Porn | School Officials Move To Fire Goodyear Teacher Over Viewing Porn Sites In Class

A high-school business teacher in Goodyear may be fired after officials discovered he repeatedly looked at porn sites during the school day when students were in the classroom.

The Agua Fria Union High School District notified Millennium High School teacher and head cross-country and softball coach Gilbert Cruz on Thursday of its intent to dismiss him, officials said.

He looked at one site 240 times in one day and attempted to access "adult material" on his classroom computer more than 2,700 times over about a week, according to a district letter sent Wednesday to Cruz obtained by The Arizona Republic .

Cruz, who has been on paid leave since April 4, could not be reached for comment Friday.

He has 10 days to request a hearing to refute the charges or he "will be automatically dismissed as of May 27," the letter states.

District officials notified Goodyear police, who found Cruz had not committed a crime, police spokesman John Rowan said.

"Pornography in and of itself is not a crime," he said. "It's being handled internally as a discipline issue."

Rowan said it would have been a crime if the district had found child pornography on Cruz's computer or if students had viewed lewd photos or videos with Cruz. There was no such evidence, he said.

Federal law requires school districts to monitor all computer use. Technology Director Mike Shepard said the district spends about $12,600 annually on Websense, which tracks Internet use on every district computer.

During a "routine random check" of the reporting logs on April 1, the district found that a computer assigned to Cruz accessed 1,719 hits on websites that were blocked as "Adult Material: Sex," the letter stated.

After further investigation, the district found that Websense "blocked most of Mr. Cruz's attempts to access Adult Material" but missed one site "dedicated to photos of 'Playboy' playmates, cybergirls (sic) and college girls," the letter shows.

The district said Cruz accessed the porn site about 240 times on April 4, when students were in his classroom.

His computer was confiscated that day, and he was put on administrative leave, district officials said.

"To the best of our knowledge there were no students involved," Superintendent Dennis Runyan said. "It was the teacher's workstation and related directly to the teacher's engagement with the inappropriate sites."

But the district provided conflicting data on Cruz's involvement with students.

The letter states that the investigation stemmed from "allegations made by students and other school employees." Later, the letter states that the investigation started after a "routine random check" of reporting logs.

Cruz, who makes $43,700 annually, has been a teacher in the district since 2003 and is a 1996 graduate of Agua Fria High School in Avondale.

Millennium Principal John Speer notified parents in a letter Friday.

A long-term substitute has been covering Cruz's business and street-law courses, and other Millennium softball coaches worked with students to "ensure that their softball season would not be disrupted," according to two letters addressed to parents dated May 13.

Student and varsity softball player Adyana Ronquillo said the team spent about 20 days without its head coach. She didn't know why Cruz was gone until the school gave the team a letter Friday.

"The principal just said that there were some issues going on, and he probably won't be back for the rest of the season," said Adyana, 17. "Without him we would all goof around and wouldn't really practice that much. The (junior varsity) coach couldn't discipline us as well as Cruz did."