Jacksonville District 117 Superintendent Steve Ptacek says the district has terminated a special arrangement that allowed a registered sex offender to bring his child to and from school under strict conditions.
The issue came to public attention Wednesday after a social-media post alleged the individual was near the district’s Early Years building on Jordan Street in Jacksonville.
Ptacek told the school board Wednesday night that the district had previously approved the arrangement because the individual was a backup transportation option for his child: “From time to time, we have individuals that are on a level of a sex offenders database that they by law can come and request for the district [to have] the opportunity to have access to the school in very limited structured scenarios if they feel and the school district feels it’s in the best interest of their student. It’s not about them and what their rights are, it’s about their student. We have had a situation where an individual needed to be a backup ride to drop off at school or to pick up from school, his wife being the predominant person who’s able to do that. [They] came in and asked us for the opportunity if there was a structured way that we could allow it to happen.”
Under the agreement, Ptacek says the individual was required to notify the school before arriving, remain inside his vehicle, and have a school employee present to bring the student between the building and the vehicle.
Ptacek says the district received a report Wednesday that the individual violated those conditions: “We are getting reports today [Wednesday] that the individual violated those guidelines. Immediately [we] let the individual know our agreement is off. Therefore, [it] goes to the strict standards from the state, 500 feet [from the school]. Now, also, I contacted the police department to let them know that this individual violated those guidelines. That’s up to their call whether they want to pursue that any further.”
He says the district is consulting with its attorneys about whether parents should have been notified about the arrangement, noting concerns that doing so could reveal information about the student and family.
Ptacek also says District 117 will check with its principals to determine whether any similar arrangements currently exist elsewhere in the district, but as of Wednesday night, he was only aware of this single agreement. Ptacek says this time of agreement is more common at schools than the public may know: “I know there’s going to be a lot of backlash saying, why would you ever allow it? It’s about that student and we want the students to be at school and we did feel in the situation that following guidelines, we could provide a safe, structured environment. Over my lengthy career in education and 18 years, something like that as an administrator, there have been multiple of these. And if you talk to school administrators, it doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen on occasion.”
Ptacek asks that the public focus on the student and not the parent in this situation: “I would ask everybody to not focus on the adult. We are going out of a way to ensure safety and that it is a supervised, very structured environment to focus on the kid in that household that didn’t do anything wrong.”