Head who had 'sexual contact' with student in class hired to run school 15yrs on

07 January 2024 , 17:39

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Jessica Bader's past came back to haunt her when she joined another school

A woman who had an "inappropriate relationship" with a student at a school where she was teaching managed to get a job as a principal of another school 15 years after the scandal.

Jessica Bader, 51, worked as a teacher in the early 2000s – but resigned after her teaching certificates were suspended for four years for having sexual contact with a male student at East Meadow High School in Long Island. But she was hired as a school principal after she lied about her teaching certificates.

But Bader was hired by another school district in between her scandal in 2006, working at George J Ryan Middle School in Queens for nine years. She then successfully applied for a job at Oyster Bay-East Norwich in Long Island, New York. When applying for the OBEN job she made no mention of her time at East Meadow in the paperwork and denied she had ever had her teaching certificate suspended.

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Bader joined the Oyster Bay-East Norwich district in 2022 and was promoted to principal in 2023 (News12 Long Island)

An Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District announcement said: "With the school year having officially begun, students at James H. Vernon School were greeted by someone new when they arrived for the first day of classes. Jessica Bader, the former director of humanities for kindergarten through 12th grade in the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District, welcomed the students as the new principal of Vernon."

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Laurie Kowalsky, president of OBEN's BOE, said: "Bader had previously worked as an assistant principal at George J. Ryan Middle School 216 in Manhattan for nine years and arrived at OBEN last year to take over the role of director of humanities K-12. She's very friendly and very conscientious and very excited which is great; half this job is having the passion for the kids."

Bader was initially welcomed as the school's new principal (Instagram/obencsd)

However, just weeks after taking on the new post, a statement sent to parents revealed Bader "will be away from the building for some time". After her abrupt resignation - an investigation revealed the decade-old scandal and members of the OBEN community have been left horrified by the revelations about her past.

Bader's relationship with the pupil went on from 2004 to 2005, throughout the student's junior and senior year, according to legal documents, and involved "physical, intimate and/or sexual contact, improper communications and/or improper correspondence". She never faced any charges because the student was aged over 18, the legal age of consent and the detective overseeing the case decided that no crime had been committed.

Her defence was based around the consensual nature of her relationship with the student, his age and her experience with postpartum depression after recently giving birth to twins. According to legal documents, Bader "did not seem to find any emotional or psychological harm to the student from her conduct when she was addressing the reasons her interactions with the student was inappropriate".

Paul Donald