Records: Suring High School nurse who helped strip-search students expressed concern, was told to talk only to police
SURING - The school nurse who helped conduct a strip search of students at Suring High School to find vaping devices contacted her supervisor the next day because she was concerned the searches were inappropriate, according to police records.
The nurse told investigators she contacted her supervisor, a nurse with an unnamed clinic, Jan. 19 because she was concerned about searches she helped Suring School District Superintendent Kelly Casper conduct the day before, according to Oconto County Sheriff’s Office reports obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin through an open records request.
Suring High School administrators have not yet responded to a call for comment.
The school nurse, who was involved in strip-searching students at Suring High School, started her job the day before the searches took place and wasn’t given paperwork or guidance on how to do her job, according to police reports.
The name of the clinic and the supervisor were redacted, whitened out, in the reports released by the sheriff's office.
The supervisor told the nurse the searches were improper per school district policy, and she shouldn’t talk to anyone except law enforcement about them, according to police reports. The supervisor told the school nurse that she would contact the clinic's legal team and start an investigation.
Suring School District policy states "under no circumstances shall a school official ever conduct a strip search of a student." State statute says any official, employee or agent of a school district who conducts a strip search is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor.
The school nurse said she hadn't talked to anyone, including her family, about what happened, according police reports.
Police documents also revealed Casper told officers she had completed training on searching students and learned to "never touch a child, never look at a child if they are nude." Casper said the searches she helped conduct in January were her first at Suring. She estimated she had previously searched 20 students while with the Coleman School District, her previous employer.
Casper, according to police records, said Suring Police Chief Kevin Schneider was called to search male students suspected of vaping.
Suring High School Principal Zachary Beeksma told officers he had an issue with middle school girls vaping on Jan. 19 and a female officer from Gillett Police Department came to the school, and she did a "pat down."
Parents of the students say the district never notified them about the strip searches in advance, and several have since hired a civil law attorney.
The school nurse told investigators that soon after she started working at Suring High School on Jan. 17, Casper came into her office and said “I’m going to have to search the girls,” and asked the nurse if she would be able to help and witness that she didn’t touch any students.
The next day, Casper began calling students into the district office to be searched. According to police reports, the nurse stood outside of a bathroom in the nurse’s office as Casper searched the girls one by one for vapes. The girls told investigators the nurse stood by the door while Casper conducted the search.
Oconto County District Attorney Edward D. Burke Jr. decided not to charge administrators with a crime earlier this month, saying state law hadn’t been broken because no private parts were exposed.
However, police reports show at least one student said she was made to pull her bra away from their body while Casper searched her for vapes.
Casper told investigators the nurse made one girl pull her bra away from her body. Casper couldn’t remember which student it was, but said it was only one student, and it was the nurse who told them to pull their bra outward not up.
Casper’s statement is at odds with the student’s version of events, who told investigators that Casper told her to lift her bra and her breasts were exposed. The girl told investigators that two of her friends were made to do the same thing.
A statement released by Burke earlier this month said Casper and the nurse, both women, searched six female students for vape cartridges Jan. 17 and 18. Casper made the students undress to their underwear and searched them.
Burke said the searches did not fit the definition of strip searches under state statute because the students' private parts were not exposed to Casper and the nurse.
Burke has not denied the incident occurred, only that it did not meet the legal definition of a strip search.
"I think the charging decision as far as what I had was pretty spot on because it didn’t fit the statutory criteria of strip search," Burke said in an interview Monday. "You can call it a strip search just based upon the facts — common sense would say that. But the law and common sense are sometimes very far apart."
Suring principal Beeksma also started working for the district shortly before the searches took place. He began at the beginning of January after working as a teacher at Nathan Hale High School in West Allis, according to police records.
Contact Jake Prinsen at jprinsen@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PrinsenJake.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Suring High School nurse raised concerns over student strip searches
