationwide with a checkered past.
“Since 2010, the number of complaints about sexual violence in K-12 schools has tripled, and that is very bothersome, and we have to get to the bottom of why,” Walder said Friday on “Banfield.” “I’m not here to diminish job that teachers are doing — I am one of them. But this is a serious issue that we need to take seriously.”
In a statement after Baldwin’s prosecution, The Hockaday School said it had undertaken a third-party audit to “review all relevant policies and practices from hiring protocols to the security of its facilities.”
“The school will continue to take every step at its disposal to protect the safety and well-being of its students,” the school said.
Walder is urging more states to comply with a provision in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act that prohibits schools from aiding and abetting sexual abuse.
“The problem is, only four states have really enacted (such) laws, and I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to, or because this is such an obscure provision,” Walder said.
If parents find themselves in a similar situation, Walder suggests going to Child Protective Services, not the school administration.
“(Schools) have their own ideas and their own agenda of how they want to play out, but this is your child, this is your life and this is your family,” she said. “The other thing is if you notice behavior changes in your child, document everything, journal that, so that you’re keeping (a) record of that and seeing if it matches up with any of the accusations about that teacher.”