Police: Dancing teacher on cell phone video drunk

Thursday, March 26, 2009

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Kylene Nelson, 42, a teacher at Rusche Middle School, is seen on the video dancing around in the classroom of students. Police say she was drunk at the time.

PASCO COUNTY (Bay News 9) -- A Pasco County teacher is on leave after police say she was drunk while in class last week.

According to the school resource officer's report, Kylene Nelson, a teacher at Rusche Middle School, drank an entire bottle of vodka.

A student's cell phone captured video of the incident.

Nelson, 42, is seen on the video dancing around in the classroom of students.

According to police, Nelson was drunk at the time.

"Is she high? Is she drunk? What is she?" said student Kaylin Jackewicz, who was in the classroom that day. "She starts grabbing people and dancing on desks and grab our wrists and hands and tell us to dance with her."

Jackewicz says Nelson even wound up showing some skin as her pants slipped down.

"We told her to keep pulling them up and she did finally," she said. "And she was laughing about it like it was no big deal but they fell down again and this time she didn't exactly pull them up."

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Renalia DuBose with the Pasco County School Board says they're still trying to get Nelson's side.

"We are currently investigating Ms. Nelson," DuBose said. "We'll see what happened at every staff level and see where we need to go from there."

Kaylin's mother, Colleen, says she's mostly upset she didn't hear from the school sooner.

The classroom dance happened last Wednesday, but parents didn't get a call until Friday.

"I feel like if any kind of incident either that or anything else the school should call immediately," Colleen Jackewicz said.

"They could have been notified earlier, possibly, but this takes a lot of investigation," DuBose said.

Jackewicz says she and her classmates were told to erase cell phone video of the incident.

"Whoever had the videos and were caught with them were told to erase them," she said.

The school district will not comment on that but says the video will be used in the investigation.

"This is rather unusual and if it's something that not a daily occurrence you need to look at your procedures," DuBose said.

Jackewicz said the hardest thing for her is losing a good teacher.

"She was a really good teacher," she said. "She was like my favorite and it's really upsetting to see this."

In 2006, the school board reports Nelson failed to show up for a class at Seven Springs Middle School. A resource officer found Nelson passed out in her car surrounded by bottles of wine.

She was ordered to change schools and undergo a substance abuse program.

Bay News 9 stopped by Nelson's home but she did not answer the door.

School board administrators plan to meet with Nelson this week.

Normally, Bay News 9 does not report on stories like this until an arrest is made but in this case the teacher admitted to the accusation so we decided to go with the story.