SEATTLE -- A sex offender has been working as a volunteer for the Evergreen High School football program, school officials said on Thursday.
In a letter issued to parents, Highline Public Schools officials said Lashawn Ferguson, a level-three sex offender, was immediately escorted off the campus after making "inappropriate comments to female team managers during team practice on Monday."
Ferguson had been convicted of child rape in 1998, but had failed to register as a sex offender, the district said. The man was placed under arrest for failing to register.
Procedures that require volunteers to undergo a criminal background check were not followed in this case, officials said. The man had been on campus on two other occasions prior to Monday.
District officials said in the wake of the incident, they've made sure the backgrounds of all other active volunteers have been checked. They added they've rescinded the job offer they'd made to the school's head football coach "because he failed to ensure that the volunteer had completed a background check."
"This incident illustrates the district's need to make improvements in management of our athletic programs," said superintendent John P. Welch. "We are putting in new safeguards in place to make sure that all volunteers and coaches are screened in the future."
Highline Public Schools is already the center of several investigations, as well as the subject of an audit by the state, which revealed scathing allegations against the district last month.
The state Department of Health said Jason Boehm, a former substitute stadium manager for Highline's Memorial Field, had fondled dozens of teenage students.
Boehm is also accused of performing physical examinations on students and giving injections without being licensed to do so in exchange for $5 per exam. The department said Boehm also falsified physical exam forms to make it appear a licensed physician performed the exams.
In one case, during a boxing match in March at a high school for a non-district event, Boehm allegedly touched the genitals of a boxer who just needed treatment for a bloody nose, according to the department. Boehm also allegedly used a needle to inject the boxer with an unspecified substance.
The case came to the attention of district officials when a school nurse contacted her supervisor after noticing that Boehm had written a medical excuse for a student.
Around the same time, a King County sheriff's detective alerted the district that they were investigating Boehm for inappropriately examining an athlete in a Police Athletic League competition.
District officials said the district fired Boehm when it learned of the allegations, and he has been barred from school property. School officials are looking into the possibility of additional victims.
As a substitute stadium manager, Boehm was to provide logistical support for activities at Memorial Field, which is adjacent to Highline High School in Burien. He had also been contracted to provide first aid at athletic events and to give first aid training to coaches and PE teachers, which he was qualified to do as a state licensed emergency medical technician.
Boehm had also served as a volunteer for Evergreen High School athletic teams, the district said.
In the wake of the Boehm incident, the district said it would hire an independent investigator and also work with the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to conduct an audit of all of its high school and middle school athletic programs.
The district athletic director and a high school athletic director have both been placed on administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation, officials said.
King County sheriff's spokesman Jim Lang said there is an active and ongoing investigation into the allegations.
Boehm, who has been licensed as a foster parent since April 2009, had been caring for two foster kids last summer. After the allegations surfaced, the two children were removed from his home.
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