Dearborn substitute teacher accidentally plays porn

Dearborn — A Dearborn middle school is upgrading its computer security this week after a substitute teacher accidentally played porn in front of a classroom of students, officials say.

The incident occurred at O.L. Smith Middle School, located at 23851 Yale St., on March 13. A substitute teacher, contracted by the company that provides substitutes to the district, accidentally played a pornographic video, Principal Zeina Jebril said.

In a notice to parents, Jebril says pornographic images were displayed on the video screen for 30 to 45 seconds until the teacher was able to turn the computer off. 

"The substitute teacher was immediately removed from the class and interviewed by myself and our school resource officer," Jebril said. "Both our human resource office and our technology department began an investigation into this incident."

Officials said a letter was sent home with the students directly involved when the incident occurred.

"I even spoke directly with a few parents who had children in the classroom," Jebril said. "This very unfortunate, isolated event was addressed and appeared to be resolved."

Jebril said she's confident the substitute who was in the classroom on that day will no longer be allowed to work in any Dearborn public school. District officials are also working with their technology department to advance their filtering software to ensure the incident does not occur again.

"There are 21,000 students in the Dearborn Public Schools and more than 2,600 staff members," she said. "This means there are millions of computer sessions in any given week. I provide this information not as an excuse for what occurred, but to provide context of the volume of traffic on our network each day. As fast as filtering software is updated and improved, there are those working just as fast at attempting to by-pass that software."

srahal@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @SarahRahal_