A teacher at a Miami high school has resigned amid a police investigation into allegations she had sex with an adult student.
Kirsys Elizabeth Padron, 35, a language arts teacher at Dr. Krop Senior High in Miami, left her job after police came to the school and informed her of the probe, the Miami Herald reported last week. She was told she would be barred from working with students while Miami-Dade Schools Police gathered evidence.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokeswoman Daisy Gonzalez-Diego declined to name the educator in question, saying only that the person had been working for the district for five years with previously facing disciplinary action. But the Herald was able to identify Pardon based on district employment records, which show she was hired in 2014. Her name and bio were removed from the school’s website.
No additional details were available about the alleged relationship between teacher and student. Police did not immediately respond to Pluralist’s inquiry about the status of the investigation. Padron did not immediately respond to request for comment.
According to her Facebook page, Padron is married and has a young daughter.
In one post last month, she expressed pride in her work helping “inner city kids get into college.”
Back in February, she shared a Herald article about a “predatory” college, commenting, “Really egregious. Breach of trust…”
It’s not just Kirsys Elizabeth Padron
A 2017 study published by the U.S. Justice Department found that women account for a large and growing minority of the sexual abuse committed by educators against students nationwide.
Psychologist Anna Salter, an expert on sexual predators, said in a 2013 study that women who sexually target students are typically married mothers in their mid-30s.
“They think they love the children,” she explained.
Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who led the research, said these women are known as “opportunistic abusers.”
“[They] tend to spend a lot of time around groups of students, talking with them, going to the same places they go, and trying to blend in,” she said. “They are the teachers who want to be seen as hip or cool and who want the students to think they are part of the student peer group.”