HERRIMAN — The kids say they were bullied by the teachers. The teachers say they were bullied by the kids.
Neither side is happy with the way the school handled it.
Athlos Academy is a taxpayer-funded charter school in Herriman. Police were called out to the school three times last school year due to a series of bullying complaints.
Police investigation #1
School investigation #1
Bosten Fry and Xander Jorden are cousins and best friends who used to love Athlos Academy. Their favorite part? Physical education (PE) every day.
They say everything started to change in December when they told their parents what happened after recess with their 5th grade teacher Alyssa Kirkland.
The kids say they were walking back into the classroom, but Xander had his beanie down over his eyes. Bosten was guiding him.
"I was steering him around, because he couldn't see, to make sure I didn't run him into a wall," Bosten said. "He accidentally touched (Kirkland). She smacked him, and he thought it was me until she called him a swear word."
"She smacked him in the back of the head and called him a dumbass," said parent Jade Jorden.
"It actually kind of hurt a little bit, until like two minutes afterwards," Xander said.
The parents reported the incident to Athlos Academy and to the Herriman Police Department.
"I was wondering where she thought it would be fine to smack a student!" Bosten said. "I was like, 'Bro! She just did that to you!'"
Detectives opened an investigation. They interviewed Alyssa Kirkland and school administrators.
Kirkland denied touching Xander.
"I'm sitting there, shaking, like, 'Oh my God. Are you kidding me?!" Kirkland said. "When the students are coming back in the building? All the teachers are lined up. So, somebody would have had to see me, so called, allegedly, ‘slap a student.’"
The school told police there was no surveillance video of the incident.
"Unfortunately our cameras were down at that time, so we don’t have any of the video footage," said Assistant Principal Stacy Tonozzi. "When we approached her about this whole scenario, she jolted on us. She just left. She resigned."
Becky Austin, the school's human resources director, told police Kirkland "admitted" to calling the student a "dumbass."
"What she said was inappropriate," Austin said.
"Like the dumbass thing?" asked Detective Jason Myers. "Did she admit to that?"
"Yeah. She admitted to it," Austin said, "but it was more of like a playful (thing)."
"The way that it was interpreted to us is that she took a piece of paper, had rolled it up, whacked him on the back of the head and called him a dumbass," said Principal Brian Dawes.
FOX 13 News filed a public records request, asking Athlos Academy to provide investigative records related to the case. The school did not provide any.
"I did not admit to calling him a dumbass," Kirkland said. "I do not call any students dumbasses."
City prosecutors did not charge Kirkland due to lack of evidence.
School investigation #2
Bosten and Xander say school became more stressful after their parents reported Kirkland.
"The more the kids came forward? The worse it got," said parent Amanda Jorden. "It's very, very disturbing."
The kids described an incident in which Kirkland reportedly "got her feelings hurt" after being reported to administration and proceeded to take it out on the class.
"She said, 'I bought treats for you. I bought pizza. You guys treated me badly. You guys embarrassed me,'" Bosten said.
"She points at me and Bosten and goes, 'These are the reason good teachers are leaving this school,'" Xander added.
School administrators referred to Kirkland's behavior as a "blow up."
Bosten and Xander's parents called it "bullying and retaliation."
Kirkland felt she was the one being bullied and taken advantage of, especially after she noticed students recording her with cell phones.
"That’s the last party y’all getting unless all of us says, 'Oh! They’ve earned it!'" Kirkland says on the recording.
Athlos Academy took the following statement from the kids:
"Mrs. Alyssa yelled at us in class. She said we were embarrassing her. She said she was going to make our lives a living heck and that she got us Christmas presents and that would be the last thing she’d ever do for us.”
Detectives also asked Kirkland about the incident.
"You singled them out in class?" asked Detective Myers. "Told everybody nobody was getting Christmas gifts because of them? That kind of thing?"
"No," Kirkland responded. "That is not what I said. I said, because of the situation, all the teachers had agreed to not do specific parties... I said, going forward, I’m probably not going to do anything like that anymore because of the way I’m being treated, and those students were recording me."
Kirkland said the accusations were made up and that Athlos Academy mishandled the case, never getting her side of the story.
"It's not right," Kirkland said. "Why are they recording us like this? Why do we have to come to work and be under a microscope like this?"
Kirkland said she resigned in December due to her mental health.
Some students sent thank you cards, saying they miss her.
"The messages that they wrote in those cards were – it made me cry – because they wanted me to come back," Kirkland said. "I was just, like, I can't."
The administration at Athlos Academy was not so positive, telling police they believe Kirkland quit to avoid discipline for the way she retaliated against the kids.
"They don't want that mark on them," Tonozzi said, "because they're under contract."
School investigation #3
Across the hall, Bosten and Xander were also having trouble with their music teacher Mr. Candido Abeyta.
They recorded Abeyta screaming in class because another kid fell asleep.
Abeyta is heard on a recording smashing the keys on a piano while scolding the class.
"I'm not doing this today!" he said. "You guys can mess with your other teachers, but I am not one to be messed with. I am here at this school as a courtesy, remember that... I am here as a courtesy. I don’t need this job."
Bosten and Xander said they were especially concerned when Abeyta told them he would "rather be mean than be nice."
"If you guys want to be mean? I'll be mean. I'm happy to. Honestly? I prefer being mean over being nice," Abeyta said. "I will show you a side of me that you will not want to see again, and this is only the tip of the iceberg."
The kids reported him for bullying and for bringing his infant to class.
"She just cries the whole class," Bosten said.
"While his toddler was bawling, he was yelling at us, even though she shouldn’t even be there," Xander said.
Principal Dawes got involved again. He reviewed the recordings.
At a parent teacher conference, he used words like "unacceptable" and "temper tantrum" when referring to Abeyta's behavior.
Principal Dawes apologized to the parents and said the kids did the right thing by using their phones to record the incident. He encouraged them to keep recording if they feel unsafe.
School investigation #4
Two weeks later, after Christmas break, the kids said Abeyta's behavior just got worse.
Bosten and Xander told their parents that, this time, Abeyta made sure there weren't any phones in the classroom before yelling.
"It literally took the whole hour of our class of him complaining, like, 'This is so unfair to me. Why did you guys tattle on me?'" Bosten said. "He said, 'My favorite teacher in this school (Kirkland) left because of two kids."
"He just kept yelling at us about how we should feel guilty and carry this for the rest of our lives," Xander said.
FOX 13 News reached out to Abeyta, but he repeatedly declined to comment because he still works for Athlos Academy.
Abeyta said he would like to defend himself, but he doesn't want to be disciplined for telling his side of the story.
"I mean, he’s the one on the recordings," said parent Colten Fry.
"He can't deny it," said parent Jenna Fry. "He can't deny that the way he was treating the kids was wrong."
Athlos Academy repeatedly promised both sets of parents that Abeyta was being disciplined and that his retaliation against students was "unacceptable."
The school said they could not tell parents the specifics of the discipline.
Records show Abeyta was placed on a "performance improvement plan."
FOX 13 News asked for an interview, but Athlos Academy declined to comment.
"It was just a rough day," Abeyta told police. "I just lost my temper."
Police investigation #2
According to Bosten, when Abeyta was yelling at the class, he told kids to tell their parents "to come confront me personally" if they have problems.
Bosten's dad, Colten Fry, said he took that to heart.
First, he went to the principal to make sure it was okay to speak with Abeyta.
"Tomorow morning I will bring this to (Abeyta's) attention. I have two parents that... they’re not hiding behind administration," said Principal Dawes. "They’re more than happy to talk to you."
Colten Fry said he then confronted Abeyta in the parking lot.
"I said, 'Hey. When would you like to have a conversation?'" Colten Fry said. "He's like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' I walk up to him, and he’s like, ‘If you want to get physical? We can get physical.’ So I one-arm shoved him back. Two teachers did get between us, and they were trying to calm down the situation."
Abeyta reported the incident days later. He told police that he didn't sustain any injuries, but he was "pretty shaken up."
He also told police about the bullying complaints.
"This man’s son? They caused a teacher to quit already!" Abeyta told police.
Colten Fry and Abeyta told a nearly identical version of the story to police.
Herriman prosecutors charged Colten Fry with misdemeanor assault and offered a "plea in abeyance," which means the charge will be dismissed but only if he maintains good behavior for a year.
"I regret losing my temper," he said. "I definitely don't regret defending my kid."
"I understand being a protective parent," said Officer Anna Meono. "I really do. However, it doesn’t give us the right to put hands on somebody."
Police investigation #3
School investigation #5
The parents also reported Abeyta to police for posting "sexually charged" Tik Toks in class.
Police reported spending "several hours going through the videos that appear to be sexually suggestive."
"One of the videos had a comment by someone with username (redacted)," wrote Detective Brady Askerlund. "The comment states, 'I'm (redacted) from ur class in music 4th grade respond to my comment.' The video depicts a horse that is rubbing its head on the buttocks of a female. The video then switches to a video of Mr. Abeyta that morphs Mr. Abeyta's face into a horse."
The detective said he found several of the videos to be "sexually suggestive."
"I showed (administrators) several of the videos and advised them that while the videos were not illegal they were concerning due to the content he was sharing both at the school and at other locations," Askerlund wrote. "(Principal Dawes and Assistant Principal Tonozzi) advised they would review policy and look into the issue further."
The parents described several other "reaction" videos posted by Abeyta that appeared to be recorded in the classroom.
"The person was handling some — looked like roast beef — that was extremely juicy and it was shaped like female anatomy," said Jade Jorden. "He was recording his reaction to the fact that they were basically touching it. That was in his classroom. (Another video showed) Patrick Star jumping on top of something sharp and it going up his rectum, and him laughing about it in his classroom. Like, come on."
"It’s disturbing that he would even feel comfortable enough to film something like that and put it on the app!" said Amanda Jorden.
Police told the parents that they sympathize with the situation, but there's not much they could do.
"Just so we're on the same page? That kind of behavior is not acceptable with kids in the school," said Division Commander Brent Adamson. "That’s coming from me both as a parent and as an officer. That being said, there's not a ton of stuff that I can do to enforce that."
Athlos Academy recommended Bosten and Xander switch out of music class.
"We recognize having your boys in that class is not a good place for them," said Principal Dawes. "It's not a good place for (Abeyta)."
"I don't think it's a good place for any student," said Jade Jorden.
At first, the parents asked for Abeyta to stop bullying students. When their kids told them it was only getting worse, the parents asked for Abeyta to be fired.
Eventually, Athlos Academy recommended the kids could switch schools.
"They've basically been taught: If you have a problem? Don't come forward. Don't say anything, or you could be singled out," said Jade Jorden.
According to a new state law, schools are no longer allowed to require a student to "change (his or her) schedule or placement or participation in a school sponsored sport, club, or activity" in response to bullying.
Bosten and Xander now attend different schools for the first time in their lives. They spend time with each other after school.