Tift County Schools Press Release
Release Date: November 8, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, the administration at Northeast Middle School was alerted by the school’s SRO to an incident involving the inappropriate treatment of a student by two staff members. The school requested district support and an investigation was initiated.
Upon the initiation of a personnel investigation into such allegations, staff members are placed on administrative leave while the Human Resources team investigates. The HR team carefully reviews the circumstances and, when appropriate, takes employment action. The district also assesses if any actions may be a violation of educator ethics, in which case a report is made to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (PSC) for their investigation. Further, whenever a staff member is accused of inappropriate treatment of a child, district procedure is to notify both DFCS and law enforcement, so they may investigate.
On Tuesday, November 5th, Tift County Schools began the investigation and notified the family of the involved student. Tift County Schools then made a DFCS report and an official request for law enforcement support within the 24 hour mandated reporting window. On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 6, 2024, law enforcement informed Tift County School’s Security that warrants were being issued.
At this time, there are open personnel and criminal investigations surrounding these matters. As such, this limits the amount of information that can be shared regarding this matter.
We ensure that any accusation of the mistreatment of students will be investigated swiftly and handled appropriately.