Tony Evers yanked license of teacher for watching porn, but GOP says he wasn't consistent

MADISON - Republicans said state schools superintendent Tony Evers yanked one teacher's license for looking at pornography at work but not another's, renewing debate about whether Evers had consistently applied the law. 

Evers' handling of these cases has become the go-to criticism for Republicans as Evers campaigns in the Democratic primary to take on GOP Gov. Scott Walker. 

In a previously undisclosed case from 2008, the Department of Public Instruction and Evers as its then-No. 2 official revoked the license of Kent A. Tollakson, a teacher in Amery, for looking at pornography on his work computer, including when students were in the classroom. 

Republicans said this latest case shows Evers in 2014 could have and should have revoked the license of science teacher Andrew Harris for using his work computer without students present to look at emails with images of naked women.

"It's long overdue that Evers fully explain why sexual harassment, predatory comments about children, and spreading pornography at school were not enough to remove an embattled teacher from the classroom," state Republican Party spokesman Alec Zimmerman said. 

DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said the Tollakson case shows that Evers has been both tough and consistent in applying the law. The key difference with the Harris case, McCarthy said, is that under state law at the time revoking a teacher's license for looking at porn meant showing his misconduct had affected students. 

"When we could find a nexus with a child under the old rules we took (the teacher's) license," McCarthy said. 

Harris, a Middleton Cross Plains Area School District teacher, had not previously been disciplined and a district spokesman said last month there have been no complaints against the educator since then. Harris was also accused of making inappropriate remarks about female students and harassing the female teacher who first raised the issue of the nude images, but an arbitrator did not substantiate those allegations.

The district sought to have Harris' teaching license revoked under a state law that prohibits conduct by teachers that is "contrary to commonly accepted moral or ethical standards and that endangers the health, safety, welfare or education of any pupil."

Evers and DPI officials have said they wanted to revoke Harris' license but couldn't because, unlike in the separate Tollakson case, no students were in Harris' classroom while he viewed the emails. 

Under Evers, DPI officials supported legislation that gave DPI the explicit power to revoke teachers' licenses for looking at porn on school computers regardless of whether students were present. McCarthy has said teachers today would lose their licenses for doing what Harris did then. 

Republicans also raised another 2008 case dealing with a Cedarburg teacher who had viewed "adult images" on his computer for just over a minute. An arbitrator held the school district could not fire the teacher for that sole instance but a trial court and state appeals court disagreed, reversing the arbitrator's determination.

The DPI couldn't apply that case to the one involving Harris, in part because the Cedarburg case dealt with the authority of an arbitrator, not with licensing, McCarthy said.