Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault and mentions suicide and other topics related to psychiatric distress. If you or a loved one is in crisis, call 988.
Sarah Santos’ daughter started fourth grade in 2022 with a new diagnosis and a new special-education teacher: David Sibley.
Her daughter had long required learning accommodations and speech therapy. Now, with dyslexia identified among her challenges, Meadowdale Elementary had assigned Sibley to work with her.
Soon, her daughter was coming home saying Sibley kept rubbing her back and touching her hair. In a December meeting to discuss her daughter’s progress, Santos told Sibley and Principal Dan Davis that her daughter felt uncomfortable with Sibley because of the way he was touching her.
“He told me Sibley was ‘just trying to be nice,’” Santos remembered Davis saying, in a recent interview with The Seattle Times. “They just brushed it off. Then it kept happening.”
Santos’ concerns should have set off an urgent chain of events at the Lynnwood school and the Edmonds School District, according to nine sexual misconduct experts from legal, academic and child advocacy groups.
But it took a full year — and three school workers reporting Sibley’s behavior ranging from touching students to sexual harassment of staff — before the district began investigating, district records show. And the district didn’t interview students in that investigation, a spokesperson said.
The district allowed Sibley to remain a classroom teacher for eight more months before he was put on leave — 20 months after Santos complained, according to interviews and the district spokesperson.
A year after Sibley was put on leave, another student reported that he had sexually assaulted her in December 2023, when she was in fifth grade. The Snohomish County prosecuting attorney declined to charge Sibley in that case due to a lack of evidence.
Sibley, 55, told The Times in a short phone call that he couldn’t comment for publication, but he then denied the allegations and referred questions to his two lawyers. One lawyer didn’t respond to calls or emails, and the other declined to comment. Sibley is still on the district’s payroll through Aug. 31.
Parents have grown outraged, fearing their students aren’t safe at school. Some have attended Edmonds School Board meetings demanding accountability from the school district and board members.
Experts say district and school administrators should have promptly interviewed Santos' daughter, other students in Sibley’s class and other staff working with Sibley. They should have separated Sibley from Santos' daughter or, depending on those interviews, taken him out of the classroom altogether. Or they could have placed another adult in Sibley’s classroom to supervise him.
Davis, the principal at the time, didn’t respond to texts or voicemails seeking comment. The Times also tried to reach him through the Edmonds School District communications director, Curtis, Campbell, who did not respond to that request. Campbell did not make any Edmonds administrators available for an interview but emailed answers to some questions for this story.
The district had a legal obligation to ensure the safety of all students at the school, said Billie-Jo Grant, a California Polytechnic State University lecturer and expert on sexual harassment and misconduct. The complaints from multiple staff members showed a pattern of behavior, she said, and administrators should have been worried about it happening again. They should have prevented Sibley from meeting with students one-on-one alone in his classroom.
“You want to be sure. You don’t want to leave that one up to chance,” Grant said. “It’s not worth it.”
Staff members file complaints
While Santos was waiting for the school to take action, her daughter would shut down when Santos asked her about Sibley. Santos said she tried to talk with Davis again, but he told her he was too busy.
Then, in June 2023, Davis and Edmonds School District officials received emails from two school employees about Sibley, later obtained by The Times.
A school psychologist said she saw Sibley had “intertwined his hand with a student who was struggling emotionally” in November, three months into Sibley’s employment. She added that several children told her they felt “unsafe” with Sibley and refused to go to his class.
An occupational therapist wrote that Sibley made comments about her physical appearance that made her uncomfortable, and that Sibley was sharing personal information with fifth- and sixth-graders. She wasn’t going to come forward but decided to after hearing other staff and students had raised concerns, according to the email.
One of the district officials then emailed Roger Jordan, a district human resources director, “I think we have a solid plan.” It was clear from the emails the plan was to address the staff members’ concerns, but it didn’t outline how. That same day, Davis forwarded to Sibley a list of the staff members’ concerns. It is not clear from public documents what happened after that.
Sibley remained in the classroom. Then, six months later, Davis and Jordan heard from another concerned staff member.
Ginnie Berry, a student intervention coordinator who used to work with Sibley at Meadowdale, wrote in two emails to administrators that Sibley “was sexually harassing me”; reached to hug her, which she did not want; and “ran his hand/fingers along my back.” Berry recently told The Times that when he fluttered his fingers across her bra line, it sent her into a panic.
Her emails also described Sibley asking students for hugs, time and again pulling one girl into his groin area. One hug “lasted at least 30 seconds.”
Berry told The Times that Sibley would call out the girl’s name and say “Come give me a hug!”
“She would just kind of melt; she was 6, so the top of her head is at his middle,” Berry said. “He would pull her around face front and into his groin area and hold her there.
“It was shocking. I’ve never seen anybody hug a kid like that before,” Berry added.
She also told The Times that he rubbed female students’ backs, stroked girls’ ponytails on the playground and held their hands. She saw Sibley in his classroom alone with female students and the lights off and the blinds closed.
She said Sibley would call out to kindergartners, “‘I’m here! I’m here to get my batteries recharged! Mr. Sibley is here to get his batteries charged!’”
District investigates one year after first complaint
Berry's complaint spurred the district to launch an investigation.
Jordan, a human resources director, interviewed Sibley, Berry and roughly eight other staff members in December 2023 and looked into whether Sibley violated district policies on teacher-student boundaries and sexual harassment of staff.
Jordan said he interviewed Sibley, who “said that he did not have students in there by themselves,” according to a transcript of Jordan’s deposition in a lawsuit later filed by Berry.
When the investigation concluded, Jordan wrote a letter to Sibley saying he hadn’t violated the district’s sexual harassment policy and he was “close” to violating the staff-to-student boundaries policy.
Jordan went on to write directions Sibley was to follow.
“You will not ask students for hugs, either from the side or from the front. You will discourage students from hugging you. You will use ‘high-fives,’ ‘handshakes,’ ‘fist-bumps,’ 'encouraging words,’ instead of hugs when dealing with students,” Jordan wrote.
While Jordan said Sibley's hugging didn't violate policy, the policy itself states that staff can’t “intrude on students’ physical or emotional boundaries” unless for an educational purpose. Jordan’s letter stated that Sibley’s hugs had no educational purpose.
When The Times last month asked the school district about that discrepancy, Campbell wrote that Sibley’s conduct “did violate district policy.” The district believed the behavior had stopped, Campbell wrote, after the 2024 letter was delivered.
“Based on the information available to the district at the time, the concerns that had been reported did not result in a determination that would warrant removing Mr. Sibley from his student-facing position,” Campbell wrote to The Times. “The district addressed the conduct through corrective action, including a letter of direction outlining expectations for future behavior.”
Three school workers, including Berry, told The Times that Sibley’s behavior didn’t change.
Berry filed a lawsuit alleging that the district retaliated against her after she complained about Sibley and that it denied her a position she had sought. The district settled with her in March 2026 and did not admit to any liability or wrongdoing.
“I didn't believe there was enough evidence that indicated sexual harassment took place,” Jordan said in a deposition during the lawsuit. But he acknowledged to a Lynnwood police detective that some of Sibley's behavior was “inappropriate,” according to the deposition transcript.
Jordan also told police that Sibley’s “hugging was not determined to be sexual in nature, according to a transcript of his deposition, because “there was no sex acts that were taking place. There was no feeling up or feeling down anybody's body. There was no – there was no kissing. There was no name it. None of that stuff took place.” He also said he didn’t receive other complaints that would help him determine Sibley’s “intent” when hugging students.
Jordan retired in August 2025. Attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful.
Losing faith in the administration and no longer working at the school, Berry filed a report about Sibley with the Lynnwood Police Department in May 2024.
As police began their investigation, more complaints about Sibley were sent to the district. Wendy Masterson, a paraeducator who recently retired but worked at the district for 25 years and at Meadowdale Elementary for 13 years, emailed a long list of complaints to district officials in June 2024, when Sibley remained in the classroom.
“He sits in very close proximity and has had his hand on her upper back area,” Masterson wrote about Sibley being alone in his classroom with a female student and the lights off and doors closed. “Or he sits on the desk/table area next to her with his leg/hip touching her arm.”
“I’m feeling really frustrated for the families that have to go through this with their children. I’m feeling even more frustrated for the families that don’t even know,” Masterson recently told The Times.
“There is no part of teaching that's a requirement that you sit in extremely close proximity to female students in a dark room,” Masterson added. “I feel as though we have failed these students.”
Ultimately, the Lynnwood Police Department issued Sibley a citation for fourth-degree assault involving a staff member and fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation involving a student, and referred the case to the city prosecutor’s office. Only then did the school district place Sibley on leave, taking him out of the classroom in August 2024. Lynnwood police told The Times he was not arrested or booked into jail.
Prosecutors decline to charge Sibley
For the staff and parents at Meadowdale, more months passed without answers.
Lynnwood’s contract prosecuting attorney asked school district officials to hold off on investigating Sibley while they reviewed the case. It took the contractor firm Zachor, Stock, & Krepps nine months to make a final determination.
In February 2025, the firm’s Chad Krepps wrote a memo to Lynnwood police declining to prosecute Sibley for sexual harassment against a staff member. The interactions “had negative psychological responses,” he wrote, but didn’t amount to a crime because “the City must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the touching was harmful or offensive.” Krepps also found the reported hugs Sibley gave students were “concerning” but not criminal.
But the prosecutor asked police to further investigate one of the allegations — that Sibley wrapped his arms around a distressed student’s body, preventing her from moving her arms and kicking her legs, and carried her across a soccer field.
In June 2025, Krepps wrote back to the police saying there was “probable cause for assault,” but the incident fell outside the statute of limitations, so the office wouldn’t file charges.
District officials kept Sibley on the payroll and had to put him on assignment while he was on administrative leave, according to Campbell, the communications director. Sibley’s name was added to a staff directory at Meadowdale High School, but he never worked there.
Student describes sexual assault
In August 2025, a female special-education student who was admitted to a hospital after having suicidal ideations told a social worker Sibley had sexually assaulted her in December 2023, when she was in fifth grade.
The student said Sibley removed her pants and underwear down to her ankles and inserted his fingers inside her vagina while saying “smile for the camera,” according to the police report.
Sibley told her “not to tell anyone what happened and threatened to kill her if she did,” according to the girl’s account in the police report.
District officials obtained a copy of the police report in September 2025, Campbell said.
Police investigated the allegations and referred the case to the Snohomish County prosecuting attorney’s office. In November 2025, the prosecutor told the district it could start its own investigation, and administrators reached out to Sibley to schedule an interview. But before the interview could take place, Sibley submitted his resignation.
Sibley has not been in the classroom since 2024 but has been on payroll and will be through the end of next month, when his resignation is effective, according to the district’s settlement agreement with him.
Edmonds School District agreed to pay him $56,770, the equivalent of his salary and health insurance for five months. Before Edmonds, Sibley worked at the Northshore School District for a year and the Everett School District for a year before that, according to his personnel files from both districts. Neither file contained discipline reports.
The Times asked Nancy Katims, Edmonds School Board president, for an interview. She said she deferred questions to Superintendent Rebecca Miner because the issue involved an ongoing investigation.
Once Sibley resigned, the district notified the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction of the allegations. The district was required to notify the state “when they have sufficient, reliable information to believe that an educator lacks good moral character and personal fitness” to be a teacher. OSPI’s investigation into Sibley’s conduct is still ongoing, OSPI spokesperson Katy Payne said Thursday.
Depending on the results of the state’s investigation, Sibley’s certification could be suspended, surrendered or revoked. The state discipline case could also be dismissed.
In February, the district contracted with a third-party investigator, Crystal Investigations, to look into “allegations that one or more staff members may not have followed district policy and/or state law related to mandatory reporting requirements surrounding concerns and/or allegations about Mr. Sibley,” Campbell wrote in an email.
The district has not released a copy of the report to The Times.
Parents frustrated, press district to act
Parents started an online petition in March to “remove Dan Davis as principal from Meadowdale Elementary” and for the district to work with law enforcement to “identify other victims” at the school.
Davis stepped down as principal in April, but the district didn’t provide a reason. He will serve in another unspecified role at the district, Campbell said.
“Our children deserve an environment where they feel safe and supported, and where their voices are truly heard,” the parents’ petition reads. “We demand a detailed and public explanation for inaction by the Edmonds School District.”
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