Technology playing greater role in inappropriate student-teacher relationships

FORT WORTH, Texas - During a week in April, police say a Kennedale High School teacher sent sexually explicit text messages to an 18-year-old student. The \"sexts\" culminated, police say, with the teacher having sex with five students. She was later arrested.

This month in northwest Fort Worth, a teacher at Boswell High School was arrested and accused of trying to solicit a relationship with a 16-year-old student, sending texts that read \"U r so sexy!\"

New technological tools are providing educators with direct access to students - often unmonitored - 24 hours a day. That, coupled with the casual tone of text or online conversations, can help blur the lines of appropriateness between a student and teacher, say law enforcement officials, educators and social media experts.

As a result, they say they've noticed an increase in reports of cases where teachers are using text messaging, Facebook and other networks as icebreakers to groom students for sexual relationships.

\"We didn't have cellphones, we didn't have computers, but we also weren't calling our teachers at home on their personal phones,\" said Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, a Las Vegas-based victim and survivor support network. \"I don't think there's any reason for teachers to be communicating with students outside of school. It just sets up a whole new boundary that can be crossed. Their relationship with the student is teacher-student, it's not friend.\"

Others suggest, however, that there has not necessarily been an increase of cases involving teachers and students but that the electronic flirting makes it much easier for teachers to get caught.

\"I don't think the technology is at fault, but the technology is making bad behavior a lot easier to accomplish,\" said Samra Bufkins, a senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of North Texas in Denton.

\"Before all this, you could get into a ‘he said, she said' sort of thing,\" Bufkins said. \"But now, this digital record is forever. This is true with teachers. This is true with politicians. They just seem to completely forget that that digital record is out there and it's forever.\"

It's difficult to track the number of cases involving inappropriate relationships between educators and students. The State Board of Educator Certification investigates some cases, but it has changed the kinds of cases it reviews.

In 2008-09, the agency investigated 123 cases of noncertified school employees who had inappropriate relationships.

Statistics are not available for 2009-10, but the number of cases dropped to 116 this past school year, when the agency investigated only cases involving certified personnel - such as teachers and administrators - whose licenses the agency can revoke.

From the criminal side, the Tarrant County district attoey's office typically files about one to three cases a year on charges of a teacher's improper relationship with a student. However, sometimes an investigation is prosecuted as a sexual assault of a child or another charge, depending on the circumstances of the case, said Betty Arvin, deputy chief of the Tarrant County district attoey's criminal division.

While there have been no national studies on whether social media have contributed to an increase in inappropriate relationships between teachers and students, a 2004 report showed that about 10 percent of students said they have been the target of sexual misconduct by a school employee.

\"My guess is ... what we're really seeing is an increase in reports and an increase in people understanding what they're seeing,\" said Charol Shakeshaft, chairwoman of the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University, who conducted the 2004 study.

Police say text messaging played a major role in the two most recent Tarrant County cases.

While a coach and teacher at Kennedale High in the spring, Brittni Nicole Colleps, 27, began trading sexually explicit text messages with an 18-year-old student, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The texting, including some messages that contained sexually explicit photographs, went on for about a week, police said.

On the evening of April 26, the student had sex with Colleps at her home in Arlington, according to the affidavit.

Eventually, Colleps would have sex with four other students, police said, including one act that was videotaped.

Colleps, a mother of three whose husband is in the military and was stationed outside the Metroplex, was arrested in May on five counts of having an improper relationship with a student.

This month, a Boswell High School English teacher and cheerleading coach was arrested by Fort Worth police on accusations that she had an improper relationship with a 16-year-old student.

Heather Jackson, 37, was placed on administrative leave last month after one student told school officials that Jackson was having improper communication with another student.

The boy told school officials that he eventually gave Jackson, a mother of two, his cellphone number and that they began exchanging text messages that were initially innocuous but became more sexual.

In one text that Jackson sent the boy, according to the arrest warrant affidavit, she asked him whether he knew why she had seated him in the front row of her class.

\"Jackson stated that she sat him there so she could excite him when she bent over in front of him,\" the affidavit says.

Similar cases have also been reported at Godley High School in Johnson County and Perrin High School in Jack County in the past year.

Lex Johnston, a Hurst attoey who represents both Colleps and Jackson, declined to comment on the specifics of the cases but said neither woman has yet been charged by the Tarrant County district attoey's office.

But Johnston said technology does appear to be playing a more of a role in such cases in recent years.

\"People don't realize that electronic messages can be found,\" Johnston said. \"Text messages and email are good tools for teachers to get messages to families - students and parents. But like any kind of communication, it can be abused.\"

Students say technology definitely makes it easier for adults who are interested in children to connect with them.

\"You can talk to anyone on Facebook. You can easily text anyone. No one knows who you're talking to,\" said Briana White, 17, a senior at Dunbar High School in Fort Worth. \"A lot of people have their teacher's number or coach's email (address). I have all my teachers' emails. But they're teachers, and they shouldn't be interested in children. They should be focused on teaching. They're grown.\"

And text messaging can be helpful in school settings.

For example, when Fort Worth schools were shut down because of H1N1 flu conces in 2009, a text-message study chain with Kirkpatrick Middle School students and their teacher helped keep them ready for an upcoming science test.

But texting a student crosses a line \"when that adult predator takes it further and uses it for their own means to start an inappropriate relationship or groom a student for a relationship,\" said DeEtta Culbertson, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman. \"That's where parents need to be aware of what's going on in their children's lives and report conces.\"

The agency responded by issuing new rules, which went into effect in December 2010, on using electronic communication with students.

And school districts are encouraging teachers to be more technologically savvy while attempting to make clear what's acceptable and what's not.

Like many schools across the state, the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district - which includes Boswell High - updated its teacher guidelines this year.

The district now prohibits texting and interaction on social media with students that is not strictly related to homework or school-related activities. District spokeswoman Kristin Courtney said teachers had training on the updated policy at the beginning of the year.

\"All social media and texting has to be within context of what you teach, and texting is only allowed within certain hours,\" Courtney said. \"As educators, we can't put our heads in the sand and tell people to put away all technology, because that is how kids today lea. But there are rules ... and the rules are pretty black and white now.\"