A school district unwittingly helped a student declare herself homeless — paving the way for her to be able to move in with a female teacher who sexually groomed her, say advocates, documents and the girl’s kin.
The unidentified teen — who attended Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the site of the infamous deadly massacre in 1999 — was a straight-A student and captain of the swim team who allegedly developed an inappropriate relationship with her social-studies teacher, possibly as early as her sophomore year in 2018.
That year, the student told Jefferson County School District officials that she felt unsafe at home and asked for help filing paperwork to be declared an “unaccompanied minor,’’ according to a later internal school-district probe whose results were obtained by the local advocacy group JeffCo Kids First.
The teen asked that she be placed in the care of her teacher, Leann Kearney, the district documents claim.
But it was a ruse: The girl had exchanged around 20,000 texts with Kearney and written a note dated in 2021 describing her “kissing” the teacher — and the pair hoped to live together, according to the documents, a sheriff’s report and the girl’s mom, who saw phone records that revealed the hordes of texts.
The student’s mother first allegedly got suspicious after spotting the unaccompanied-minor paperwork under her daughter’s bed.
The mom brought the phone records and disturbing note to school Principal Scott Christy, who said he was “aware of the situation” but argued that Kearney merely had a special interest in “helping kids navigate their sexuality,” according to the district investigation.
The school even allegedly took steps to keep the girl’s mother in the dark, with emails from the teen’s counselor asking a family liaison not to inform her parents of the situation.
“If my friend hadn’t found the homeless paperwork under the bed, this would’ve remained sealed,” family pal Heather McCormick told The Post.
McCormick, whose daughter is best friends with the teen’s younger sister, said nothing about the family’s home life ever raised a red flag in terms of issues in the household.
“[My daughter] is over at their house all the time. We go to church with them. I’ve never had any concerns. They’re just an average middle-class family,” she said. “But [the girl] made it sound like the home wasn’t safe and didn’t want the school to talk to her parents.”
After allegedly getting the brush-off from the school, the girl’s mother reached out to the advocacy group, which alerted local media to the case and district documents.
But by then it was too late.
“It was only a few weeks before [the student’s] 18th birthday,’’ McCormick said. “At that point, she had already made her decisions, and there was no going back.’’
The girl left her family home as soon as she turned 18, although she temporarily moved in with a different teacher, as Kearney had been deployed by the National Guard, the district probe said.
As soon as Kearney returned, she resigned, and she and the teen absconded together to Oregon, McCormick said.
The state eventually stripped Kearney of her education license. The revocation document, signed by the attorney general, described her behavior as “grooming.”
The girl’s mother rarely communicates with her now, McCormick said.
The district said in a statement to CBS Colorado, “We deeply regret how profoundly this violation has affected their family.
“While we have taken every step to remove this former employee from Jeffco and prevent her from working in another educational setting… We recognize this is of little comfort to the family,” it told the outlet, which first reported on the probe.
The district did not respond to a Post request for comment.
The Post could not find a working phone number for Kearney, with all of her listed numbers disconnected.
