An investigation is underway in North Georgia after a registered sex offender was discovered volunteering in the concession stand at Dade County High School during Friday night's homecoming football game.
The administration was made aware of the incident, and it was reported to law enforcement the following day.
Superintendent Josh Ingle said the sex offender "put herself in a position to volunteer" in the concession stand. She was not asked to do so, he said.
"The cross country team was scheduled to work concessions on Friday," Ingle told the Times Free Press by phone Tuesday. "That parent just showed up. At a Friday night football game, that's an unstructured event. It's hard to monitor who goes where when there are that many kids and adults there, and there probably were about 2,000 people there Friday night. All of our volunteers at the school, for example, check in at the front office. We have our thumb on volunteers during the school day and in the classroom."
Ingle said the school system is aware of who the registered sex offenders are in Dade County, but he said it was difficult to know what rights they have.
"We know who they are, but we don't know what their rights are in every case because with her having kids, she is entitled to certain rights," he said. "We turned it over to law enforcement and they are looking into it. I trust that if she was in violation of her probation, they will handle that appropriately."
To ensure the safety of students, Ingle said the school system will examine its procedures for volunteering during extracurricular activities and will establish additional safety protocols to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
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Right now, one of the ways the district plans to address the problem is by collecting additional demographic information from parents whose children are involved in extracurricular or afterschool activities at the start of each season or school year.
Some parental information is already collected that way, but Ingle said the new forms would ask for more than just full names and contact information. There would also be space on the form for parents to include information about themselves that the sheet might not specifically ask for but that might be important for the district to know at some point.
"Primarily, in terms of sports teams, every head coach has a meeting with parents at the start of the season. Parents and guardians are expected to attend so they can go over what is expected of students who play sports in high school, what the rules are, things like that. It's about setting expectations and asking questions about what it's like to play the sport," Ingle said. "We are in the process now of creating a sheet to collect demographic and other information from parents during that meeting."
Ingle said any new form the school system comes up with will be reviewed by the district attorney before it is presented to parents.
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The Dade County Sheriff's Office said an investigation into Friday's incident is ongoing. It is unclear if the woman violated her probation terms as a sex offender by working concessions at the game. No charges have been filed.
Contact Kelcey Caulder at kcaulder@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @kelceycaulder.