PALM COAST, Florida—Flagler County is on the digital prowl for teachers who access porn while at school. Steven Knob, a band teacher at Matanzas High School, was caught by IP professionals while he was allegedly trying to access porn sites and has resigned, bringing a long career to an abrupt end.
“Now, it’s possible he could be forever banned from teaching in Florida,” reported cfnews13.com, adding, “Knob has had a stellar teaching career that’s spanned over 20 years.”
The teacher’s unexpected resignation on Oct. 7 was not explained to the student body for a month. Now everyone knows that, as Flagler County Schools Superintendent Janet Valentine put it, "He made a very bad choice.”
Knob was not accused of looking at anything illegal, or for accessing any inappropriate sites in the presence of pupils, but somehow he obtained a password that allowed him to bypass the school network’s filter. It’s against school policy to do surf porn under any circumstances, and the district apparently has a zero-tolerance policy. Tracked down by the IP police, he decided to resign rather than fight to keep his job.
Now, according to the article, the Florida Department of Education is determining whether Knob should face further disciplinary actions, including being barred from teaching in the state ever again.
Additional details about this incident are included in a more recent post by the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which reported that Valentine said Knob accessed the prohibited sites only twice.
"One of the things I want to make clear is he was not viewing those sites when students were in the classroom," she said. "It was before school, after school or in a planning period."
Told by school administrators on Oct. 7 that they knew about his “inappropriate” surfing, he was asked to leave the school. He resigned that day rather than fight to keep his job.
"I am sorry for the timing of this, but I am facing personal and family medical matters that require more attention than I can currently give them with the responsibilities of running both a MS and a HS band program," he wrote in an Oct. 10 resignation letter.
