Grand Jury Investigative Findings Regarding Kingsport City Schools and Timely Reporting of Child Abuse On May 17, 2023, the Sullivan County Grand Jury heard testimony from a Kingsport Police Detective, a Kingsport City School Principal, a Chief Human Resource Officer for Kingsport City Schools, and a former Superintendent of Kingsport City Schools ina matter regarding alleged child abuse committed by a special education teacher. The dates of the alleged abuse were between August of 2021 and March of 2022 and involved multiple children in a class of three and four-year-old pre-K students, many of whom were non-verbal children on the autism spectrum. A teaching assistant who worked in the same classroom made a detailed report to the school principal with the names of children, dates, and the specific acts of abuse that she witnessed being committed by the main teacher. These actions included screaming in kids’ faces, putting her foot on a student's shin and applying pressure until the student cried to keep his legs still, smacking a student’s hand and leaving red marks, belittling and name calling children who had accidents, yanking kids up and down by their arms, leaving students in soiled diapers, pushing them roughly onto the commode, digging her finger deeply into students’ armpits (and telling the assistant teacher that it was the way to do it so it would not leave observable bruises), and jerking and dragging a student. Parents of the children reported patterns of regressive and fearful behavior due to the ongoing abuse. This same teacher had been accused of similar behavior two years prior, at which time the school system investigated the allegations themselves and did not report it to the Department of Children’s Services or the Kingsport Police Department contrary to the law. The teacher was given a two-day suspension after an internal investigation by the school administration. In 2020 the child abuse reporting statute as it relates to school personnel was changed to make reporting easier for teachers and administration. The revised statutes were provided to the Superintendent of Kingsport City Schools along with two separate letters from the District Attorney highlighting that school personnel must avoid conducting an investigation. The statute provides detailed protocols and procedures to be followed when there is an allegation of abuse, but all of this was ignored by multiple administrators within the Kingsport City School system. The law specifically states that there should be no internal investigation by the school, which was again ignored in this current case.Rather than report the alleged abuse immediately, administrators conducted their ‘own internal investigation and waited nearly two weeks before notifying the Department of Children’s Services and law enforcement. This delay hampered law enforcement's ability to promptly begin an investigation in a case where most of the witnesses/victims had no ability to communicate and signs of observable injuries disappeared quickly. The substandard handling of the past and current case is considered egregious by this Grand Jury and represents a systemic failure on the part of the Kingsport City Schools. Most disturbing to the members of the grand jury, however, was the testimony regarding the significant impact this abuse had on the students. Grand Jurors asked many questions of the witnesses and felt their answers showed a blatant disregard of the children’s best interests as well as the law. Witnesses admitted to knowing about the statutes, but claimed they also had to consider the interest of the tenured teacher. The witnesses each stated that any future allegations will be handled properly. The Grand Jury hopes that by providing this report to the citizens of Sullivan County and the city of Kingsport that a dialogue will occur between law enforcement, the Department of Children Services, and the Kingsport City Schools ‘to ensure that our children’s interests come first, and an incident of this nature is not mishandled again.