The Poway Unified School district is investigating multiple complaints made about a male Mt. Carmel High School teacher's alleged inappropriate behavior and interactions with students.
The complaints came from anonymous students and surface on the Instagram page @urvoiceneedstobeheard. In them, students describe alleged inappropriate behavior by the teacher, which they claim has gone unchecked for years.
NBC 7 spoke to the student who claims to have made the page. She said she doesn’t want her name or face out there because she doesn’t want to be retaliated against.
“He’s really creepy… that’s kind of what you hear from all the girls at the school,” the anonymous creator said.
Soon after creating the page, the Poway Unified School District reached out to the creator on Instagram asking the creator to tell the accusers to reach out to the district’s investigator.
NBC 7 obtained copies of the formal complaints made to the district. Here’s some of what they say:
“He would stare at me and the other girls in the class as well as touch their shoulders a lot.”
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“He would crouch beside my desk, oftentimes touching my shoulder, and would almost whisper in my ear.”
Some students say some of his remarks were racist. One student recalls, “He said the n-word in class,” while complaining about how unfair it was that he couldn’t say it as a white man.
In another complaints, a student said about three years ago she took a list of students complaints regarding the teacher to a school counselor, but nothing was done.
She then graduated and lost hope.
A petition has since been started demanding justice for the teacher’s accusers. It has more than 2,000 signatures.
Ro’aa Alkhawaja, a rising junior at Mt. Carmel High School, is one of them.
She said the teacher never did anything to her, but she did witness a moment where he made her friend feel uneasy.
"He looks her up and down and then said you’re looking really nice today,” Alkhawaja said.
Alkhawaja said her friends have similar stories. One of them, according to Alkhawaja, “watched him go up to somebody and she was wearing a spaghetti shirt tank top and he started playing with it.”
Poway Unified School District told NBC 7, “We did receive some specific complaints that we are investigating.”
NBC 7 is not releasing the accused teacher’s name because no action has been taken against him.
NBC 7 reached out to the teacher, but he offered no comment.
