Art teacher loses license for showing videos with suicide, nudity to kindergartners

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – More than two years after leaving his job, a former art teacher will be permanently barred from teaching in Ohio after he showed young children videos depicting self-harm, suicide, addiction and nudity.

David Lafferty was in his second decade teaching art in Franklin Local School District in Muskingum County when he was placed on administrative leave in 2020 for a series of YouTube videos he showed to kindergartners, first- and second-graders. Those videos – and a years-long pattern of inappropriate behavior with children – have pushed the Ohio Board of Education to strip Lafferty of his educator license on Tuesday, according to the board’s June meeting materials.

Lafferty showed three videos about famous artists, all of which contained varying degrees of nudity or inappropriate concepts for young children, a state board investigation found. But the videos were far from Lafferty’s first reported instance of questionable conduct. 

The first video Lafferty showed to kindergartners in January 2020 was about Armedeo Modigliani, an artist who, according to the video’s narration, "struggled with alcoholism, drugs and various love affairs." The video showed several examples of Modigliani’s affinity for nude portraits and emphasized that the subjects were often his lovers. One scene was of a pregnant woman’s suicide after Modigliani died.

The same day, Lafferty played a video about Pablo Picasso for a second-grade class, according to the state board report. The video discussed fascism, showed photographs of a city destroyed by bombs, and detailed the suicide of another artist whom Picasso knew.

Lafferty showed a third video to a second-grade class about Vincent van Gogh, one that depicted van Gogh’s detached, bloody ear shooting across the screen. At the end of the video, van Gogh is seen pointing a gun at himself before the sound of a gunshot ushers in a billow of smoke. 

At a hearing, which Lafferty did not attend, Pamela Hartman, principal of Duncan Falls Elementary School, testified that she became aware of the Modigliani video after a kindergartener told a parent they saw a video of “naked people” in art class. Lafferty wouldn’t give her the name of the video and assured her the only inappropriate material was a few nude portraits, Hartman claimed.

But when she watched the video herself, Hartman found "adult themes such as suicide and lovers" and determined the video was "entirely too long for kindergarten students as well as developmentally inappropriate in other areas." She instructed Lafferty – both verbally and in writing – to not show the Modigliani video or anything remotely similar to it.

By then, Lafferty had already shown multiple classes two of the videos and would show more students the third, according to the state board report. 

After an aide attending an art class reported the van Gogh video to Hartman, Lafferty was placed on paid administrative leave. At a subsequent meeting with Hartman, the district superintendent and his union representative, Lafferty admitted he didn’t watch the entirety of the videos before showing them – and that he didn’t find anything wrong with the clips.

One child began having nightmares about van Gogh’s self-mutilation, Hartman testified, and another asked her pregnant mother whether she intended to kill herself.

"That Mr. Lafferty persisted in showing inappropriate content to students after being instructed not to do so, and then attempted to conceal and defended his actions, suggests that his misconduct resulted from something more serious than a momentary lapse in judgment," a hearing officer wrote in the report.

A 'culmination' of inappropriate conduct

Lafferty received at least five written reprimands between 2000 and 2019, according to the hearing report. In November 2001, he was reprimanded for using profanity while talking to a student. After telling two students to fight him in 2010, Lafferty was instructed that “students are not to be taunted by their teachers.”

Lafferty received three more warnings after being moved to Duncan Falls Elementary School in 2013. In 2014, while in school, he posted a profane social media post about parents and student conduct. In 2018, he was reprimanded for mocking a student about his weight. 

In 2019, Hartman received a complaint that Lafferty yelled at a kindergartner with fine motor impairment who used a tracing tool to draw shapes. The report states Lafferty thought it was "unfair" the child could use a tracing aid while other students could not.

Beyond the documented instances, Hartman said she received more complaints about Lafferty’s behavior after he was placed on leave. The teacher hired to replace Lafferty found a pornographic magazine in his filing cabinet, Hartman said. 

One parent claimed that Lafferty stomped on their son’s artwork, while others said he yelled at their children. Hartman testified that students were begging their teachers not to send them to art class, fearing Lafferty’s wrath. 

"I told him that he is definitely not the same person that he was when he first came to the elementary; that he doesn’t seem like himself," Hartman said. "He replied that, 'I'm not.'"

After the district launched an investigation into Lafferty, he resigned in February 2020.

When asked for comment, Kacey Cottrill, superintendent of Franklin Local School District, said in an email that the district will "defer to the State Board and Department of Education" regarding Lafferty's license revocation.

"David Lafferty is a former employee who has not worked in our district for more than three (3) years," Cottrill said. "The Franklin Local School District is focused on our mission of building an academic foundation for students' future successes for the 2023-2024 school year and beyond."

The hearing officer recommended Lafferty be permanently ineligible for licensure in the state, finding the "uncontradicted evidence" suggests Lafferty engaged in "conduct unbecoming" to the profession. 

"If, as it appears, a pedagogical objective in conducting art classes for kindergarteners, first and second graders, is to cultivate an interest in and receptivity to visual arts, causing such young students to first associate ‘art’ with images that many of them would find disturbing, frightening or embarrassing, would not seem reasonably calculated to meet that objective," the hearing officer wrote.

Lafferty could not be reached for comment.