First, the good news: many students have thrived at Vashon public schools this year.

Every day of the school year, excellent teachers, counselors, coaches and other staff members of our school district go above and beyond to provide an excellent education for local youth. We salute and thank them.

Vashon is additionally blessed with nonprofit organizations and parent-led organizations that also support students with a vibrant array of enhancement programs — Vashon School Foundation and Partners in Education, most particularly.

Remember these organizations during Washington’s fundraising campaign, GiveBIG, coming up on May 4 and 5. They do vitally important and increasingly needed work.

All that said, it is also necessary to talk about something that has gone very wrong at the district this year, which has had an extremely adverse impact on staff, students, parents and the entire community. It has helped no one thrive and feel safe.

This week, we devote significant space to an article detailing the district’s separate, months-long but now-concluded investigations of two high school teachers, Kara Sears and John Rees.

The separate allegations — involving two teachers and three students, over a time span of 22 years — were strikingly similar, raising the completely valid question of whether the district has lapsed, over the course of many years, in protecting its students from serious harm.

The district — perhaps in part for legal reasons — has provided scant specifics on the investigations, and even now, announced no actions to be taken as a result of them.

Lack of information leads to speculation, which has buzzed on Vashon’s social media pages about the cases, despite Superintendent Slade McSheehy’s oft-repeated assurance that the district’s highest priority “is the community’s trust and ensuring the safety of all its students.”

Those are priorities shared by The Beachcomber, and the lengthy article we are now publishing is our way of demonstrating our own iron-clad commitment to the safety of island youth.

We hope our deep dive into the investigations will provide a single source of accurate information, so far, about both cases, which is sorely needed in our community and beyond.

That said — we still have questions about the district’s response to the investigations.

Why, for instance, did the district settle with the two teachers in what appears to some to be a generous way, allowing them to resign but continue to receive paid administrative leave from the district for months?

After all, we now know that McSheehy has written letters of complaint about both teachers to the state office that oversees teacher certification — as he is required by law to do in cases where he has evidence to believe educators lack character or moral fitness or professional capacity.

Also, we’re disappointed that the district has additionally announced that it will not provide public information or documents related to the investigation of Rees, because the district’s settlement with him occurred before it had received a written report from the investigator in the case.

Why could the district not request and pay for a partial report from the investigator, at the very least, to add to the public record about this matter?

And another question: why did McSheehy not pick up the phone and personally alert the people who had undertaken the emotionally exhausting and time-consuming work of filing the complaints against the teachers, shortly prior to, or just after, sending out community-wide emails about the conclusion of the investigations?

His answer to this question — “It’s not the responsibility of the district to notify the people who filed the investigations” — isn’t acceptable. It would have been the kind and compassionate thing to do, as a courtesy. It would have shown empathy.

Finally, we want to know what concrete actions the district will take to truly establish a culture where the kind of behaviors detailed in the investigations will never again take place.

In an email to The Beachcomber, McSheehy detailed three measures taken by the district in the wake of the allegations of misconduct — which, quite frankly, seem perfunctory at best.

These included discontinuing the practice of allowing student teaching assistants to interact with staff members during the teacher’s “prep period;” re-training staff, last fall, on how to appropriately report incidents; and visits to all classrooms by [district] administration, to “share best practices with students on how to report any activity that might appear to be unsafe.”

Much more needs to be done, starting with a statement by the school board that it generally condemns the practice of educators engaging in romantic relationships with students immediately following their graduation.

More regular and rigorous training on boundary invasions needs to take place with staff as well as students at the school.

Bargaining with unions could also, perhaps, add stipulations for educators to not engage in romantic relationships with students for at least one or two years after their graduation.

Because who would not support such a stipulation, given the damage detailed in the investigations, and the disruption of the past year?