As teachers preyed, did officials look away?

Associated Press

PLUM, PA.

The legal and emotional casualties keep piling up in a Pittsburgh suburb where two high-school teachers have pleaded guilty to having sex with students, a third is awaiting trial and a fourth is charged with trying to intimidate one student victim by pointing her out in class.

The atmosphere is so poisoned in the Plum Borough School District, a largely rural, upwardly middle-class bedroom community of roughly 27,000 people, that the senior class president told the superintendent to stay away from commencement ceremonies today.

“You don’t deserve to be at my graduation,” Plum High School senior Sylvia Ankrom told Superintendent Timothy Glasspool at a school board meeting last week. “We don’t want you there. Don’t show up.”

That appears to be a moot point now that the school board has placed Glasspool and Ryan Kociela, principal of the 4,100-student district’s only high school, on paid leave and hired a law firm to investigate whether they and possibly other employees should be fired.

The new internal investigation is fueled by a scathing grand jury report released May 19 by the Allegheny County district attorney’s office. The grand jury determined employees were more concerned about upholding the district’s image than investigating misconduct.

The county prosecutor convened the grand jury to determine whether those delays were criminal after teachers Ruggieri, 41, and Jason Cooper, 39, were charged last year with having sexual relationships with students. Both have pleaded guilty, with Ruggieri serving two to five years in prison and Cooper 11/2 to three.

The grand jury also uncovered purported wrongdoing by Michael Cinefra, 30, a former part-time teacher and coach, who is awaiting trial on charges he had sexual contact with a student under 16 and provided her with alcohol.