MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald
March 9, 2018
By Kyra Gurney
A seventh-grade student at Miami Arts Charter School had a funny feeling about her math teacher, so she went home and Googled him.
It didn’t take her long to find a 2007 newspaper article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune detailing troubling allegations against Scott Manas.
While he was teaching at a middle school in Hillsborough County in the mid-1990s, the article said, Manas had allegedly taped a photo of a female student inside a cabinet and collected mementos from her — including a lock of her hair and a tissue she had used to blot lipstick — in a desk drawer.
Investigators later discovered that Manas had also written “inappropriate” notes to other girls and that he’d told one student he loved her, according to the article. As a result, Manas had been sanctioned by Florida’s Education Practices Commission, the body that evaluates allegations of teacher misconduct, but had kept his teaching license. No criminal charges were filed.
Manas could not be reached for comment. He told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2007 that he was “unfairly singled out and made an example of for other teachers.”
“The School Board took what she said and just ran with it, despite her reputation at school and the way she dressed and presented herself to others,” he told the newspaper.
The Miami Arts Charter School student posted the results of her sleuthing on Snapchat on Feb. 7. By the time she got to school the next morning, everyone was talking about the allegations. And by Monday morning, Feb. 12, the teacher had been fired.
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