Attorney Bobi J. Frank has filed suit against the city of Alachua and the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) on behalf of a Santa Fe High School (SFHS) parent who says baseball coach and school media specialist Travis Yeckring sexually harassed her daughter.
The suit names Athletic Director Michele Faulk, former principal Tim Wright and former assistant principal Mac Rendek as school employees who had received reports of Yeckring’s behavior and did not act. Faulk is still at SFHS, and Rendek is now an assistant principal at Buchholz High School.
Faulk and Rendek have both been placed on administrative leave with pay due to the allegations, according to Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) spokeswoman Jackie Johnson. Johnson said there is no estimate of how long they will remain on leave.
The first count of the suit is negligent supervision for the lack of action, even after reports were filed, the second count is negligent retention for keeping Yeckring, Rendek, Wright and Faulk in their positions of authority.
The third count is negligence of the school district and city’s duty of care for its students, and the fourth count is res ipsa loquitur, which holds that the occurrence of an accident implies negligence.
According to the suit, a pre-litigation investigation revealed that ACPS employees and school resource officers had received multiple formal reports from “numerous” students about sexual misconduct by Yeckring.
As of the Oct. 30 filing date, the suit states that Yeckring’s personnel file does not contain any record of any complaint or investigation into sexual harassment, child abuse or child neglect.
The lawsuit states that both the SBAC and city of Alachua owe a duty of care to students at SFHS, the city because it provides school resource officers through its police department.
According to the suit, Yeckring “intentionally exposed” the plaintiff’s daughter to a sexually explicit image on his cell phone when she was a sophomore at SFHS during the 2022-23 school year.
The suit states that the student did not want or invite the photograph, and that Yeckring smirked at her when he showed it. Immediately after that first incident, the suit says the student began to suffer from acute anxiety with at least one migraine episode.
Though she tried to avoid Yeckring after that, the suit says a week later she encountered Yeckring in the hall when she was running late for class, and he made “sexually charged statements” until she ran to class, where she told her teacher about both incidents.
The suit says the student then filed a complaint against Yeckring, and Rendek took her to a conference room where his first response to the accusations was “This is not the first time I have heard this type of thing about Yeckring.”
The student wrote a formal witness statement that day, according to the suit, but her parents were not notified about the incidents by the school or city.
A week or two later, according to the suit, the student entered a class and found Yeckring substituting for her regular teacher. She left class, called her mother and went to the front office to tell Wright about the situation.
According to the suit, Wright’s response was:
“We have had some issues in the past like this with Yeckring. This is not the first time I have heard this.”
Shortly after, Faulk entered the room and the student was “forced” to recount again the two incidents with Yeckring, according to the suit. The suit also says that Faulk had formerly threatened a female student-athlete with being benched in her next game if she didn’t stop calling Yeckring “Pedo Yeck.”
Johnson told Mainstreet on Monday that the district had not yet received the lawsuit, and a public records request to the city of Alachua was closed after it was determined that the city did not have a copy of the suit on file.
The suit was filed with the Alachua County Clerk of the Court on Oct. 30, five months after Frank sent a demand letter on the client’s behalf, alleging that Yeckring “engaged in inappropriate contact” of a sexual nature, with a female minor student.
Yeckring was put on administrative leave in March after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) started investigating alleged crimes against children at the school.
The suit demands a trial by jury for “all legally available general and compensatory damages for Defendants’ violations of law” and a ruling that prevents the defendants from further violations, as well as attorney’s fees and costs and other further relief.