Alaina Ferguson, a 25-year-old former high school teacher who admitted having sex with a 16-year-old student on a park bench, was sentenced on Thursday, August 23, to 10 years of probation.
The former Plano High School teacher was also fined $800 and sentenced to 120 days in jail — to be served two weeks per year over several years.
In addition, Ferguson, who plead guilty to charges of an improper relationship between a teacher and a student and indecency with a child by exposure, must perform 150 hours of community service and register as a sex offender for 10 years.
Ferguson was a 23-year-old algebra teacher at the time of the incident.
via NY Post:
Ferguson was arrested in late 2016 after she and the teen started a relationship at the beginning of the school year after he wrote his Snapchat handle on a test and gave it to Ferguson, according to an arrest warrant obtained by The Post.
Shortly afterward, Ferguson met up with the teen in Lewisville, where they had sex on a park bench, according to an affidavit. They also had sex in the back of the teen’s pickup truck after a football game and in her fiancé’s apartment while he was out of town on a hunting trip.
Ferguson, who also exchanged nude photos with the teen and supplied him alcohol during their two-month relationship, later called off her engagement. She resigned just two months after starting her job in August 2016, school officials said.
According to Ferguson’s arrest warrant, she told the victim that she knew their relationship was “not the right thing to do, but it felt right at the time.”
Ferguson is just the latest teacher to be charged for inappropriate conduct. Over the course of just a few months, educators across the country were arrested for entering into an inappropriate relationship with their students, Tennessee teacher Janet Smothers, LaToya Parker, Florida teacher Caroline Lawson, 26-year-old Allyson Moran and Katherine Ross Ridenhour were all arrested on similar charges. A woman named Kayla Sprinkles was arrested in North Carolina for similar sexual crimes.
The list goes on to include 22-year-old Oklahoma science teacher Hunter Day, 28-year-old teacher Megan Kotarski, 23-year-old history teacher Michelle Schiffer, 29-year-old Alyssia Marie Reddy, special education teacher Jordan Ondish and 28-year-old Samantha Fitzpatrick have all been allegedly carrying on inappropriate relationships with their students.
In addition, 31-year-old Nicole Marie Andrews, 32-year-old Jessica Langford, 29-year-old Andrea Baber, 27-year-old Robin Dunlap, 27-year-old Jennifer Olajire-Aro have also been charged with these charges.
34-year-old Miranda Nicole Pauley was charged with similar crimes, Nancy Leigh Ann Brann, a former Christian school teacher, was arrested for having sex with a student, Coine Audiat pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in 2016 and 23-year-old Darci Lake was arrested for an inappropriate relationship. 27-year-old Brittany Zamora from Arizona was arrested on similar charges. Keri Hoffman, 35, was also arrested for an alleged relationship with a student. More recently, 29-year-old Tiffany Ranweiler-Oblander and 33-year-old Maren Oates were arrested on similar charges.
