After four hours of training by Utah’s Granite School District, 19-year-old Christopher Page was deemed sufficiently qualified to stand in as an “emergency substitute” at Churchill Junior High in Sandy, Utah. Somehow, during Page’s brief tenure as a Granite School District substitute, he was able to get the cell phone number of one of his female 13-year-old students. Thus began a relationship that culminated with Page being discovered in his car, in the middle of the night, in the topless company of one of his junior high school students. According to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune, Page allegedly told officers that he had kissed the girl and that she had offered him oral sex.
Page was arrested on suspicion of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and is being held without bail in the Salt Lake County jail.
It seems that most of the outrage in this case centers not on what this 19-year-old allegedly did, which of course is completely inexcuseable, but on what the Granite School District didn’t do. In other words, they failed to properly screen and qualify those that would be teachers in their classrooms. I doubt there is even an “emergency substitute”policy on the books for the school district. From what I can discern, school policy is that substitutes have at least 48 semester hours of college. Not four hours of training in some back room. What about other administrators filling in? It seems that the principle would be appropriately qualified. Others in the career development and/or administrative office may also meet these minimum qualifications. Maybe they were busy? Was this 19-year-old honestly the best person available? It seems to me that if they are that desperate for substitute teachers, and there is no suitable and qualified teacher to instruct, then they should send the students home!
The way I see it, the District was negligent in allowing this pedophile to come onto campus and have access to impressionable junior high students. As a parent of a 13-year-old girl, I would be outraged if my child were put in this situation. Luckily, the 19-year-old was caught and arrested before the encounter developed into something much more serious. I can only hope that Utah’s school districts take a lesson from this and never allow this to happen again.
Ron Kramer is a Utah personal injury and accident attorney in Draper, Utah, with experience in bringing claims against negligent school districts.
Published by: Ron Kramer
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