Students, teachers complained about Bourbon Co. teacher for years. What did district do?
Bourbon County school officials have received complaints about disgraced University of Kentucky researcher turned science teacher Eric Smart since he started in the district in 2011, according to parents, teachers and students who contacted the Herald-Leader.
Since Friday, Dec. 2, when the Herald-Leader published a story about complaints of harassing and sexualized comments that Smart allegedly made to two students at Bourbon County High School last year, we’ve received a dozen calls and emails about his behavior. Three students, four teachers and five parents contacted the Herald-Leader; all said they or their children had been targets of Smart’s and most of them said they had also complained. In addition, three people who worked with Smart at UK emailed to talk about their harassing and demeaning experiences with him there.
It’s unclear what actions district personnel took over the years; they have not fully responded to our questions. But the case again shows how the lack of transparency in many school personnel issues makes it difficult to get clear answers in these cases.
Tricia Weiderman, for example, started teaching at Bourbon County High School in the fall of 2011, the same start date as Smart. As the Herald-Leader has previously reported, Smart was allowed to resign from UK in 2011 after he was investigated for research misconduct and sexual harassment. While on leave from his job, he got a teaching certificate and started working at Bourbon County High School in fall 2011.
“That very first semester in the fall, I went to then principal David Horseman because Smart had said something really inappropriate to me and I wanted to have it addressed,” Weiderman said. “I was a new teacher in the building, figuring out my way, and he said at the time, ‘ok, well, we’ll handle it, it will be ok, and you need to let it go.’ “
Weiderman said later in the semester, she heard from students that Smart had made similarly inappropriate comments to students in his classes, so she went back to Horseman. “He basically said you need to quit bothering me with this,” Weiderman said.
The Herald-Leader does not usually identify victims of harassment, but Weiderman agreed to go public because she understands why the girls involved wouldn’t want to, and said she has less to risk by speaking out. She left teaching in 2021.
“Now I would know to get the KEA involved,” she said. “At the time I thought I was making an official complaint —as far as I knew, I did what I needed to do to report it. I don’t know why this was allowed to thrive, but it was.”
Three other parents and two more teachers said they complained either to Horseman or to Superintendent Amy Baker and a school district attorney. Another parent, who asked not to be identified, contacted me by email and phone. She said she met with Baker and a school district attorney in 2017 about Smart’s sexualized comments to her daughter, who took his class.
The mother said she was told that “the things he said were not sexual harassment,” she said. “They told me that they would send him to classes and have a monitor in his room, but to me that wasn’t good enough, so I pulled my daughter out of his class.”
The Sunday article made it obvious that nothing had changed, the mother said. “I was furious, obviously nothing was done,” she said. “These kids should not have to listen to the things he’s saying. Now it’s occurring again, and the board needs to be held just as accountable.”
At least one of Smart’s former students filed an official complaint this fall with the Education Professional Standards Board, the state agency that investigates complaints and oversees teacher certification.
Smart has not responded to the Herald-Leader for requests for comment.
Confidentiality
On Dec. 6, I sent a series of questions to Baker, including whether Smart was still employed by the district, how many times administrators had met with parents, teachers and students about him and whether formal or informal disciplinary measures against Smart were ever initiated. I also asked “After a decade of such complaints, why was Smart allowed to stay in the classroom?”
Bourbon County officials responded in a Dec. 8 email that student and staff safety is “paramount.” But they did not directly address the sustained number of complaints against Smart or what they had done to protect students.
“Each instance of perceived or actual threat brought to the administrators at school or central office is immediately investigated,” the email said. “To allege otherwise is patently incorrect ... However, investigations may or may not generate a written record. Often, a school administrator may deal with the matter at the time and determine if any there is any validity to the alleged threat to either students or staff. Actual physical altercations are immediately dealt with by the school resource officer who may charge the student or staff with a criminal complaint.”
Instead of discussing past threats to students, the email suggested that the Herald-Leader’s reporting may have provoked threats against staff. “Any actual threats generated by recent Herald Leader articles as against our staff will be investigated,” the email said. It also said he is a tenured teacher in the science department of Bourbon County High School.
“Public records protected by the attorney-client privilege are excludable from disclosure pursuant to both case law and attorney general opinions. As such, the District will not violate any of those parameters to satisfy the Herald Leader’s insistence otherwise.”
At least three people who contacted the Herald-Leader also provided copies of emails they sent to administrators complaining about Smart’s behavior. But none of those emails shown to the Herald-Leader were in Smart’s personnel file, which the newspaper requested under the state’s Open Records Act. His personnel file, provided by the district, contained one letter to Smart noting that he would see a pay decrease because he was no longer department chair, but the letter did not say why he was no longer in that position. His file contained no other mentions of complaints from students, teachers or parents.
Snow angels
According to Kentucky Department of Education regulations, “Harassment/Discrimination is unlawful behavior based on race, color, national origin, age, religion, sex (including sexual orientation or gender identity), or disability that is sufficiently severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive that it adversely affects a student’s education or creates a hostile or abusive educational environment.”
Is it harassment if a teacher required female students to do “snow angels” on the floor before they could ask a question? That’s the allegation of another parent, who sent me a copy of a 2020 email she sent to then-Bourbon County High School Principal Shane Mitchell about Smart’s classroom behavior, including making girls do “snow angels” on the floor in order to ask a question. The parent said she met with Mitchell, and he obviously spoke to Smart because Smart’s behavior to her daughter individually improved, but he still made sexualized remarks to other students in class.
But two years later, a teacher at Bourbon County High School was concerned enough about Smart’s behavior in talking about strippers and students’ breast sizes that she sent an email to Baker about her worries for Smart’s students. She sent me a copy of the May 2022 email. She said she was referred back to then-Principal Shane Mitchell, but it was unclear if he did anything in response. He is currently principal at Bourbon County Middle School, and did not return calls for comment. She told me that Smart’s behavior was well-known throughout the high school and to administrators.
Lana Fryman, the Bourbon superintendent when Smart was hired, has retired, but now serves on the school board. When I called her several weeks ago, she said she could not discuss personnel matters. Board chairman Todd Earlywine did not return calls for comment.
Another woman left teaching altogether after her experience with Smart. She was a young science teacher in 2012 and he was the head of the science department.
“I have a shirt that tied at the top,” she said in a phone interview. “He pulled it open and looked down my shirt, and said ‘you can’t wear this again, this is inappropriate.’”
The woman said she went to the vice-principal at the time, who was a woman. The vice-principal allegedly told her that Smart’s teaching credentials, including a Ph.D., boosted Bourbon County’s prestige. The woman left teaching for another job after three months.
What’s next
One former Bourbon County teacher emailed me to say that the first article did not accurately reflect how often teachers had tried to protect their students against Smart by complaining about him. It’s now obvious that many of them did. But we — parents, teachers, the public — don’t know if district officials took any action in response because they have not answered specific questions about the matter.
It’s true that science teachers are desperately needed. The Kentucky Department of Education has deemed science a “critical shortage area” in nearly every region of the state. But it’s hard to imagine that any district would want to put their students through the kind of classroom experienced that many have described in Smart’s classroom.
So the response from the Bourbon administration that underlines their legal obligations but shows no concern for the students under their care is frankly bizarre. Saying they will protect Smart from any problems raised by our articles is poor optics at a time when so many people are suspicious of public schools.
At this point, the only avenues left for concerned people in Bourbon County is the school board, making more complaints to the EPSB, and perhaps the Office of Education Accountability. School districts are often full of silence from fear of retribution, but parents and students and teachers deserve transparency and a better understanding of the power dynamics of teachers and students. If they have required Smart to do training, let’s hear what it is. Tell us why he’s still a suitable presence in classrooms. The Bourbon County administration needs renewed pressure from the public to show it cares.
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 11:23 AM.
