“We Reported Tim Ryan”: Students, Parents Break Silence on Former Teacher’s Conduct

Some of the allegations against Coweta County commission candidate Tim Ryan are not new.

The Citizen previously reported on a 152-page personnel file documenting complaints, disciplinary actions, and administrative concerns during his time as a teacher.

What is new are the voices behind those records.

Several of the parents and students said they reached out to The Citizen after reading the newspaper’s initial report on Ryan’s personnel file, prompting them to share their own experiences.

In interviews with The Citizen, former students, parents, and a colleague are now speaking publicly—using pseudonyms—to describe what they say happened inside Ryan’s classroom, offering firsthand accounts that go beyond redacted documents and connect specific incidents to specific children.

Those accounts now span all three years Ryan taught in Coweta County Schools — his single year at Madras Middle School, followed by two years at Smokey Road Middle School — and include allegations of isolating students, making sexualized comments, unwanted physical contact, and, in one case, encouraging self-harm.

“I didn’t see what was happening”

Nicole Tatum, a pseudonym for a former sixth-grade student at Smokey Road Middle School during Ryan’s first year there, said she did not initially recognize anything was wrong.

Now older, she sees it differently.

“I feel kind of ashamed I didn’t see what was happening,” she said.

At the time, she said, she trusted Ryan and confided in him about personal struggles at home.

“I looked at him like he was my best friend. I told him everything,” she said.

Her mother, Renee Tatum, said that trust was something Ryan exploited.

“That’s what grooming is,” she said. “Turning a child against their parent and making them confide in you instead.”

“He took me into a closet”

Nicole said the situation came to a head the day of a school dance, when she was upset after a breakup.

Ryan offered to comfort her.

“He took me into a closet and closed the door so no one could see me crying,” she said.

Nicole said she did not initially see anything wrong with the interaction.

Renee did.

“He’s a grown man. He should not be taking you into a closet,” she said.

According to both Nicole and her mother, Ryan told her she was “really pretty” and added, “if I were your age, I’d date you.”

Nicole said that when she tried to leave, he attempted to keep her there.

“I still have a few more words to say to you,” she recalled him saying.

A pattern of comments and contact

Nicole and her mother described additional incidents they say occurred throughout the school year.

These included comments about Nicole’s mother’s body. After Nicole told Ryan her mother had undergone a tummy tuck, she said he made remarks to students about her appearance.

According to Renee, Nicole later recounted that Ryan made comments about her mom’s chest and said her husband would “really enjoy” her body.

Nicole also described repeated physical contact in the classroom, including with her friends.

“He would start from the top of our back and rub all the way down,” she said.

As she described those interactions, Nicole could barely speak through her tears.

“He made every girl so uncomfortable,” she said.

Renee said her daughter did not initially understand the behavior as inappropriate.

“He had those kids completely on his side,” she said. “You had to almost un-brainwash your own child.”

Nicole said that included moments she did not fully understand at the time, but now sees differently.

After she told Ryan that her mother had called him a “pedophile,” she said he responded in class in a way she did not process at the time.

“He licked the door and said, ‘I’m a pedophile,’” she said.

Allegation of encouraging self-harm

Nicole said Ryan also inserted himself into her personal struggles in ways she now finds deeply troubling.

At the time, she said, she was confiding in him about conflicts with her mother.

“He said, ‘you need to do something to get her attention,’” Nicole said.

She then described a gesture she said Ryan made.

“He got his finger and pointed to his wrist and acted like he was cutting his wrist,” she said. “He made like… for me to start self harming myself to get my mom’s attention.”

Asked to clarify, Nicole said he was suggesting she harm herself.

“Yes,” she said. “To get attention.”

Renee said her daughter later began cutting herself — something she said Ryan did not report.

“He knew,” Renee said. “And he didn’t tell anybody.”

Complaints escalated to district leadership

Renee said she repeatedly reported Ryan’s behavior to school administrators as concerns mounted.

She said she first raised issues with Smokey Road Middle School Principal David Dement before escalating concerns to district leadership, including Vera Perry-Harris, director of human resources for Coweta County Schools.

“I literally named everything that had ever happened,” Renee said.

According to Renee, the concerns included the closet incident, comments made to students, and what her daughter had shared about interactions in the classroom.

Ryan was temporarily removed from the classroom during the school’s investigation, she said.

But when he returned, Renee said she felt her concerns had been dismissed.

“I don’t feel like he believed me,” she said, describing a phone call with Superintendent Evan Horton.

Renee said she left that conversation believing the district would not take further action.

District points to superintendent’s directive, declines further comment

In response to questions from The Citizen, Coweta County School System officials declined to discuss specific allegations publicly, citing legal and confidentiality constraints.

“Those concerns are investigated and acted upon appropriately,” said Dean Jackson, public information officer for the district.

“Our school system is not free to publicly discuss either the nature of complaints or many details, or our opinions about those matters,” he said.

However, Jackson directed The Citizen to a May 21, 2024 letter from Superintendent Evan Horton to Ryan, included in the personnel file obtained through an open records request.

In that letter, Horton wrote that Ryan’s actions had led to parent complaints for a second consecutive year and issued a formal directive regarding his conduct with students.

The letter specifically references concerns that Ryan had been alone in a closet with a female student and had made “an inappropriate comment about being a pedophile.”

Horton ordered that Ryan immediately cease all communication with the student and her family and avoid any contact, including speaking to her, greeting her, or discussing her with others.

“You must never place yourself in a position where you are alone in an unsupervised location with a student,” the letter states. 

Jackson said the personnel file reflects how the district addressed concerns brought to its attention and noted that all materials were provided to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission for review.

It wasn’t until another middle school student named Ryan in a suicide note following a suicide attempt documented by the Sheriff’s Department that the district placed him on leave and later accepted his resignation, approximately two months before the end of the 2025 school year.

A Madras parent says the warnings started early

The concerns described at Smokey Road were not isolated to that campus.

A second family said they saw warning signs the year before, during Ryan’s only year at Madras Middle School.

Jennifer Scott, a pseudonym, is the mother of a former Madras Middle School student and said her concerns about Ryan began during his only year at that school.

Her daughter, now a ninth grader, was in gifted science when Ryan taught at Madras.

“From the first day I met him at open house, I came home and told my husband, ‘Something’s off with this guy. I don’t feel right. Something’s weird,’” Scott said.

Scott spoke with The Citizen by phone, and much of what she described is also documented in writing in Ryan’s personnel file.

She said parents in her neighborhood quickly began comparing notes about what their children were reporting from class.

“He was already cussing in front of them in class,” she said. “He was, in my opinion, emotionally abusive to these children.”

She said students were belittled over small things, including forgetting supplies, and sometimes humiliated over grades in front of the class.

“Kids would cry in class all the time — not just girls, boys,” Scott said.

She said Ryan would question whether students even belonged in advanced classes.

“If they made an 85 or 90, he would call them out in front of the whole class,” she said. “He’d talk about how they need to do better. How did they even make it in REACH? There’s no way they’re smart enough to be in there.”

Her daughter later needed therapy

Scott said the situation escalated for her daughter in October after a class lab assignment went unfinished because her assigned partner failed to complete work that had been sent home.

When the pair were later asked to present, Scott said her daughter became overwhelmed and began crying.

According to Scott, Ryan responded by yelling at her daughter to get out of the room “if she’s gonna cry like a baby.”

A school counselor later found the girl upset in the hallway.

Scott said the incident, and others that followed, contributed to anxiety severe enough that the family sought therapy for her daughter.

“We put my daughter in therapy because of him,” Scott said.

Scott says she warned the district

Scott said she repeatedly raised concerns with school leaders during Ryan’s year at Madras.

She said she spoke with an assistant principal during the school year and later sent an email to Superintendent Evan Horton that she recognized in Ryan’s personnel file.

“That first parent email that mentions Madras — that’s my email to Evan Horton at the end of the year,” she said.

Scott said she was troubled not only by Ryan’s conduct, but by the district’s response.

“When I let administration know, the response I got was, ‘Well, he really knows how to teach science,’” she said.

By the end of sixth grade, Scott said, the family pulled her daughter from public school.

She said the district told her Ryan was being moved to Smokey Road Middle School and asked whether her daughter would remain where she was.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not,’” Scott said. She indicated that her daughter needed to feel safe at school, and Madras Middle wasn’t for her anymore. 

She said that district decision still troubles her because she believes the transfer exposed a new group of students to the same behavior.

“I never understood, why are we moving him to another school?” she said.

Still traumatized

When she recently saw one of Ryan’s campaign signs in District 3, Scott said her daughter immediately recognized the name.

“She was like, ‘Is that the same Tim Ryan?’” Scott said. “And she burst into tears in the car.”

Scott said the reaction came three years after her daughter left his classroom. Scott’s daughter is now in high school. 

Other students describe similar behavior

By Ryan’s second and final year at Smokey Road, another student — Lucy Smith, a pseudonym — described similar concerns in his classroom.

She said Ryan once physically blocked her and a friend in a hallway.

“He had one arm around me and one arm around her so we couldn’t move,” she said. “We kept saying, ‘please let me go.’”

She said he eventually released them, saying he was “just kidding.”

Lucy also described being pulled out of another class while she was in the middle of an exam by a girl who said “Mr. Ryan needs you in his class.” She was brought into Ryan’s classroom to “hang out” with a small group of girls, something she said left her confused and uncomfortable.

“He said, ‘I just figured you wouldn’t want to be in that class,’” she said.

She said he frequently called girls “baby girl” and described them as “mature for their age.”

Lucy also recalled him discussing a potential trip to his beach house in Panama City with select students.

“It would be only our class,” she said.

Bullying extended beyond female students

Lucy said Ryan’s behavior was not limited to interactions with girls.

She described repeated humiliation of at least one male student in class.

“He made fun of his smell all the time,” she said. “He would say he’d never get a girlfriend, that he’d never find love.”

She said the student, who she understood to be dealing with difficulties at home, would often put his head down in class and then be disciplined for it.

“He would just keep giving him points,” she said, referring to the school’s behavior system.

Scott described similar behavior at Madras.

“He made them feel worthless,” she said. “Teenage boys were crying in class.”

Behavior continued despite restrictions

Renee said that even after she reported concerns, the behavior did not stop.

According to documentation previously reviewed by The Citizen, Ryan was restricted from certain areas of the school, including the seventh-grade hallway and lunchroom, in an effort to limit contact with specific students.

Renee said those restrictions did not work.

“He would not leave her alone,” she said.

She described an incident in which Ryan went into the lunchroom and stood directly behind her daughter for several minutes, despite being told to have no contact.

“It was like he said, ‘I can do what I want,’” she said.

Family pulls children from school

Renee said that incident was the breaking point.

“I’m pulling my kids,” she recalled telling school officials.

She transferred both of her daughters out of Smokey Road Middle School.

“They were devastated,” she said. “They had friends there. They were stable there.”

But she said she no longer felt the school could keep them safe.

“You don’t move your kids unless you have to,” she said.

Behavior continued after removal from classroom

Lucy’s mother, identified as Stephanie Smith, said she contacted The Citizen after her daughter read the earlier report.

“My daughter found your article and asked me to call and tell you thank you — and we love you,” she said.

Stephanie said Ryan continued contacting students even after he was removed from the classroom.

“He was still emailing the kids, still leaving notes, still coming onto campus,” she said.

Lucy said she received a handwritten note from Ryan after he had been removed.

Her mother said she contacted the school in anger.

“I thought we were finally free of him,” she said.

She also described an incident at a school basketball game in which Ryan attempted to approach her daughter.

“I blocked him,” she said. “I told him to leave her alone.”

Former colleague describes concerns

A former colleague of Ryan’s at Madras Middle School said she witnessed inappropriate behavior firsthand.

In one instance, she said Ryan made a sexual comment to a school secretary.

“She was eating raw vegetables, and he said, ‘You know, eating those makes your dick bigger — I hope you’re making your husband eat some too,’” the colleague said.

In another instance, she said administrators intervened after Ryan requested to carpool alone with her to a conference.

“They told him he was not to be alone in a vehicle or anywhere else with a female teacher,” she said.

Ryan did not provide comment to The Citizen for this article. He has denied allegations outlined in The Citizen‘s previous reporting in statements made to another publication, as well as a letter to the editor of that publication.

“I just want him to go away”

All three families said they decided to speak out after learning Ryan was running for public office.

“I tried to forget that he even existed,” Renee said. “But when I saw he was running… we had to talk to somebody.”

Asked what she hopes will come from sharing her daughter’s story, she was direct:

“I just want him to go away,” she said.