LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The former football coach of Waggener High School has been fired by Jefferson County Public Schools after exchanging sexual text messages with a student in November, according to district records.
The district’s investigation into the accusation against Jordan Johnson, who was pulled from coaching and reassigned as a teacher at Waggener effective Nov. 12, found that he had exchanged messages “of an inappropriate and sexual nature” with the student in question.
He was fired for immoral character, conduct unbecoming a teacher, insubordination and neglect of duty, according to a Jan. 23 letter from JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio.
JCPS spokesman Daniel Kemp said Johnson did not appeal his termination. The district did not forward the matter to law enforcement, he said.
"It’s our understanding that the communication exchange did not rise to that level," Kemp said in an email to WDRB News.
An investigation into the matter found that the girl had revealed to Johnson that she had been sexually assaulted in the past and began talking to him on Facebook and, eventually, through text messages. The mother of another student informed Waggener officials of the correspondence Nov. 8 after the girl told her daughter, records show.
The girl asked him questions about his sexual experience, such as when he lost his virginity and different sex acts, according to a Dec. 20 investigation report.
At one point, she asked him whether he liked any students. The report says he responded that he liked several students, and when she asked who, he responded, “You.” He also told her to delete their exchanges, according to the investigation.
“Later on I asked him if he still felt that way, he said feelings like that don’t go away,” she wrote in a legal statement included in the investigative report.
When the topic turned to nude photographs, the girl said she had never sent any. Later, Johnson said he wanted “to be the first that you send pics to,” according to screenshots of text messages included in the report.
The girl declined, reminding Johnson that he is “a married man with kids.”
When Johnson apologized and said he was joking, she told him to stop messaging her. Johnson told district investigators that he was referring to photos of her recent mission trip.
“Mr. Johnson acknowledged his communications with the student and could not provide a reasonable explanation for his actions” during a Jan. 8 meeting with school leaders to discuss the investigation’s findings, according to a Jan. 15 report signed by Johnson and Waggener Principal Sarah Hitchings.
“He stated, ‘In a logical sound mind, it doesn’t make sense,’” the report says. “’That six hour period was a scary time for me where I was out of control. I couldn’t gather my thoughts and come up with a logical plan to make it stop.’”
The investigation’s findings and Jan. 8 meeting “substantiated the fact that Mr. Johnson sent inappropriate messages to a student and did not report inappropriate messages sent to him by the student,” the report says.
Johnson “unequivocally” denied any wrongdoing in a Jan. 23 letter, but he was fired the next day.
Johnson, who did not respond to a request for comment through social media, said the student reached out to him for help on Nov. 2, then started asking questions that he believed “were no longer about guidance for her.” He wrote that he ended the conversation, but she sent him text messages on a phone number he gives his students for field trips hours later.
Johnson wrote that he tried to be short in his responses and ignore questions, but he didn’t “shut it all down” because he was worried about her mental state.
“I didn’t want to enhance that,” Johnson said in the letter. “I attempted to end the conversation in a fragile way and failed miserably at that, but not in the way” JCPS and Hitchings have said.
Johnson wrote that he answered a question from her because she would not stop asking and texting him.
“I felt it was the only way, which is a terrible mistake,” he said. “However, at no point of the conversation was it about ‘us’ in a sexual way.”
Johnson has only had one other incident during his time at JCPS, getting a written reprimand in 2013 for locking a student in a locker for a brief period before letting her out.
Reach reporter Kevin Wheatley at 502-585-0838 and kwheatley@wdrb.com. Follow him on Twitter @KevinWheatleyKY.
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