Ex-Kentlake High School teacher Barbara Jeanne Anderson pleaded guilty Friday morning to first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor for having sexual contact with a 17-year-old male student.
Anderson is scheduled to be sentenced at 1 p.m. Sept. 9 in Courtroom 4J before King County Superior Court Judge Jay White at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. The felony charge carries a sentencing range of six months to one year in jail, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s website.
Anderson was booked into jail Friday at the Regional Justice Center after entering her plea. Anderson will receive credit for the time she serves between now and her sentencing.
Anderson, a former math teacher, had been scheduled to go to trial Sept. 12 for a charge of first-degree sexual misconduct. She had a pre-trial hearing set for Aug. 12.
King County prosecutors filed the charge against Anderson on April 4 after it was discovered in March that the 37-year-old teacher had an inappropriate relationship with one of her male students.
Anderson pleaded not guilty to the charge in April.
According to the prosecutor’s probable cause document, the relationship was discovered after the boy’s mother found hundreds of text messages between the two in the space of about three weeks.
Kent School District officials contacted the King County Sheriff’s Office March 8, and an investigation began, which resulted in Anderson’s arrest March 17. She was released the next day.
An ongoing relationship through text messages and a social networking website allegedly led to sexual contact between Anderson and the boy, according to the probable cause document.
The statute used in this case is written to prohibit teachers (or other school employees) from having sexual intercourse with students who are 16 or 17 years old, when the employee is at least five years older than the student.
The age of consent for a sexual relationship is 16 in Washington state.
Anderson was fired by the school district on July 29 because of the guilty plea, said district spokesman Chris Loftis. Anderson had been on paid administrative leave since officials found out about the incident.
“People get outraged when they hear that,” Loftis said about Anderson getting paid over the last few months. “But if you think about the legal possibilities, if you let someone go for unjustifiable reasons, you face a lawsuit. Legally, it’s the proper thing to do. Everyone is innocent until they are proven guilty.”
This marks the second case of sexual misconduct this year involving a teacher with Kent connections.
In April, Taryn Fairbanks, another former Kentlake teacher was sentenced in Seattle to six months in jail for first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor for having a sexual act with a 17-year-old male student in June when she was a teacher at Garfield High School.
Fairbanks, a former teacher in the Kent and Renton school districts, was sentenced by King County Superior Court Judge Greg Canova at the King County Courthouse. Fairbanks pleaded guilty to the charge March 18 before her case went to trial.
According to King County jail records, Fairbanks began serving her sentence March 17 and was released on June 23 because her sentence had expired.
Fairbanks taught language arts at Garfield and was an advisor for the school newspaper, The Messenger. She taught at Garfield since 2006 after previous teaching jobs in Renton and Kent.
Fairbanks, then known as Taryn Stermer, taught from 2001 to 2004 at Kentlake. She taught from 2004 to 2006 at Lindbergh High School in Renton.
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