3 NJ teachers accused of inappropriate sexual relationships | Tomorrow's headlines tonight

Tomorrow's headline tonight, so essentially it is a chance to speak with reporters about the stories that they are working on, the stories that they broke and what they are looking into next. So we're going to begin with this first story that takes us out to Jersey, where at least three teachers at a small performing arts school have been accused of inappropriate sexual relationships with students to have pleaded guilty to child endangerment charges. But what's especially troubling from this report is the allegations that school administrators knew what was happening and did not intervene. Joining us now is Mike Davis, investigative reporter with the Asbury Park Press. He has been working on this story for more than a year. Mikey, Mike, thanks so much for being with us this evening. No, glad to be here, Frances. Obviously, it's a pretty awful story. But, you know, I think it's important that we talk about these really serious and startling allegations as much as we can. Yeah, well, let's just begin with the background of the school, Mike. It is a relatively small school, a small performing arts school with just a couple hundred students, I believe. Yet three teachers have been accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with students. How did you first discover what was going on at this performing arts academy? You know, just in the course of my reporting, I had a source reached out to me who told me about a teacher who had just recently been sentenced, parole supervision for life no prison sentence for having a sexual relationship with one of his former students and the thing that really jumped out to me was not that not what the source told me about this teacher but the fact that there was apparently another one that everybody knew about that it also had some sort of sexual relationship with with a student and at the same time there was a third teacher that actually ended up marrying one of his former students so I chased this story at the Grunner Performing Arts Academy down in Ocean County, New Jersey for a long time but really the bombshell came uh during the over the summer when two former students filed lawsuits uh both former students of Doug Bollinger uh who has been kind of the poster child for this problem at the Grunner Performing Arts Academy and those lawsuits included not just details of like pretty horrific abuse but also made some serious allegations that other teachers administrators even district officials knew or should have known about all this and instead of doing something about it they covered it up or at least ignored it and dismissed it and in a couple cases even retaliated against people who tried to report it yeah mike often i think as reporters you start looking into one story and then you uncover a bigger story or you get more follow-ups talk to me about the process in your reporting of the story because i believe a principal was even aware of some of these allegations and again this is a relatively small school i think anyone who's been to a small school know that people talk kids talk and this gets around in not only the school building but also maybe to to the kids homes yeah that's that's true Francis, the Grand P Performing Arts Academy only has about 60 kids in a class the teaching staff is only ever it's more than never more than 30 in any given year so uh what the what the lawsuits allege uh there's two pretty specific incidents involving two different principals, one who replaced the other. One principal allegedly told Doug Bollinger that they knew about this relationship and he had to keep it more discreet. He had to be discreet about it. The second principal that's mentioned in one of these lawsuits actually walked in on Bollinger and one of his students. They ushered the student away and they never brought it up to either the teacher or the student ever again. And what the lawsuit says is, you know, take away everything else. Take away, like you said, it's a small school and people talk those are two pretty clear examples of somebody that knew somebody who knew what was going on and chose to do nothing about it obviously the school district has denied all this they said the first time they heard about most of these allegations were when these lawsuits were filed but they are some pretty startling allegations in those lawsuits and in your reporting Mike you spoke with more than a former a dozen former students rather and you reportedly or you were reporting about kind of a culture at the school where kids had to grow up quickly. What did you mean by that? And remind me of the grades and the ages of the students at this Performing Arts Academy. Yeah, it's a pretty standard high school for New Jersey. It's grades 9 through 12. It's a performing arts school, so you do have to audition to get in. It's part of a vocational school district, which is part of why what I believe after doing all this reporting is part of why this problem went unsolved is that nobody pays attention to a vo-tech district. But, yeah, you're right. I did talk to a lot of former students across 10 years, and the common theme was that it was very competitive, which I think we all know about performing arts high schools, but they felt like the only way to succeed was to get in with their teacher and spend as much time as possible. So, you know, ditching class to go hang out with them, but also doing all these really long and grueling rehearsals for the shows. But it also wasn't that weird to hear teachers take students out for dinner and even text each other after hours. Those shows, too, are pretty interesting because one of the common themes the students told me was that they felt pretty adult for a bunch of teenagers. Now, you know, they put on Cabaret and Sweet Charity, which, yeah, sure, those are some pretty adult shows, but one student told me he was actually even assigned to sing a song about domestic violence from the musical The Wild Party at 15, 16 years old. So what became kind of clear is that if you take a teenager and you put them in this adult environment and you tell them they're an adult or an artist, they have to be uncomfortable and you make them spend all their free time around adults. It's not that crazy that some of them entered into what they felt was an adult relationship. Now, of course, it wasn't an adult relationship. It was a predatory relationship. But students I spoke with all told me they felt like that when they heard the rumors about teachers and students, they felt like clearly the administration is OK with this or they would have done something about it. Mike, what has the district said in response to your reporting and you reaching out? Have they conducted a formal investigation? Where are they in that process? You know, I know oftentimes with allegations, they put the teacher on leave. But you mentioned the lawsuit also revealed so many allegations. Where is the school district on this? And what is the reaction from parents and the greater school community? You know, that's actually the the subject of kind of our next bit of reporting on this is that you would think in a school community when something like this comes out, you know, everybody's showing up at the next board of ed meeting with their pitchforks, right? And it's been really a muted response. Almost everybody that I've heard from is a former student of this school. The district, because there hasn't been this kind of big public outcry, has been pretty quiet about it. Their position is that when the lawsuits were filed, they referred them to the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office to make sure that they were investigated. The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office is doing their job and they are investigating this, but they haven't conducted any sort of internal investigation. They've never even acknowledged this publicly. And, you know, even though there are a lot of allegations in that lawsuit, you're still talking about two teachers that have been convicted, pleaded guilty to having these relationships. And the district has never said anything about it. The school certainly has never said anything about it. And I think that's very interesting. Part of what I'm going to be tackling in the coming days and weeks is really looking at the officials in Ocean County, you know, the legislators, the county officials that have been pretty quiet about this. Now, Ocean County has said they expect the district to do a full investigation. They expect them to pass the kinds of policies you would expect after a scandal like this breaks. But there's really been little movement on that front. And I think the question is, at what point does somebody have to put pressure on the district to really address these concerns and really take some meaningful action? And Mike, this is really why we are launching this segment, Tomorrow's Headlines, tonight, because we want to talk to reporters in their process of finding out some of this information and developing their stories you know you've been working on this for over a year but there's so many questions that you still are seeking answers to what do you think would be your aha moment in oh i've i've found an answer or i'm trying to get an answer to this question and now it can move forward especially when it comes to as you mentioned this lack of public outrage that we're not seeing because oftentimes as we know in reporting right the district or officials only respond when there's public outrage or when their feet are held to the fire yeah i mean ocean county like anywhere else in new jersey especially is very politically connected it is a the vocational district that looks over the Grandin Performing Arts Academy uh there are people involved in the school district that have connections to every different facet of public life in ocean county And I'm not saying whether that's good or bad. Certainly it's not unique. But I do think it's interesting that, you know, I think around, especially nowadays, you know, with all the culture war stuff that goes on, easy thing, right, is you hear the term grooming thrown around a lot in really awful and misleading ways. But here you have really clear-cut examples of grooming, according to a lot of sexual assault experts I've spoken with. But what about our legislators, for example? I've tried to speak to almost all the legislators in Ocean County. Nobody has been willing to talk about this as of yet. But it seems interesting to me that they are willing to speak openly about the Newark Public School District, for example, right? A big political hotbed thing going on right now. That's a district miles and miles away. But I find it very interesting that they're not willing to speak up about what's happening in their own backyard, especially with a situation as serious as this one. Yeah. Situation where everyone's kind of pointing the fingers at anyone else but themselves. All right. Exactly. Mike Davis with the Asbury Park Press. Mike, thank you so much for your reporting and giving us a look into what you're investigating next. This really is why we are launching this segment, because we want to kind of talk about what these reporters like you are looking into before those next headlines are made and looking forward to the next developments in the story. Because, as you mentioned, so many people impacted yet still haven't seen that lack of the public outrage, so to speak, to get the district to respond the way maybe you had hoped they would in the beginning of your reporting. So thank you, Mike. Yeah, thank you, Francis. Glad to be here.