A Savannah, Ga. teacher has been fired after students accessed nude selfies on her cell phone.
Lekeshia Jones
The Savannah-Chatham school board fired Lekeshia Jones, 34, on July 30 for failing to report the incident and for continued insubordination in the weeks following the incident, according to the Savannah Morning News.
According to the newspaper, district officials claimed Jones had allowed students to use her phone in the past, and gave them her password. At one point earlier this year, she left them and the device unattended, and the students accessed her phone and viewed the pictures. School authorities said Jones did not immediately tell them of the incident but attempted to track down those responsible herself via social media.
After the school’s principal discovered the truth, Jones was removed from her teaching position at the school for three weeks and assigned to a central office job, but failed to report to that job for three weeks. In that time, district officials said she forged an offer of a teaching position for the upcoming school year in order to obtain a loan.
When she resumed work at another middle school, according to media reports, she left her phone unattended and it was stolen.
“She gave her password to the kids and they somehow got on it, and when she found out she didn’t report it but had the kids send pictures back to her. Those pictures shouldn’t have been in the classroom in the first place. Policy clearly says if you take a cell phone to school, it’s your responsibility to take care of it,” school board attorney Leamon Holliday told the Morning News. “Then incredibly she takes her cell phone to a second school and it gets stolen.”
The photos were circulated to many middle schoolers via social media, and depict Jones lying in bed with her nude body partially draped in a sheet, a nude selfie and a close up of female anatomy.
Jones claims that the students who first viewed the photos hacked into her phone. According to Jones, she did not give out her password and the students somehow figured it out on their own.
“I’m grown,” Jones said. “Whatever is in my phone is my business. There is nothing in the policy about what you can or cannot have in your phone.”
Jones has filed a wrongful termination suit against the school board, and said she plans to press charges on the teens that she claims hacked into her phone.
