A Texas high school teacher is out of the classroom after allegedly making pornography “visible” to students during class, prompting one disturbed teen to report it, school officials and police said.
Police in La Porte were notified of the incident after a student was “alarmed by what they saw” on the personal laptop of a male teacher at La Porte High School on Tuesday, Sgt. Bennie Boles told The Post.
Investigators sought to file a misdemeanor charge of displaying harmful materials to minors against the unidentified teacher, but the Harris County District Attorney’s Office declined to pursue that count. Instead, police will seek a lesser misdemeanor charge of obscene display or distribution, which is expected to be filed Thursday, Boles said.
The penalty for the Class C misdemeanor is typically a fine of less than $500 with no jail time, Boles said.
Authorities learned of the incident after a student told a school employee, who then relayed the accusation to a school resource officer, Boles said.
A video that purportedly shows the pornography on the teacher’s laptop is circulating on Snapchat, KFSN reports.
School officials, meanwhile, said in a statement that the teacher had been immediately removed from the campus pending the outcome of an investigation.
“The matter was referred to the La Porte Police Department,” the statement read. “The outcome of its preliminary investigation and conversation with the District Attorney’s office is that the District Attorney is not inclined to press charges.”
The teacher, who was not identified by school officials, will remain on leave with pay until the probe is complete.
One student inside the classroom at the time told KPRC that the teacher stepped away from his desk to help a classmate and the offending material was seen on his laptop. Another teen then captured a six-second video and posted it to social media, the station reports.
“That is a private thing, and I understand that people have their private things that they do,” the student’s mother, Kira Lackey-Thompson, told the station. “It’s an adult thing. There is a time and place. In my child’s classroom, during school hours, my child in the classroom? Not the time and place.”
Lackey-Thompson — whose son did not record the teacher, she said — also questioned whether the incident was the first time the teacher allegedly brought his personal habits into the classroom environment.
“How long has he been doing it?” she asked. “How many other kids have seen it and didn’t say anything? If you feel comfortable enough to watch pornography in a classroom full of underage children, this is not the profession for you.”
