A local resident of the Highland Park Independent School District admonished the school board members at a public hearing on September 13 for hiring a teacher with a disturbing social media history and what he perceives as a breakdown in schools’ ability to protect students across Texas.
Russell Fish, Highland Park ISD taxpayer and founder of OpenRecords.org, spoke at the hearing and raised concerns about the teacher, who worked with children as young as 5 years old.
Fish was made aware of the situation concerning the teacher by a parent in the district who reportedly discovered highly sexualized social media content purportedly belonging to the teacher.
According to reports, the parent sent an email to the superintendent of Highland Park ISD and the principal of the campus where the teacher worked, Robert S. Hyer Elementary, alleging that the teacher’s social media account showed “violent sexual fetishes and fantasies,” among other disturbing images.
A child’s comment to their parents sparked the chain of events leading to the discovery of the social media content.
Fish alleges that a 5-year-old came home and told their parents, “My teacher is crazy,” referring to how the teacher “looked like a girl but dressed like a boy.”
This spurred the child’s father to look into the teacher and, upon digging, apparently discovered the disturbing posts on social media.
The parent demanded that the teacher be immediately removed from contact with children and any classroom settings and for proper authorities to investigate whether “any crimes against children had been committed.”
The parent concluded that this “represents the greatest possible security threat to our children.”
Fish is advocating for a new state law to allow parents to withdraw their child from a public school that has exposed their child to sexualized content and then take that child’s public school funding allocation and utilize it at another school of their choice.
“These districts are broken,” he said.
According to The Epoch Times, an addendum to the September 13 Highland Park ISD school board meeting stated that the teacher in question resigned on September 9; however, a review of the district’s board meeting agenda found that the only document not available for download online by the public is the alleged addendum, “Section 7.G. Human Resources Report Addendum.”
The Dallas Express reached out to Highland Park ISD about this story and specifically asked about the lack of a copy of this addendum online.
Jon Dahlander, director of communications for the district, responded with a separate link and instructions to access the document. It remains unclear as to why it is not on the main agenda page.
To our questions about the incident involving this specific teacher, Dahlander replied, “As a general rule, HPISD does not comment on issues related to individual personnel matters, nor are individual personnel matters discussed publicly during board meetings.”
“HPISD is committed to the safety and security of all of its students and staff. Any allegations made about staff members are taken seriously and handled with discretion,” he concluded.
