Legal Question in Education Law in Missouri

Re: teacher reporting

Most teacher contracts have a morals clause or some statement that "moral turpitude" is grounds for dismissal. In order to answer your question, you need to know how broadly that district defines those terms, and what it considers to be moral turpitude. If the district viewed the behavior of not reporting students who were engaged in unlawful activity as a violation of the morals clause, it could terminate even though it happened during other than school time, in much the same way that they could terminate you for a DWI conviction obtained over the Christmas holidays if that's what they chose to do.

So the real question is, how high is your risk tolerance?

No one can say for sure how your district will view this, how they will spin it, or what they will do if they learn of it. They might never learn of it, and you'd be just fine. But my wife was a teacher for 25 years and she never played it close to the line of this stuff. She always reported it. Of course, her district had a policy that during the school year you could not be seen out in a restaurant having an alcoholic beverage, so a lot of it depends on the district.

Good luck.