An outpouring of sympathy has been expressed for a teacher who was sent a hefty bill for a five-day water leak at his school.

The teacher in his 30s at the municipal-run Inada Elementary School in Kawasaki in May was filling a pool ahead of the swimming season.

He turned off the watering switch six hours later. But water continued to pour into the pool for five days because the circuit breaker had tripped.

Water that could fill six pools was released.

In August, the Kawasaki education board ordered the teacher and school’s principal to pay 950,000 yen ($6,300), or half of the water bill of 1.9 million yen.

The school side paid the sum in September.

Although the compensation rate of 50 percent was based on local governments’ policies and a court ruling, the Kawasaki education board’s decision to force the school staff to pay ignited controversy.

PRECEDENT SET 

In 2012, the Odawara education board in Kanagawa Prefecture, where Kawasaki is also located, discovered that water had spilled from a swimming pool at a city-run elementary school over 10 days.

Some school staff members, including the principal, covered half of total loss of 3 million yen.

The Odawara education board’s secretariat said the cause of the incident was human error because someone inappropriately released the water without checking the feeding pipe’s condition.

“The city government’s bearing all the damage would not be fair, given the serious error,” the secretariat said.

But “forcing the school to cover the whole cost would be unsuitable since the error occurred during a legitimate duty,” it added.

The secretariat came up with the idea of the school and city sharing the blame and the cost.

“I simultaneously felt both a sense of sympathy and a need to question the responsibility for the accident,” Teruo Maeda, 72, head of the secretariat at the time, told The Asahi Shimbun.

Naoto Shimazaki, chairman of the executive committee of the Kanagawa Teacher’s Union, said the outcome contributed significantly to local governments’ propensity to impose a 50-percent penalty on schools for such water leaks.

“Criticism grew against using taxpayers’ money to offset such losses against a backdrop of public bashing of civil servants,” Shimazaki said. “This resulted in the trend to demand that teachers pay compensation.”

Also behind the Kawasaki education board’s conclusion was a legal judgment concerning a high school operated by the Tokyo metropolitan government.

Water continued to pour out of a drain valve that had been left open at the school in 2015.

The school’s staff members, such as the principal, were responsible for half of the price of the wasted water.

Local residents filed an audit request in 2016 to get the school to cover the entire bill.

The metropolitan government’s auditing committee upheld the conclusion of the Tokyo education board that “watching a pool does not fall under the main scope of school staff’s responsibilities, and it was difficult to quickly spot the leak due to equipment problems.”

The residents took the issue to court.

The Tokyo District Court ruled in 2017 that it was appropriate to seek a “50-percent” fine.

The public response to the Kawasaki case, however, has been different.

The city’s education board received 646 comments from citizens by phone and email by Sept. 25 about the water bill payment, and 394 sympathized with the school.

One resident said the board’s decision was “pitiful,” while another insisted the move would “further accelerate the shortage of people who want to become teachers.”

An online petition with 17,000 signatures was submitted to the Kawasaki education board chairman and the city’s mayor, asking the board to retract its order.

Parents and guardians of children attending Inada Elementary School solicited donations in an effort to cover the financial loss.

PENALTY DEEMED TOO HARSH

Similar cases regarding school pools have transpired nationwide, and the reactions, including reparation orders, differ from region to region.

Lawyer Yusuke Taira, who is knowledgeable about lawsuits against government bodies, said the pay-half policy goes too far.

“At least 70 to 80 percent of bills should be borne by municipalities, even in the event of teachers’ gross negligence,” he said.

Article 1 of the State Redress Law stipulates the central government and its local counterpart are, by and large, responsible for paying compensation over damage caused by civil-service workers during their duties.

“When there was intent or gross negligence on the part of the public employee, the state or public entity has the right to obtain reimbursement from that public employee,” Paragraph 2 of Article 1 states.

Taira said the provisions are aimed at preventing public officials from being “unnerved” by the risk of compensation.

He said this law does not directly apply to the Kawasaki case because the municipality was a victim. But he said the payment ratio should be determined within the core objective of the legal framework.

Taira said the compensation amount should be set only after taking into account whether systems that sound an alarm about water overflow and other problems have properly been put in place.

Teachers are moving to protect themselves from pricey fines.

The Japan Teachers' Mutual Aid Cooperative Society in 2011 started an insurance program for educators who are ordered to pay reparations for their on-duty failures.

Subscriber numbers have been rising, with the total payment reaching 18.9 million yen in fiscal 2022 from 8.8 million yen in fiscal 2013.

(This article was written by Yusuke Masuda, Hidenori Sato, Naoko Kobayashi, Kohei Kano and Shintaro Shiiki.)