Records show that he had resigned from his previous position in California three months earlier, after a student told the school district that Lacey had groomed and pursued a sexual relationship with her during her senior year in 2018. The student had survived a suicide attempt that year, and as the school psychologist, Lacey had been assigned to look after her well-being, records show.

In April 2021, following the California investigation, the state revoked his teaching license. But it took another two years before Washington took action. Records show that investigators with Washington’s oversight agency only reprimanded the educator for lying on his job application –– not for the previous sexual misconduct that occurred over state lines. 

And instead of revoking his license as the California regulators did, his license was instead suspended for three months and was reinstated in September 2023. He now works for an international study abroad program, according to his LinkedIn.

Payne, with OSPI, said in an email that if a teacher is under investigation by state investigators or if disciplinary action is taken, a banner will appear when the school district searches the person’s name in the state’s internal database. 

But since California hadn’t completed its investigation into Lacey by the time he applied to work in Washington, there likely wasn’t a flag on his application in the system. And even if there was, the alert doesn’t show what the actual issue was.

“If a school district is considering an applicant and their record contains a banner, the district could contact OSPI to request additional information, they could ask the candidate directly, and/or they could decide not to consider the candidate for the position,” Payne wrote. “School districts have the experience to know that disciplinary action is something to investigate further before making a job offer to a candidate.”

Payne said OSPI adds new information from the national database monthly.

State database: the tip of the iceberg

Washington’s statewide teacher misconduct database is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the prevalence of teacher sexual misconduct in K-12 schools. And Washington isn’t alone in failing to track or accurately quantify how often it happens. The U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Justice and child welfare agencies do not collect consistent data regarding employee sexual misconduct in K-12 schools. 

Researchers estimate that one in every 10 students experiences some form of educator sexual misconduct by the time they graduate high school, with the average age a survivor discloses their experiences being 52 years old. Students may not come forward because they fear the perpetrator, they feel shame about what happened or they might not recognize the teacher’s behavior as abuse. 

“Students aren’t taught what to look for in terms of boundary crossing, and they might instead think, ‘Oh, this is cool to be friends with the teacher,’” said Joel Levin, the co-founder and director of programs for the Seattle-based nonprofit Stop Sexual Assault in Schools. “It could be subtle at the beginning, but then sometimes it progresses from these sorts of subtle flirting things to physical contact.” 

Levin founded his nonprofit in 2015 after his daughter was assaulted by a peer on a school field trip and his family struggled to hold Seattle Public Schools accountable. “The revictimization, institutional betrayal, this type of thing that we experienced firsthand –– we didn’t want other families to go through it like we did.”

Research shows that administrators and school leaders can often fail to recognize common grooming signs and report the behavior to law enforcement or other state oversight agencies meant to investigate claims of sexual misconduct. Inadequate district investigations and union negotiations can also keep misconduct from being reported. 

When a teacher is allowed to quietly resign from their position during an investigation, they can avoid formal discipline that could ultimately prohibit them from being hired elsewhere. In these instances, a teacher is often allowed to leave without a “termination for cause” on their employment record and a school district can avoid a lengthy –– and at times expensive –– firing process. The practice, which makes it difficult to quantify the prevalence of teacher sexual abuse, is known to researchers and investigators as “passing the trash.” 

“There are so many things that are wrong with this practice of passing the trash that does even more detrimental harm to victims,” said Miller, with the National Center to Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct & Exploitation. 

“Oftentimes, (victims) say the abuse was bad enough, but knowing there were people that knew, knowing there were people that could have stepped in and intervened and helped at the time, that betrayal is sometimes a harder pill to swallow for them,” she added.

A separation agreement is what allowed a Mercer Island High School English teacher to quietly resign from the district despite misconduct concerns. 

Eric Ayrault, who taught in the Mercer Island High School’s English Department from 1997 until 2019, was under investigation in 2018 for misconduct related to “maintaining professional staff/student boundaries” before his resignation, school records show. 

The investigation was initiated in part after three students shared a GoogleDoc with the principal that documented over a dozen alleged instances of inappropriate behavior over the course of a semester.

In his separation agreement, Erin Battersby, the head of legal for the Mercer Island School District, wrote that the three week investigation into the allegations had concluded “without a finding.” He resigned the same day without facing any formal discipline and went on to teach at seven schools in Colorado and California, according to his LinkedIn.

Battersby, who is in charge of investigating reports of teacher misconduct within the Mercer Island School District, declined numerous interview requests.

School records show that Ayrault had been under investigation the year prior after a fellow teacher reported to the administration that she had overheard students complaining that he was “creepy” and made them feel uncomfortable. 

The investigative report obtained by InvestigateWest showed the educator was found to have violated three separate school policies, including “Maintaining Professional Staff/Student Boundaries” and sexual harassment. He was required to enter a no-contact agreement with one of the students, which included a safety plan for the student. But the discipline was nominal. He received a written reprimand and was required to take additional training. His conduct was not reported to the state, and he was allowed to continue teaching.

“Reports to OSPI are the responsibility of the superintendent and in this instance, we do not know why the superintendent at the time did not make a report,” Ian Henry, the spokesperson for the Mercer Island School District, wrote in an email to InvestigateWest. “Unfortunately, we can’t speak to the actions of a former superintendent.”

Ayrault’s misconduct was finally reported to Washington’s oversight agency in October 2025 by the current superintendent, after InvestigateWest published reports regarding two other longtime English teachers at the school who had engaged in inappropriate relationships with students. But as of Jan. 26, 2025, Ayrault does not appear in OSPI’s misconduct database. 

The first teacher, Gary “Chris” Twombley, was quietly put on paid administrative leave in 2023 and later resigned and voluntarily surrendered his teaching license, according to a settlement agreement between the school district and the teachers’ union.