Amid a still-unfolding high school sex scandal that remains under active investigation, Plum teachers will be in class themselves Tuesday for a refresher on how and when to report suspected child sexual abuse.
The lesson likely will not be lost on anyone.
That’s because as the teachers file back into the classroom the next day, one of their colleagues instead will be traveling to a district judge’s office for a hearing on criminal charges that he had sex with a female student.
Suspended English teacher Joseph Ruggieri, 40, of New Kensington is one of two Plum educators charged with crimes involving sex between teachers and students. Chemistry teacher Jason Cooper, who is also suspended, already has been held for trial for having sex with a different female student.
And one week after Mr. Ruggieri’s preliminary hearing, another co-worker, suspended chemistry teacher Drew Zoldak, will make his own court appearance on a charge of intimidation. He is accused of humiliating Mr. Ruggieri’s alleged victim in a classroom before her peers.
Against this troubling backdrop, parents in the district have asked publicly whether administrators and faculty have been turning a blind eye to sexual hijinks for years, an accusation that superintendent Timothy Glasspool flatly denies.
“The belief that the high school staff, faculty and administration accepts sexually inappropriate relationships or would condone the type of behavior is absurd,” Mr. Glasspool said recently.
“We devote a large amount of our in-service time to the safety of our kids. My kids are in this district, and there is nothing that we don’t do to keep our kids safe.”
Plum’s in-service retraining for the district’s 268 teachers, school resource officers and administrative staff had been scheduled long before police in February arrested Mr. Ruggieri and Mr. Cooper.
But Mr. Glasspool acknowledged that the choice of topics — refresher lessons in mandated reporting, training in appropriate use of social media, and the district’s “educator misconduct” policy — resulted directly from the lurid accusations that have roiled the district and now overshadow the school board races in Tuesday’s primary election.
“This has been very hard on the whole borough,” Mr. Glasspool said of the accusations against the teachers.
Meanwhile, a sprawling probe continues. Plum police have acknowledged that the department is investigating other allegations against Mr. Ruggieri. And the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office is exploring suggestions that the school district has fostered a culture of permissiveness that has long allowed inappropriate relations between teachers and students to flourish.
District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. last month said his office expected to conduct several dozen interviews to determine whether others at the school, in both the current and past administrations, knew of the relationships that led to the criminal charges but did not report them — even though they are mandated reporters under state law.
His office declined comment Friday.
Attorney Michael DeRiso, who represents Mr. Cooper, concurred with parents who have suggested there is a pattern of permissiveness in the district.
“I think that over a number of years this situation has been there,” Mr. DeRiso said. His client’s arrest, he said, “opened the can of worms.”
Mr. DeRiso said eight to 10 Plum alumni have contacted him to describe “inappropriate conduct, comments, sexual misconduct between male teachers and students.”
“Interestingly, some of the comments they made were, ‘I can’t believe they got Mr. Cooper when others have been doing it for years,’” Mr. DeRiso said. “So when comments like that are made, to me you have a serious problem in a school, and there’s no way — there’s just no way possible to me — that administration did not know …”
Mr. Cooper, 38, of Verona stands accused of getting involved in a sexual relationship with a student who was 18 after they began talking about “personal matters she was dealing with at that time,” police said. He is charged with institutional sexual assault, corruption of a minor, witness intimidation and serving liquor to a minor. He was held for court last month.
Mr. DeRiso is not contesting that there was a sexual relationship or denying that the school district has a right to take administrative disciplinary action. But he has argued that Mr. Cooper did not commit a crime because his alleged victim was not a minor.
In April police charged Mr. Zoldak, 40, also of New Kensington, with telling his class that he was absent from school for a day because investigators from the DA’s office were questioning him “because of her” as he pointed to Mr. Ruggieri’s alleged victim, an affidavit said.
“The only comment I would make is we are challenging the factual allegations. In other words, our defense is that it didn’t happen,” Mr. Zoldak’s attorney, Alexander H. Lindsay Jr., said Friday.
“I can’t get into the factual allegations. I don’t think that would be appropriate. But the challenge here is that it did not happen. In other words, what we’re talking about is these allegations of things that were said, things that were done, were not done. So that’s the defense.”
Part of Tuesday’s sessions for teachers will be refresher courses on extensive training the district staff had in August 2013 by the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance, Mr. Glasspool said.
But another section will focus on the district’s “educator misconduct” policy adopted by the board Feb. 25, eight days after Mr. Ruggieri’s arrest.
The policy, approved in response to new state legislation, defines sexual abuse or exploitation as “the employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement or coercion of a child to engage in or assist another individual to engage in sexually explicit conduct.”
Sexual misconduct, under the policy, is defined as “any act, including but not limited to, any verbal, nonverbal, written or electronic communication or physical activity, directed toward or with a child or student that is designed to establish a romantic or sexual relationship with the child or student.”
Mr. Glasspool said it was an “unfortunate coincidence” that the school board adopted the policy shortly after the arrest.
The policy requires any educator who knows of sexual abuse or misconduct to report it to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the superintendent and his or her immediate supervisor.
Mary Niederberger: mniederberger@post-gazette.com; 412-263-1590. Jonathan D. Silver: jsilver@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1962 or on Twitter @jsilverpg.
First Published: May 18, 2015, 4:00 a.m.