EE Lyon: New Messages Raise More Questions

This is Why School Safety is My #1 Priority

A police report on the incidents at E.E. Lyon Elementary in Covington was made public last week. It lays out, in the detectives' own words, a series of failures by the school's leadership. I wrote about that report in my previous article, and I asked a question: had protecting the school system's image become more important than confronting serious problems openly?

It took less than 72 hours to get an answer. Screenshots of text messages and other records from the investigation started circulating on a community Facebook page. One caveat: those screenshots did not come from an official source. As far as I know, nobody has checked them against the originals, and there is no way to know if they are complete. Anything below that comes from them should be read with that in mind. That said, they look real, and if the district claims they are fake, it can say so. As of this article, no one has challenged their authenticity. What they do show makes me more concerned, not less, about how district leadership handled this and about whether employees felt safe coming forward.

What We Know for Sure

This part comes from local news coverage and the police report, not the screenshots. On September 2, former Principal Lauryn Faciane and former Assistant Principal Tanya Barth pleaded guilty to failing to report child abuse and were sentenced to probation. District Attorney Colin Sims said both incidents involved sexual conduct between students aged eight and nine on campus, that neither was reported to law enforcement, the school resource officer, or DCFS, and that both administrators had received specific training on reporting child-on-child abuse. In his words: "School personnel do not have the discretion to minimize such conduct."

The pleas settle, for now, the administrators' role. They do not settle the district's role, and they do not answer whether anybody above the school level followed policy or state law.

The December Incident

The police report identifies December 1, 2025, as the first incident. It was handled inside the school with no notice to the SRO, police, or DCFS. In a screenshot presented as an excerpt from the forensic report on Barth's phone, a staff member wrote to Barth that afternoon describing two children seen together in a bathroom stall and asked her to check the cameras. That evening the same person asked whether the situation was "as bad as I am thinking." The reply attributed to Barth: "Eh kids being kids. I'll share tomorrow."

The police report adds the SRO's account of that same day. According to the report, Barth had her pull the video but told her the children were "playing in the bathroom," that it could not be discussed for confidentiality reasons, and that the matter "could get messy" and she "did not want it to get out." The SRO says she found out what actually happened a couple of weeks later from teacher gossip, not from administration.

That is not a training problem. That is a decision, and one that was not only wrong but also illegal. A staff member flagged it, the SRO pulled the video, and the administrator with the information decided it was kids being kids and that she did not want it to get out. Parents deserve to know how a serious concern became an internal matter and why the required report was never made. Frankly, when I think about this as a parent, Barth's dismissive attitude is absolutely infuriating. The ease with which she dismissed an incident of a sexual nature between two students and then decided not to notify the parents is a dereliction of duty on multiple fronts. Legally and morally, that is not her decision to make. Period.

The Superintendent's Meeting with Police

According to the report, Superintendent Frank Jabbia told detectives on May 18 that the SRO had been notified of these incidents and that the school's JPAMS record proved it. Detectives obtained the record. It showed only that the school ran its own investigation. It said nothing about the SRO or DCFS being notified. The report says Steve Alfonso told Jabbia during the meeting that the notification was not in the record, and that Jabbia remained "adamant" the SRO was being advised. A central-office employee Jabbia later pointed detectives to said SRO notification was "school board policy," but had no firsthand knowledge that it happened here.

So the superintendent walked into a police station, told detectives a record said something it did not say, was corrected by his own associate superintendent in the room, and kept insisting. Then he sent the detectives to someone who could only tell them what the policy was supposed to be. What was he relying on? Once detectives showed him the record did not say what he said it said, what did he do to fix it? Those are not gotcha questions. He is the superintendent. He should be able to answer them in about thirty seconds. He didn't.

The Employees Who Spoke Up

Now the part that bothers me most, and the reason I do this work for a living.

The report says detectives spoke with numerous current and former Lyon teachers on May 24 and 25, and that most would only talk off the record because they feared termination or discipline. In that same window, Jabbia sent a text message, with the detective included on it, announcing that he would file an official complaint against the SRO and against an employee who, he said, reported an older incident more than a year late, and that "they will be recommended for termination by STPPS." Read that again. The employee who reported abuse and the SRO who was supposed to receive the reports were the two people the superintendent named for termination. Not the administrators that actually broke the law. By the way, as of the writing of this article, the two administrators who were arrested and pleaded guilty to failing to do their job are still on the district's payroll. Make it make sense...

Either way, I don't have a problem with an actual late report being investigated. What I do have a problem with is the threat of investigating a late report in retaliation for making the actual report. And the fact that Jabbia's message went out while teachers were telling police they were afraid of exactly this makes his reaction that much more concerning. I've seen this behavior on the part of management numerous times in my career. It's meant to have a chilling effect on employees. Keep your mouth shut or lose your job and livelihood. It's the greatest betrayal that someone in a position of authority can perpetrate on the folks that work for them, especially when it comes to topics like these where clear violations of policy and law took place and, in this instance, where the safety and welfare of children is involved. That's what makes this case disturbing on a number of levels.

The screenshots show the threat and retaliation mechanisms in action. On the morning of May 26, Barth forwarded Jabbia screenshots of text threads circulating among staff, wrote "I lost my job for a witch hunt," and identified the SRO by name. Jabbia asked who two of the people in the threads were. Barth told him one was a third-grade teacher: "the teacher in 3rd that the Detective has reached out to after the school board meeting. She was the most negative one who spoke. Supposedly she put the detective in touch with 2nd grade teachers." The next morning, the day Barth turned herself in, Jabbia asked for that teacher's "official name" and whether two names belonged to the same person. Barth confirmed and added that the teacher also uses her maiden name.

Think about what that teacher did. She stood up at a school board meeting and said something the district did not want to hear. When a detective called, she talked to him. When he needed to reach other teachers, she apparently helped. In any functioning organization, that is the employee you want. At the St. Tammany central office, she became "the most negative one who spoke," and the superintendent wanted her legal name, including the one on her personnel file.

I don't know what happened to her afterward. The screenshots don't show it, but I definitely want to know. I have handled enough of these cases to know how this plays out. First you find out who talked. Then you get their real name. Then the employee gets written up for something unrelated. The questions I would want answered as a member of the school board, the entity that Jabbia is supposed to answer to, is what did he want with her name? What did he do with it? Did he call anyone about her? Did he pull her file? Was any action taken against her and for what reason? In these settings, nobody asks for an employee's official name because they are planning to thank them.

Here is why this matters beyond one school. Since I started this campaign I have heard the same thing from several teachers and support staff that are personal friends, in almost the same words: they will not raise a concern because they are afraid it will cost them their job. And now we have those same fears captured and validated in an official law enforcement report. The police wrote down that Lyon teachers were afraid to talk. Then the superintendent's own texts show a termination threat aimed at the people who reported, and a hunt for the legal name of the teacher who cooperated with police. The fear is not a rumor. It is a reasonable reading of how the central office operates.

Reputation

On May 25, Faciane told a district colleague identified in the records as Burkett that she planned to call "Frankie" and wanted him or someone else to mention the situation at the next day's meeting "so it comes out in a more positive way than everyone just seeing us arrested." On May 26 she wrote: "My only hope is that our colleagues support us and kill negative comments with positive ones."

People facing charges are entitled to a defense and to their friends. I am not going to fault anybody for that. The question is whether the families of two eight- and nine-year-olds got the same attention from the district that its administrators' reputations did. These excerpts cannot show everything officials did for the children. They do show a lot of attention to how the administrators would look. The Board should find out whether notifying parents, getting outside help for the children, and fixing the reporting failure got the same urgency.

Confusion About Reporting

On the morning of May 26, Burkett described to Faciane a leadership meeting that had just ended. In her telling, Jabbia said police had informed him two administrators would face felony charges, that "he wants to protect us at all costs," and that child-on-child conduct "is an area … that we are not necessarily reporting." An attorney then walked through the statute and "pointed out where it is confusing/broad/vague." She described the room as worried and confused. That is her account, not a recording, and Jabbia's words are secondhand. Either way, for a school official to admit in any forum that "child-on-child conduct" is an area that's not being reported is just beyond the pale.   

It supports what I said in my last article: staff need clear guidance. But it does not blur the line between ordinary contact and suspected abuse. The District Attorney drew that line plainly, and so did the SRO. In an unrelated November 2025 matter, SRO Janel Walters texted Barth that a deputy's welfare check did not change the fact that "the teacher or whoever he told about the abuse still needs to file a report with dcfs." The rule was not a mystery at Lyon. It was being stated in writing, by the person the administrators were supposed to be calling.

Still on the Payroll

Another concern is who is paying for all of this. Why are these two administrators still receiving a paycheck from taxpayers and are taxpayers footing some or all of their legal bills? Faciane's messages say she and Barth had "the school board [attorney] and a different one." Other exchanges discuss administrative leave, resignation, and an agreement that would keep the reason for resignation private and shield against future litigation. The screenshots do not show who paid for counsel or whether any agreement was signed, and Faciane herself wrote that she was confused about what resigning would accomplish.

Here is what we do know. On September 2, both women stood in court and admitted they did not comply with the mandatory reporting law, after being trained on it, in cases the District Attorney said involved sexual conduct between eight- and nine-year-olds on a school campus. As of the district's last public statement, reported September 4, both are still employed by the school system, on paid administrative leave. If that has changed, the district has not bothered to tell anyone. In my world, when an employee admits in open court to breaking a law that exists to protect children, the proposed removal is on my desk before the ink is dry. Here, the taxpayers have been paying two salaries since May 27 to people who are not allowed on a campus, and there are questions as to whether we are also paying for their representation.

Why are they still on the payroll? What personnel action is pending, if any, and what is the Board waiting for? What has this cost so far? Did the district pay for their lawyers? And did that May "agreement" ever get signed, and who approved it? Those are questions for a public meeting, not a spokesperson. Those are the questions a school board representative should be asking.

Why This Is a Safety Issue

I keep saying school safety is not only about doors, cameras, and resource officers. Those things are necessary and I support all of them. But every safety system in a school runs on one thing: an adult sees something and says something.

Look at what actually worked at Lyon. A teacher reported two children missing from class. A para told a counselor what a child said. A mental health provider said it had to be reported. The SRO pulled the footage. Every one of those people is an employee. The people who failed were the administrators who sat on it and the central office that backed them up. The police report says the SRO told detectives administration was already hiding incidents from her: a knife, ammunition, a student slapping a teacher's child.

When employees learn that reporting gets you labeled "negative" and gets your name sent to the superintendent, the cameras and the SRO become decoration, because nobody tells the SRO anything. A district where the staff is afraid is a district where the next incident gets handled "internally" too. That is not a personnel problem. That is the safety problem. It is the one I am running on.

What the Board Should Do

I said in my earlier article that the new leadership and support at Lyon are welcome, and I still think so. That does not answer any of the questions above.

The elected Board is the only body that can. These records do not show what any individual Board member knew or when, and an independent review should establish that. The Board should commission one from people who do not report to the officials being examined, and publish a timeline with the children's identities protected.

Beyond that, the Board should put the superintendent at the microphone and ask him what he did with those names, which complaints were actually filed after that May text, against whom, and what came of them. It should send every Lyon employee who spoke with Covington Police written notice that their cooperation is protected and will not be used against them. It should put in writing that an employee who reports suspected abuse or cooperates with law enforcement will not be disciplined for it, and name someone outside the building chain of command that a teacher, para, bus driver, or cafeteria worker can call. And it should state, on the record, the employment status of both administrators, what action is pending, what it has cost, and whether any agreement exists.

The bottom line is this. Teachers and support staff told me they were afraid to speak up. I now have their reason in writing. A school system that goes looking for the name of the teacher who talked to the police, while keeping two administrators who admitted to not reporting child abuse on the payroll, has its priorities exactly backwards. The Board can fix that. It should start at its next meeting.

If I am elected to the District 7 seat, I intend to serve as a direct and confidential resource for teachers and staff to discuss these concerns (to the extent that confidentiality can be maintained). I am dedicated to thoroughly investigating any issues that are raised, particularly those involving allegations of illegal activities and retaliation against employees who act with integrity.

Screenshots/records source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Lm52taMfA/