Pikeland district says former employee out amid police investigation
Pikeland schools say a former employee is gone as police investigate a parent’s allegations of sexual comments to students and a warning not to talk.
Pikeland Community Unit School District 10 said a former employee is no longer with the district while police continue investigating allegations involving inappropriate conversations with students. Superintendent Dr. Russ Tepen said the district had already taken employment action after a parent’s social-media post brought the matter into public view.
The allegations center on claims that a child reported repeated inappropriate sexual comments by a member of the district’s janitorial staff and that the employee told students not to discuss the conversations. No arrest has been announced, and the district has not identified the former employee by name. The active police review leaves open the questions families in Pikeland still want answered: what happened, when it happened, who knew about it, and whether any criminal conduct occurred.
Tepen is listed by the district as superintendent, and Pikeland’s main office is in Pittsfield. The district’s website also points families to Safe2Help and a sexual abuse response and prevention resource guide, a reminder that concerns involving students move quickly beyond personnel matters and into school-safety territory. For parents, the immediate issue is whether concerns were escalated fast enough and how the district is handling communication while investigators work.
Pikeland CUSD 10 serves about 1,164 students in the 2024-25 school year and operates three public schools. In a compact district of that size, a personnel case tied to student safety can ripple quickly through classrooms, buses, and athletic programs, especially when the accused employee worked in a support role that placed them around children during the school day.
The district’s staff listings show an administrative structure that includes school principals, transportation and maintenance staff, and other support employees under the superintendent’s office. That structure now sits under sharper scrutiny as police continue their review and district leaders weigh what else needs to be told to families in Pittsfield and across Morgan County.
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