Mount Vernon News

MOUNT VERNON — The official investigation into allegations against middle school science teacher John Freshwater is under way, according to David Millstone, attorney for the Mount Vernon City Schools.

The investigation, he said, is being conducted by Human Resources On Call, headquartered in Concord, Ohio.

“They are experienced in doing investigation into employee issues and misconduct,” Millstone said. “They have done work with a number of public schools. They do all sorts of human resources-related things, including investigations.

“[In this case] they’ve been asked merely to come up with what are objective facts, not to reach any conclusions as to what should or should not be done as a result of those [facts]. The legal analysis and what the actions will be are going to be up to the school board, ultimately. We’ll give the board advice on the legal side once we have facts.”

Part of the investigation, Millstone said, will be to look into the allegation of harm being done to a student. He said the school has been provided with pictures of the injury allegedly caused by Freshwater, and he has seen them.

“I don’t know if burn is the right term to use to describe it,” Millstone said. “Clearly the flesh was raised; and it was red. In the letter of complaint the [family] referred to it as a burn.

“This was some sort of electrostatic device, and I know the student volunteered to see what it felt like. There were several students who volunteered. The student ended up having pain, according to the complaint, and being wakened from sleep. We’re investigating into what device was used, whether it would have caused that [injury], whether it could have caused that. That’s part of the investigation.”

Millstone said the school district discussed the allegations with Children Services at the time of the complaint, but no action was taken by the agency.

Without discussing specific cases due to confidentiality requirements, Aimee Frye, social program specialist with Knox County Children and Family Services, said a telephone screening is the first step when an allegation of child abuse or neglect is made.

“There are many pieces that go into the decision whether to pursue an investigation,” she said. “Some of that depends on the information we receive from the person that’s calling in. And it has to meet the legal mandates for the definitions of an abused child or a neglected child. Some of those legal terms can be vague, which makes it kind of tough sometimes for us to make the decision solely based on those legal mandates. There are a lot of factors which go into that decision, including the age of the child, what’s being reported and what type of risk they’re at, and the potential for further harm.

“This is what the state says to us: ‘The standard for accepting information as a child abuse or neglect investigation will be serious harm,’ and that’s the focus. They gave us some screening guidelines, but they also said it is up to the individual county to interpret those. When they say ‘serious harm,’ determining what that is and balancing the other pieces can be difficult. ... Our focus is to keep kids safe and to keep kids with their families.”

Millstone said another part of the investigation will probably deal with allegations that Freshwater has been proselytizing in the classroom.

“Your current superintendent just officially started in January, and the middle school principal is new this year, too,” Millstone said. “ It’s been brought to their attention and they are investigating it. They’re both doing something about it. What people may or may not have done in the past, quite frankly, I think that’s going to be part of the investigation, too.”

No conclusions have been reached as to whether there has been improper religious teaching in Freshwater’s classroom, but the school district has assigned an administrator to his classroom as an observer while the investigation is being done.

“We put the observer in there,” Millstone said, “rather than remove [Freshwater] and pay him to stay home while the investigation went on. That is also, in some ways, an expense, because you have somebody spending all their time on one employee rather than dealing with the 15 or 20 that a supervisor would typically be supervising at one time.”