Keystone Central to examine hiring, reporting processes in the wake of employee arrests

Keely Doll
·3 min read

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After two support staff members were accused having inappropriate contact with a 14-year-old student, Keystone Central School District’s superintendent said the district is working to ensure safer hiring and reporting practices for both students and staff.

According to criminal complaints, Dana Ann Kitchen, 36, of Lock Haven, and Brittany Kay Koch, 29, of Beech Creek, each sent sexually explicit messages and photos to the child. There were arrested this month after an investigation was launched last fall.

Koch, a teachers aid at Central Mountain Middle School, admitted to sending nude photos and explicit videos of herself to the student, who was in the class where she was teaching, police wrote.

Kitchen worked in the cafeteria at Central Mountain High School. She also admitted to sending sexually explicit photos and videos to the 14-year-old and sent nude photos to another student under 16 years old, according to the criminal complaint.

Kitchen was charged with two counts of corruption of minors and two counts of unlawful contact with a minor, and Koch was charged with one count of corruption of minors and one count of unlawful contact with a minor.

Both employees were suspended without pay in November 2023 when the investigation into inappropriate conduct began.

Francis Redmon, the superintendent of Keystone Central School District, said the district is working with its legal counsel on the next steps regarding Kitchen and Koch’s employment but couldn’t say more due to the ongoing legal case.

Redmon, who stepped into the role in February after the retirement of Jacquelyn Martin, said incidents like these are a call for districts to look closely at their hiring practices.

“When issues like this happen, it’s awful and unfortunate, and everything that I do around our hiring practice is to try to ensure that we have the best people that are going to do the best work with our students and our young people,” Redmon said. “It’s these kinds of unfortunate incidents that make us take a real close, granular look to ensure that all of our policies are first up to legal code, and they certainly are, but then looking at some of the other vetting processes that we do.”

This isn’t the first time Keystone Central has dealt with the aftermath of serious accusations about its staff. In 2020, Cole Black, a former district teacher and soccer coach, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 17-year-old student.

As much as districts screen and vet candidates in the hiring process, it’s not a guarantee offenders won’t slip through the cracks, Redmon said. That’s why making sure both students and teachers understand when and how to report possible inappropriate relationships is so important, he said.

“We spent a lot of time working with our students and with our teachers about, first of all, how to go through that reporting system,” Redmon said. “Our administrators are trained frequently on this and we’re sending out continuous reminders for folks that if you see something or suspect something that you have to report it, and how to go about that reporting.”

With a month left until classes begin again on Aug. 28 for Keystone Central students, Redmon said the district is ensuring that additional training on how to recognize and report inappropriate relationships will be at the forefront.

Redmon also said the district is working to strengthen school culture in the wake of the arrests.

“When when a tragic incident like this happens, we make sure that our students and our staff are supported through our counseling services,” Redmon said. “We also look to broader networks, like our intermediate unit, to ensure that we have the systems in place to support staff who are feeling maybe that there’s something deeper going on, which we found wasn’t the case here.”

Keystone Central School District covers parts of Clinton, Centre and Potter counties.

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