Three months after a 16-year-old boy in Oklahoma was allegedly raped with a pool cue by his Bixby High School football teammates at the superintendent’s home during a team function, the school board’s only “disciplinary action” so far has been to accept the resignation of the superintendent, Kyle Wood. They did this while giving him his year-end bonus of $4,000 and allowing him to receive full compensation and benefits through Oct. 31, 2018, according to a report from Tulsa World, which has been closely covering the story since breaking news of the investigation into the incident.
Police have indicated that they are investigating school and district officials for possible delays in reporting the assault allegations. According to the search warrant affidavit filed in Tulsa County District Court, a law enforcement officer wrote:
“It is unclear when school officials reported this sexual assault of a child to the authorities, although it was certainly delayed for days. It certainly appears that any reporting of the incident was significant and has caused difficulty in the investigation, especially including the inability to preserve evidence. It also appears that there may have been some initial effort by one or others to not report the incident at all.”
Wood’s attorney denied that his client had violated any law regarding reporting of child abuse, after the school board accepted Wood’s resignation on Dec. 18.
Tulsa World reported on the details on Wood’s resignation agreement:
Doug Mann, the Bixby school board’s contract attorney, confirmed that in the days just before his resignation agreement was approved, Wood received a total of $4,000 for meeting all four of those objectives, as well as a $2,000 one-time stipend received by all Bixby Public Schools employees.
As the newspaper reported, the school district revealed it was investigating an incident on Wood’s 52nd birthday, which means that he was eligible for retirement under the state retirement system for public school educators which says employees are able to retire at age 62 or whenever the sum of their age and years of service equal 80 or more. Wood had been in the system for 28 years.