Feb 8, 2008 - Selena Bell Blad, 46, a Canton Middle School teacher, was arrested after she bought opiates from an undercover officer. She was charged with felony trafficking opium.
Blad is the second Canton Middle School teacher to be arrested in undercover police operations in the last two weeks. Waynesville detectives charged Thomas Eric Allen Jr., 45, a seventh-grade social studies teacher, on Jan. 24 with felony solicitation of a child by computer to commit an unlawful sex act after he tried to meet an undercover officer who was posing as a teenage boy for sex. [TT entry for Allen]Police were tipped off about Blad when an informant told police that someon
e was looking for drugs. An undercover officer posed as a drug dealer and Blad purchased a "large amount of drugs."Blad was hired in September to teach children with special needs.
[Haywood County Schools Assistant Superintendent Bill] Nolte said they would examine employment standards in light of the recent arrests, though he didn’t think there was much they could do to screen employees beyond their current system of references, criminal background checks and drug testing.Full Name: Selena Bell Blad
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TT - Maybe parents should question the school's ability to judge people. Parents and taxpayers should certainly ask whether either, or both, teachers were emergency hires and their qualifications to be in the classroom in the first place.
When a middle school teacher has sexual interest in a boy the same age as those he is teaching, it raises red flags. When a heroin addict (and we're guessing heroin because of information at the Waynesville Police web site) manages to look clean enough to work at a school, it's a five-alarm alert.
