Utah teacher Courtney Jarrell
Pat Reavy and Sandra Yi report for Utah’s KSL.com, April 22, 2013, that Courtney Louise Jarrell, 22, a Riverton High School math teacher and coach of the sophomore girls’ basketball team, has been arrested and charged with raping a 17-year-old female student. Prosecutors say the rape happened at Jarrell’s house.
Riverton High School is a public high school in Riverton, Utah. It is also the largest high school in the state.
Jarrell was charged last Friday, April 19, in 3rd District Court with object rape, a first-degree felony, and forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.
On the same day, Jarrell also submitted her resignation from the school, after having been placed on administrative leave since the allegations were brought up about a month ago. the Jordan School District said every employee is required to sign a moral conduct policy, to which the district strictly adheres. The complaint was immediately turned over to police.
Students said they were surprised to hear the allegations because Jarrell was a popular teacher everyone seemed to like. Student Kathryn Orchard said, “Everybody loved her. My parents were even way shocked because my parents loved her too. They thought she was a great teacher.”
Meanwhile, in the state of New Jersey, a second-grade teacher has been fired for insubordination and inappropriate behavior, including urinating in his northern New Jersey classroom.
The AP reports from Trenton, NJ, April 25, 2013, that NJ State Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf approved removing 2nd grade teacher Ron Tuitt‘s tenure protection and firing him on April 18.
Tuitt had taught in NJ’s Paterson Public School District since 1996.
The state found Tuitt once urinated in a classroom trash can, sometimes urinated in a plastic bottle and asked students to take his waste to the boys’ bathroom and flush it, and let students sit in his motorized wheelchair.
According to an account in Black Blue Dog, a month earlier an administrative law judge had found that Tuitt’s behavior “was inappropriate and unprofessional and constitutes conduct unbecoming a staff member.”
Tuitt, 56, also allegedly sent students on personal errands for him, and to have driven students home when he shouldn’t have. Parents have also accused Tuitt of sending nasty emails to them while he was on administrative leave.
Tuitt denied some of the accusations, but his union representative says much of this could have been prevented if Tuitt’s principal had made accommodations for the disabled second grade teacher’s condition.
Cerf says Tuitt’s disability does not excuse his behavior.
“We put our trust in this man to teach our children and he put them in a very unhealthy education environment,” Board President Christopher Irving said.
~Eowyn
