Friday, Pekin Community Schools Interim Superintendent Derek Philips issued a statement regarding a situation that happened that day.
This is part of that statement, “School safety is a top priority and we take this situation seriously. The student involved will face appropriate disciplinary consequences. We continue to work with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to resolve the situation.
Pekin Community Schools has one staff member on paid administrative leave pending further investigation.”
Philips spoke with KCII news and stated, “We had an unfortunate incident that didn’t meet our high expectations here for a safe and welcoming school environment and it’s something that we’re addressing and continue to address and we’ll make sure that we take all matters very seriously. We’re working with our school resource officer and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to make sure that we are doing our due diligence. But there’s a staff member that is currently on paid leave which is standard protocol to put someone on paid leave pending an investigation and so my administrative team and I are working through that and we want to make sure we’re committed.  We want the community to know we’re committed to constant communication that we are able to share due to confidentiality there are things that we are just not able to share, but we want to be as open and transparent as possible and we just want to make sure we are doing everything we can to provide a safe welcoming school environment here at Pekin.”
KCII news will provide more information as it becomes official.