Teacher Moved After Alleged Sexual Remark

RESEDA — The band director at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies has been transferred from his job while authorities investigate allegations that he made an inappropriate remark to one of his students.

The city attorney’s office is reviewing a Los Angeles police report involving “an allegation of child annoyance” against Samson Baltimore, 48, said Ted Goldstein, spokesman for the office. Prosecutors are expected to decide next week whether to file misdemeanor charges against Baltimore that could lead to as much as a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Goldstein and Los Angeles police would not release details of the investigation, but the 17-year-old student who came forward last month quoted Baltimore as saying, “So when am I going to get my lap dance?” Baltimore allegedly made the comment after a recent rehearsal at the school.

Baltimore could not be reached for comment. School district officials said he has been transferred with pay to a nonteaching job involving no contact with students at an undisclosed location.

According to the student, a junior who played clarinet in the symphonic band and was interviewed Friday, the comment culminated numerous troubling incidents with Baltimore.

One of them came during an April trip to New York, where the band performed at a competition at Lincoln Center. In a break room after the band performed, Baltimore allegedly asked the girl to sit on his lap, pulled her onto his knees, then told her to get up because he was becoming aroused. The girl said she smelled alcohol on Baltimore’s breath.

“That is when he crossed the line,” the student said. “He totally lost any trust he had with me. It scared me.”

Back in Los Angeles, police were called to the Reseda campus by the school principal May 22 after the student and her mother approached school administrators with complaints about Baltimore. Police originally said they could not pursue the case because the most serious allegations--that Baltimore groped the student in New York--occurred outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s jurisdiction.

But police decided to revisit the case after seeing an 11-page typewritten summary in which the student thoroughly documented times and locations of numerous incidents.

“We’re pressing [the case] because of the cumulative effect of the alleged incidents,” said Det. Bill Seeley, coordinator of the major assault crimes unit at the LAPD’s West Valley Division. “If found to be true, it’s totally inappropriate. Absolutely wrong.”

Los Angeles school officials, meanwhile, are conducting their own internal investigation. The school district’s Personnel Commission is examining whether Baltimore engaged in any unprofessional behavior. It is expected to wrap up its review in two or three weeks.

“Even if the city attorney’s office doesn’t find enough evidence to charge [Baltimore] with any crime, the administrative investigation will continue because there was enough possibility of inappropriate behavior and unprofessional conduct to warrant an investigation,” said Socorro Serrano, a district spokeswoman.

Students and colleagues on campus defended the teacher Friday, saying he has developed a well-respected music program whose bands have performed at festivals around the country. Baltimore is a popular teacher on campus, where he is known simply as “Mr. B,” several students said. His wife would frequently accompany her husband when the school’s bands performed out of state.

A flier was distributed on campus Friday inviting band members and parents to a meeting today, as the notice stated, “to help Mr. B.”

The student who is pursuing the allegations against Baltimore said there has been a backlash on campus against her. Students have called her derogatory names and shunned her, she said.

Her mother, meanwhile, accused school administrators of initially ignoring complaints made by her daughter before May 22.

“It breaks my heart for my daughter to step forward and then have them turn on her,” the woman said.