The Orrick School District said it has completed a full investigation and has removed a district computer after a student found nude photos of a teacher on the device.
Superintendent Aerin O’Dell sat down with 41 Action News to explain what prompted the district to send a letter to parents a week ago.
“She’s embarrassed. We’re embarrassed. No one meant for anyone to see anything inappropriate whatsoever,” O’Dell said.
According to O’Dell, a 7th and 8th-grade teacher checked out a district computer last year and had it for several months. Before she checked the computer back in, she “inadvertently” synced her personal iPhone with the checked-out district computer.
In doing so, all the teacher’s text messages were transferred to the computer.
One week ago, a student in a computer literacy class was using that same computer and found the teacher’s text messages synced to the computer, said O’Dell. One of the messages contained nude photos.
“I’m not even sure [the teacher] knows how it happened, completely unintentional,” said O’Dell.
O’Dell said the student first showed others before reporting it to the high school’s principal. The computer was immediately taken out of service and an internal investigation was launched. O’Dell said no other computers contained the messages or images.
“In our 1-to-1 program, no one shares devices so even if this accidentally happened no one would have seen it because we don’t share our iPads. It’s just that the Macbook was shared,” she said.
The district would not tell 41 Action News if disciplinary action was taken, citing personnel matters. O’Dell did say this incident was “unintentional” and done “inadvertently” without the teacher realizing what she was doing.
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Ariel Rothfield can be reached at Ariel.Rothfield@KSHB.com.
