COVINGTON, Ky. — When three of her students came into her classroom with a strange request one day in December 2022, Lisa Snider-Gross said she realized there was a problem.
“They asked me that if they have to be removed from the room for disciplinary reasons in the future, that I contact the assistant principal, who was female, instead of Mr. Bohannon,” said Snider-Gross, who was a teacher at Covington Independent Public Schools in 2022 and 2023. She worked at the Transformational Learning Center, an alternative school often referred to as the TLC. “And when I asked them why, that’s when all three of them started sharing with me incidents in which he had touched them and made them uncomfortable.”
Upon hearing the students’ request, Snider-Gross reported their statements to the TLC’s counselor. Thus began a nearly 2-year-long series of events that culminated in an investigation by the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which found Covington Independent had violated several policies related to Title IX, federal legislation aimed at preventing sex-based discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. Specifically, the report found the following:
- The district failed “to respond to reports of sexual harassment in a manner consistent with the Title IX regulations, including by failing to promptly discuss available supportive measures and provide information about how to file a formal written complaint.”
- The district failed “to complete a Title IX investigation.”
- The district failed “to comply with the procedural requirements of Title IX” by inadequately displaying grievance procedures throughout the district.
The man Snider-Gross mentioned is William “Sean” Bohannon, the former principal of the district’s Transformational Learning Center, an alternative program for students in grades 3 through 12 with recurring behavioral problems. Bohannon retired from the district on Nov. 30, 2023.
The Office for Civil Rights, shortened to OCR in agency correspondence, identified four students who made complaints about the former principal. The OCR’s investigation does not determine whether the four students’ allegations are true or not. Rather, it offers an assessment of how well Covington Independent conformed to federal regulations in the actions it took to respond to the allegations of sexual harassment.
The OCR’s investigation culminated in Superintendent Alvin Garrison signing a voluntary resolution agreement with the OCR on Sept. 9, 2024, essentially agreeing to institute a set of policy changes to ensure compliance with Title IX requirements, including doing a systemic review of all its sexual harassment complaints, provide new training related to sexual harassment and perform a climate survey for high school students at the Transformational Learning Center, among other measures.
WCPO's news partner, LINK nky, investigated this story through interviews with teachers, students, and parents. We also closely examined hundreds of pages of documents related to the case obtained through public records requests and other sources.
The story serves as a window into how a school district – one struggling in the face of poor academic performance, declining student enrollment and politically charged discourses around public education – reacted when some of its most vulnerable students reported they felt threatened.
LINK nky reached out to Bohannon’s legal team several times, but each time they declined to comment. The district, on the other hand, sent the following email response when LINK nky posed a series of questions to district administrators:
“Public employees and students have privacy rights under various State and Federal laws,” the statement reads. “Therefore, consistent with these laws, it is the policy of this District not to comment on specific matters involving personnel and/or students, or student safety.”
The statement concludes by saying that the district follows all relevant policies and laws around student safety, including Title IX mandates, “as well as statutory reporting and cooperation with investigations undertaken by community partner agencies such as the Covington Police and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Child Protective Branch.”
The district declined to make additional comments on the matter and did not permit LINK nky to interview staff members.
What we know
Bohannon interviewed and hired Snider-Gross in August 2022. During the interview, Snider-Gross said Bohannon informed her that he had ambitions of becoming a superintendent.
The OCR’s investigation lays out the events leading up to Snider-Gross making a complaint to the federal office.
The OCR cites ahandwritten account of a conversation between Snider-Gross’ teaching assistant Charisse Welch (who did not agree to be interviewed for this story), which describes a conversation between Welch and a student after the student was referred to Bohannon.
Welch had sent one student in particular to Bohannon’s office for behavioral problems the day before the trio of students informed Snider-Gross of their discomfort (LINK nky refrains from naming child victims of alleged harassment, so students will be referred to as they appear in the OCR’s investigation: Students 1, 2, 3 and 4).
On the day in question, Bohannon brought Student 1 into the office, where he asked the student to identify different emotions on a spinning wheel, game-show style. Student 1 said Bohannon touched her shoulders, called her beautiful and generally made her feel uncomfortable. As a result, Student 1 asked Welch to send her to the Assistant Principal, Paula Capano, instead of Bohannon in the future if she was ever referred to the principal’s office. Capano moved into the principal position at the center in July 2024.
“She [Student 1] stated that he was rubbing on her arm and telling her how pretty she was. Which made her feel uncomfortable,” the note reads. The note indicates that Bohannon had a mirror in his office.
“He was telling her to look in the mirror but would not look up,” the note continues. “She kept staring straight ahead. She just wanted to get out of his office.”
The note goes on to state that Bohannon did not mention the behavior that resulted in Student 1 being sent to his office. The teaching assistant’s note concludes by saying “I apologize[d] to [Student 1] and stated that she should feel safe with all staff. And that I would call Ms. Dusing [the counselor] or Ms. Capano next time.”
Statements from LINK nky’s interview with Snider-Gross match the description of events in the note.
“He never talked to her about the incident, never talked to her about anything related to behavior modification, according to what she shared with me,” Snider-Gross said.
According to both the OCR report and an interview LINK nky did with Student 1 and her mother, Bohannon would call the student out of the class “almost every day,” as the OCR report put it. When the student spoke with LINK nky, she said it was not always clear why she was getting called down.
The OCR report and other documents indicate that the incident in Bohannon’s office occurred on Dec. 7, 2022, a day that Snider-Gross was absent from school. Students 1, 2 and 3 informed Snider-Gross of the events the following day, Dec. 8. A separate hand-written account from Snider-Gross dated Dec. 13, 2022, which bears her name, states that other students had shared similar sentiments of discomfort around Bohannon. Student 3 said that “her sister had been here (at TLC) last year, and that she also felt uncomfortable because Mr. Bohannon would put his arm around her neck, and one time his arm fell and hit her on the butt,” according to Snider-Gross’ note. An excerpt of the note also appears in the OCR report.
“I felt it was necessary to report this to somebody in administration because to my way of thinking and to the training that we had been through and not knowing anything about his past, I thought, well, maybe he’s just wholly unaware of his approach to people,” Snider-Gross told LINK nky. “So, somebody in administration needed to have a conversation with him to let him know that there are some young ladies that find his behavior disturbing to make him aware of it. That was what was in my mind. So, I talked to our school counselor, Kate Dusing.”
Snider-Gross had intended to tell Capano about the incidents, too, but she couldn’t find the opportunity to do so throughout the course of the school day. Still, she wanted to make sure the students got some help.
“I spoke to [Dusing] to let her know because I thought probably some of the girls might need some counseling,” Snider-Gross said.
The day went on. The bell rang. The students went home.
Then Bohannon confronted Snider-Gross and her teaching assistant in their classroom.
The OCR’s investigation indicates that Dusing informed Capano about what the students said before Snider-Gross could. Capano then told Bohannon, but she did not reveal it was Snider-Gross who made the complaint because “she did not know,” according to the OCR report. As a result, Bohannon called Dusing who, according to the OCR summary, said Bohannon “pressured her to reveal which teacher made the report to her and that she eventually provided the Complainant’s [Snider-Gross’] name. Immediately thereafter, the Principal went to [Snider-Gross’] classroom and confronted her in front of the Paraprofessional.”
Upon entering the room, Bohannon chastised Snider-Gross for relaying her concerns to others, rather than to him directly.
“He started yelling at me and he basically said, ‘We got a problem here,’” Snider-Gross told LINK nky. “‘These little girls,’ and he didn’t call them girls, he called them ‘heifers.’”
The ‘heifers,’ Bohannon allegedly said, would make up any excuse to get out of trouble, including making up stories about being touched. Bohannon continued to deride the students, Snider-Gross said, to the point that her assistant became uncomfortable and asked him to stop. Bohannon concluded by saying that any future issues should be brought to him directly, Snider-Gross said. The OCR report quotes Snider-Gross’ written account of the encounter:
“When these little heffas get in trouble, they always make something up to get out of it! I don’t mess with no heffas! The next time one of these heffas wants to accuse me of something, you will bring them to me so they can accuse me to my face! This little heffa has no idea what’s coming to her. I’ve called her mom in for a meeting and she is going to be so surprised! I’m gonna get her and she won’t even see it coming!” Bohannon reportedly said during this exchange.
Snider-Gross described the situation in her interview with LINK nky.
"‘This little heifer,’ and he never named her, ‘doesn’t know what’s coming to her,’” Snider-Gross said, quoting Bohannon. “‘I’ve already called her mom. Her mom’s gonna come in here for a meeting, and she’s not going to know what hit her.’ So, basically, he was threatening retaliation against this young lady for reporting his behavior.”
Transcripts from the investigation quote interviews with Bohannon, in which he acknowledges that he confronted Snider-Gross and her assistant to express that they were entertaining “nonsense, and we just got to be professional in how we handle things, and that’s what I made clear to both of them… [t]hey were gossiping, and they were just basically listening to what the girl’s [sic] wanting to say.”
He also admits to referring to the student as a “heifer.”
“You asked somebody did I say ‘heifer’ cause I, I said I’m going to let this heifer know,” Bohannon said, according to the OCR report. “I wasn’t calling her out of turn. I said I’m going to let this heifer know that this is how we deal with business and this is how we’re going to deal with this head on.”
He added that he didn’t mean the word as an insult but rather “just a female.”
Bohannon, according to the OCR report, provided an interview with an external lawyer hired by the district, in which he explained his actions.
“The Principal told District counsel that the only way he touches students is with a fist bump, high five, or slap on the shoulder or back,” the report reads. “In addition, with regard to telling students that they are beautiful, he explained that he tries to explain to students that they have to act the way they look, and that if they come into school looking cute, but then use profanity and have negative behavior, he has the student look in the mirror and explain to them that their behavior does not match their appearance. The Assistant Principal told District counsel that the Principal would frequently tell female students that they looked beautiful or that they looked nice, and that prior to COVID-19, there were a couple of complaints from female students that he made them uncomfortable.”
The investigation also states that at least some of the students regarded Bohannon with suspicion, and that fellow staff were aware of how he often referred to female students.
“The [teaching assistant] told District counsel that she was a lunch-room monitor and had overheard Student 1 and other students talking about the Principal and refer to him as a ‘pervert,’” the report says. “All District staff interviewed by District counsel also confirmed that the Principal frequently referred to female students as ‘heffas.’”
Student 1, her parents and Bohannon met on Dec. 9, 2022 to discuss the student’s behavioral problems. The meeting had been scheduled before the student made her complaint on Dec. 8. According to the OCR report, Bohannon immediately disclosed he was under investigation.
“I just want y’all to know that I’m being investigated for inappropriate conduct with some of the girls here, and I want you to know its [sic] false,” the Office for Civil Rights reports Bohannon said.
The report states that Student 1’s father then asked her directly if any impropriety had occurred; Student 1 “looked down and shook her head no,” the report reads.
The same day, Student 1’s mother went to the district’s central office on East 7th Street because she didn’t feel safe having her daughter at the school. The OCR report states the mother spoke with Cuncray Collins, an administrative assistant “who assured her that nothing happened and [the student] was fine to continue at the center,” the investigation reads.
The OCR report describes another incident in which Student 1 said she was made to feel uncomfortable, this one on Dec. 14, 2022.
“Student 1 reported to the Complainant that the Principal made her uncomfortable again by approaching her and Student 3 during class, walking in between them, putting his arms around their shoulders, massaging their shoulders, and stating ‘I just want to see what you’re working on,’” the OCR report reads.
An email from Collins describes another meeting between Collins, the student and her mother, where the student demonstrated the alleged act.
“I asked the mother if Principal touched her daughter’s breast because during the demonstration the hand was near the breast,” Collins’ email reads. “The mother stated ‘no.’ The daughter was present during the entire conversation.”
The mother said that Student 1 had told her at first that Bohannon had not touched her breast, a statement the mother believed. Yet, a few days later, the mother told LINK nky, Student 1’s emotional state began to decline before she finally broke down and changed her position. When LINK nky interviewed Student 1, she said Bohannon had touched her breast, and the OCR report states the mother “told [the Office for Civil Rights] that [the student] told her the Principal’s hand grazed the side of her breast during the interaction.”
After some discussion with administrative staff, the student was allowed to do online work from home, but anemail from Capano dated Jan. 9, 2023, indicates that Student 1’s work was deteriorating, and she was at risk of facing truancy.
Student 1’s mother said the student has since begun mental health treatment. The mother eventually sought out legal representation, but no lawsuit was ever filed.
Collins reported the new incident to the district’s Human Resources Director, Ken Kippenbrock, who, in turn, made a report to the Kentucky Cabinet of Health and Family Services.
Snider-Gross filed a grievance with the district on Dec. 13, 2022, which included the hand-written account of the events leading up to Bohannon’s confrontation after school as well as an account of the encounter itself. The notes attributed to her assistant are included in the grievance. The grievance focuses on Snider-Gross’ interactions with Bohannon on Dec. 8, 2022; the second incident from Dec. 14, 2022, had not yet occurred.
Bohannon was suspended with pay between Dec. 16 and Dec. 20, 2022. Then, on Jan. 3, 2023, Superintendent Alvin Garrison tendered disciplinary action against Bohannon, concluding that Bohannon violated district policy 03.27, which prohibits “immorality, misconduct, or conduct unbecoming of a school employee,” among other prohibitions.
Firstly, the letter tells Bohannon that insisting reports of misconduct come directly to him impedes teachers’ “legal duty to report allegations of misconduct to others, including authorities, even if you or they believe the allegation to be without merit. They should, in fact, not take the student to you if the allegation is against you.”
It also confirms Bohannon’s use of the word “heifer” or “heffa,” further stating that “you have been advised that this is unprofessional in the past by Principal Duffy and you continue to do this.”
Finally, the letter states that Bohannon’s confrontation with Snider-Gross was “perceived as aggressive and intimidating.”
Garrison then revoked the pay Bohannon received during his initial suspension, ordered him to take mandatory reporting and “respect in the workplace” training, assigned a corrective action plan, ordered him to not retaliate against other teachers and staff members and instructed him to “refrain from touching students and adults.”
Garrison’s note does not mention the students’ complaints directly, but states complaints made to Covington Police and Cabinet of Health and Family Services were “separate from this grievance.”
A letter dated Jan. 4, 2023, from Kippenbrock to Snider-Gross describes the investigative process the district undertook upon hearing the allegations against Bohannon.
“In my capacity as Executive Director of Human Resources and Operations I have reviewed the investigative report from witnesses, including you and Mr. Bohannon, and our investigation is now complete,” the letter reads. “The information has been shared with Superintendent Garrison. Based upon the investigation it does appear that unprofessional behavior and violations of the District’s policies governing reporting of incidents took place, and that there was conduct unbecoming a school employee in violation of board policy 03.27.
“Although privacy considerations limit our ability to share confidential information with you about other employees, I can tell you that the appropriate action has been taken to ensure that such conduct does not repeat itself.”
Bohannon’s personnel file shows that he completed threetraining courses, including ones on sexual harassment policies and retaliation liability, in the middle of January 2023.
Sometime in the spring of 2023 – the OCR report doesn’t give an exact month – another student, student 4, made a complaint about Bohannon.
“The HR Director [Kippenbrock] told OCR that another female student, who is also Student 1’s cousin (Student 4) made a complaint regarding the Principal in spring 2023,” the OCR report reads. “According to the HR Director, Student 4 ‘s mother was aware of Student 1’s accusations about the Principal and reported to the HR Director that Student 4 was receiving the same treatment from the Principal and that she did not want Student 4 at the [Transformational Learning Center] anymore. As a result, the District permitted Student 4 to transition to virtual school. The HR Director told OCR that he called the Cabinet and the police, and the Cabinet accepted the report and added it to Student 1’s report. According to the HR Director, the police called back a couple of days later saying that they were not initiating a criminal case against the Principal.”
Snider-Gross made a complaint about the 2022 incidents to the Office for Civil Rights on May 23, 2023, which sparked the investigation. She resigned from the district on July 7, 2023.
Kippenbrock received a phone call from the Kentucky Cabinet of Health and Family Services on Jan. 31, 2024, according to the OCR report, “in which he was told that the Cabinet found that [Student 1’s] complaint was unsubstantiated, and it was closing its investigation.” The OCR’s investigation continued separately.
A cabinet spokesperson described to LINK nky the process by which investigations are carried out.
“The central intake system consists of nine regional service units who are dedicated to processing statewide reports of abuse or neglect both via phone and online,” the email reads. “Calls are first routed to the closest region based on the caller’s area code. When online referrals are submitted and the worker completes the intake, an email will automatically be sent to the reporting source. Central intake workers have two hours to process the report and submit for supervisory review and approval. The supervisor then has four hours to further review and make a final determination on [sic]. The report goes into an electronic documentation system in the instance of future reports being made on the same child/family. All investigations require in-person contact.”
How Title IX cases work
As noted, the OCR report in this case found violations of Title IX. Title IX was passed with the aim of preventing sex-based discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. Federal regulations implementing Title IX define sexual harassment this way: “unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the recipient’s education program or activity.”
Title IX also mandates that responses to sexual harassment must not be “deliberately indifferent.” Institutions must also provide adequate supportive measures to complainants and enact disciplinary sanctions.
As Title IX deals with discrimination in schools, they’re often fielded through the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Most cases between the Office for Civil Rights and districts are resolved informally, similar to settling out of court, said Scott Lewis, a managing partner of the Association of Title IX Administrators, a professional association of Title IX specialists.
Title IX discrimination complaints based on sex are common, he said, although he was not aware of and did not comment on Covington’s case. They can run the gamut from harassment complaints to complaints about access to sporting facilities.
“It’s very common for that to come in the door,” Lewis said. “It’s not an uncommon complaint, and it could be everything from somebody touched somebody inappropriately all the way to the other side of the coin, where it’s [a] boys’ program is treated better than [a] girl program.”
Following a complaint, the Office for Civil Rights will begin the process of investigating. The OCR has latitude in how it carries out its investigations, Scott said. Once complete, the OCR delivers its findings to the district, informing it they didn’t find anything wrong – at which point the complaint is dismissed – or, as in this case, informing the district its procedures were inadequate. At that point, the district can either sign a voluntary resolution agreement, wherein they don’t admit fault but agree to change some things in the future, or fight it and potentially risk being forced to sign a non-voluntary resolution agreement.
As of Jan. 14, 2025, there were 581 open investigations of sexual harassment in elementary and secondary schools nationwide, 13 of which were taking place in Kentucky, according to the Department of Education’s own numbers. The numbers had not been updated past Jan. 14 at the time of this story’s publication.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, aimed at dismantling the Department of Education. Given that the department was established by Congress in 1979, the order by itself isn’t enough to end the department. Still, if the department ends up getting abolished down the road, Lewis said, Title IX itself and its enforcement provisions would still be on the books. As such, the responsibility for investigating complaints may be folded into another agency, such the Department of Justice, although he admitted that federal staffing cuts anywhere could lead to a long backlog.
As it relates to this case, the Office for Civil Rights’ report concluded the following: Covington Schools’ Title IX policies failed to meet the standards of prompt and equitable resolution of complaints of sex discrimination, as established by federal law.
“Specifically,” the report reads, “the policies fail to address, among other requirements of the regulation: an objective evaluation of all relevant evidence–including both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence.”
In other words, the report concluded the district did not have an adequate method in place for figuring out the truth (or lack thereof) behind harassment allegations.
The OCR also concluded the district failed to adequately display information about the district’s Title IX Coordinator, Ken Ellis, who also serves as the athletic director, and attendant Title IX policies.
Most notably, however, the investigation concluded the district failed to provide supportive measures for the students who made the allegations and failed to properly follow through on its own internal investigations.
Although documents from Kippenbrock and Garrison show the district did carry out an internal investigation of some sort, Snider-Gross is skeptical about how thorough it was, believing it did not adequately interview students and parents.
“Nothing was ever done on behalf of the students, nothing,” Snider-Gross said. “He [Bohannon] was back. That was shocking.”
Besides the meetings with Collins, Student 1’s mother said, no one from the district ever interviewed her or her daughter to get their side of things.
The OCR report had this to say about the district’s processes:
“Although the Athletics Director was designated as the Title IX Coordinator during the 2022-2023 school year,” the office writes, “there is no indication that, in response to either the Complaint [Snider-Gross] or Student 1, 2, 3, or 4’s reports of sexual harassment, he met the regulatory obligation to promptly contact the Complainant or Student 1, 2, 3, or 4 about the availability of supportive measures or to explain the process for filing a formal complaint.”
The timing of events as laid out in the OCR report may have played a role in the district’s response. Kippenbrock made his report to the Cabinet of Health and Family Services while Bohannon was still working at the district, but the cabinet had not concluded its investigation until after Bohannon had retired, at which point the district did not take up its own internal investigation or provide a report to the families, something OCR concluded they should have done.
Ellis may have even been discouraged from exercising his role as Title IX Coordinator, according to the OCR report. Kippenbrock, as well, seemed to be under the impression that the district’s hands were tied while the Kentucky Cabinet of Health and Family Services and police went about their own investigations.
“The Title IX Coordinator confirmed that he has been ‘forcefully informed’ that the police and Cabinet have first rights and that he has to wait until given the green light by the police and Cabinet to proceed with an internal investigation,” the OCR report states.
Later on, the report states, “The HR Director [Kippenbrock] decided that the allegations did not need to be referred to the Title IX Coordinator once the Cabinet completed its investigation because the Principal retired by then. As such, the Title IX Coordinator was never involved in the [sic] any of the reports regarding the Principal, and never met with the Complainant or Students 1, 2 or 3 to discuss the formal complaint process or the availability of supportive measures.”
After Garrison signed the voluntary resolution agreement on Sept. 9, 2024, the district agreed to do several things. These measures included new training about sexual harassment for both staff and students (the materials for which the district must submit to the Office for Civil Rights), requiring the district to review and revise its Title IX sexual harassment grievance policies and meet with Snider-Gross and the students who alleged conduct against Bohannon and instruct them how to file a grievance with Title IX. If the families do so, the district must then conduct its own internal investigation.
Additionally, the district must review all of the case files for Title IX sexual harassment complaints in the district for a year after Garrison signed the resolution agreement so that the OCR and the district can “identify systemic issues and any delays in the process.” The district must also develop a student climate survey for grades 9 through 12 at the Transformational Learning Center to see their attitudes about the environment there. Finally, the district must generally shore up and make more prominent the procedures for filing a Title IX grievance.
There have been five complaints of Title IX sexual harassment, which have been investigated and closed, throughout the district since Garrison signed the voluntary resolution agreement, as of Feb. 6. All of them involved a student making a complaint against another student, according to the district attorney’s response to LINK nky’s open records request. Additional information on the complaints was not available for review as they involved minors.
Past and future
It perturbed Snider-Gross that the students who complained about Bohannon were part of the school’s alternative program, which she feared might undercut the students’ credibility.
“I know there was a lot of fear with these kids coming forward for that very reason because [they might think], ‘Are they going to believe me?’” Snider-Gross said. “‘I’ve got behavior problems; are they going to believe me?’”
For Snider-Gross, her experience raised questions as to whether more people – students and adults alike – were affected by Bohannon’s behavior.
“It just makes my heart bleed for all of the kids out there, who have no advocates, who have nobody that stood up for them, and they’ve just been left victimized,” Snider-Gross said. “It’s heartbreaking. It was bad enough that it happened on my watch.”
A graduate of Holmes High School, Bohannon started working at the district in the early ‘90s and served in various positions, according to his personnel record, which LINK nky obtained through an open records request. He was eventually hired on as a full-time eighth grade math teacher in 1993. He also worked as a football and track coach throughout the late nineties and early 2000s. He worked as a middle-school math teacher and the principal of Holmes Middle School from 2004 to 2015. He was hired as the principal of the Transformational Learning Center earlierin 2022.
In 2001, former Superintendent Jack Moreland assigned Bohannon as the director of discipline and attendance at Holmes Junior High. In a letter to district Personnel Director Ken Ellis – the same Ken Ellis who would later serve as the Title IX coordinator – in 2002, Bohannon expressed interest in an assistant principal position at the Holmes campus, and shortly thereafter was transferred to the position of director of alternative programs at Holmes. Then in 2004, he assumed the role of assistant principal at the Holmes campus. In 2009, he became principal of Holmes Middle School.
Bohannon’s personnel record suggests many of his early years at the district were unremarkable. In fact, former Holmes Principal Raymond Finke commended Bohannon’s work as the director of discipline in a 2001 letter.
Bohannon was reprimanded in 2009 for failing to follow proper teacher evaluation protocols. The only other disciplinary reprimand in the file is evidenced by an August 2011 letter from Personnel Director Eric Neff, which states that “after meeting with Covington Police it has been determined you exhibited conduct unbecoming of a school employee.”
The letter did not provide further details about the “conduct,” and the Covington Police Department did not have any records on file associated with the conduct. Yet, the conduct prompted former Superintendent Lynda Jackson to suspend Bohannon with pay pending an investigation. Documents showing the results of that investigation, if they still exist, were not provided in Bohannon’s personnel record. The OCR report notes, as well, that the district was unable to furnish more information about this incident.
Bohannon departed from his position as the middle school principal in the middle of the school year in 2015. In a letter dated Oct. 26, 2015, Bohannon requested a transfer to a less demanding position.
At the end of the 2015-2016 academic year, current Superintendent Garrison recommended Bohannon be transferred to the assistant principal position at the Transformational Learning Center. The transfer occurred in July 2016.
Finally, on May 23, 2022, Bohannon applied to become the head principal of the Transformational Learning Center. He assumed the role two months later in July 2022. Bohannon tendered a letter to the district on Oct. 13, 2023 informing them that he planned to retire as of Dec. 1, 2023. His final day with the district was Nov. 30, 2023.
The whole experience has left Student 1’s mother with a profound distrust of the district as an institution.
“I don’t trust it, at all,” the mother said. “Literally, this situation has opened my eyes about the cover-ups that go on, and I feel like that they only care about themselves. They only look out for each other. They’re not in it for the well-being of the kids or anything like that.”
When asked how she felt about everything that happened, the daughter said that she tried not to think about it.
If you or anyone you know has information about Bohannon’s time at the district or the district’s handling of this situation or allegations of harassment or misconduct generally, please contact LINK nky at news@linknky.com or 859-878-1669. Anonymous tips are welcome.
This story was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and legal help from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
This story originally appeared on our partner's website LINK nky.
