BUCKLAND — A former Mohawk teacher who left the school under a cloud of allegations of improper conduct with students has pleaded guilty in Greenfield District Court to five counts of serving alcohol to minors.
Ivan Grail, 37, of Greenfield, who resigned from Mohawk Trail Regional School on April 7 and then relinquished his state teaching license on June 4, was arraigned Monday. He was sentenced to one year of probation, with several conditions: He is to have no contact with either victims or witnesses. With the exception of his own child, Grail is to have no unsupervised contact with children under the age of 18 — and only if the supervising adult is aware of the court convictions. He is not to work or volunteer where there are children under age 18, and he is to continue to receive counseling. Also, Grail is to perform 40 hours of community service.
In an affidavit supporting probable cause, State Police Sgt. Thomas F. Bakey said he was assigned to investigate Grail, who was escorted from the school on March 8, after Mohawk administrators had received complaints from students and parents about his conduct with a female student.
Over several weeks, several students were interviewed by the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office Child Advocacy Center team and by Bakey, who was present during most interviews and listened to all the recordings. The affidavit cites interviews with 27 students, between the ages of 16 to 18. None are identified by name, although the affidavit says their names are known to the state.
The affidavit reports interviews in which students said they had smoked marijuana with Grail or that he had provided beer or wine to groups of students. Some interviewed described an after-hours “debate party” in Grail’s classroom, “believed to have been the evening of the televised March 16 Republican debate. Mr. Grail and several students were present,” the affidavit says.
One student interviewed “watched Mr. Grail roll a marijuana joint at his desk with several students standing around watching. Mr. Grail and several students were going to play ‘beer pong’ with beer present in the classroom.”
Another student reported going out after school hours with two other students and Grail to a restaurant. “Along the way, Mr. Grail provided a bowl and marijuana which all four smoked.”
Another allegation was that several students met Grail at a Greenfield shopping plaza, where he gave them alcohol that they took to a student’s home and drank. Another student said Grail had brought “the same group of students” to a hill across the street from Mohawk, “where he provided and smoked marijuana with them.”
At the restaurant, Grail allegedly let students share a beer with him, then bought more beer, which they shared in his Mohawk classroom, while watching a movie. This incident supposedly took place in late February and appeared to be corroborated by social networking messages that were shared with investigators.
According to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Grail received his teaching license in Aug. 2012 — just before he was to start his first school year at Mohawk, teaching social studies.
“Earlier this year, we learned that his school district was investigating him for boundary violations,” said DESE spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis. “He surrendered his license on June 3, 2016. We treat that surrender the same way we would a revocation.”
When asked if Grail could renew his license later, Reis said it would be a complicated process, and that he would have to get a two-thirds majority vote of approval by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for re-licensure.
“When a licensed educator leaves under a cloud, under suspicious circumstances, the (school) district has a certain period of time to notify us,” Reis said, explaining that such notification is required. “If he hadn’t surrendered his license, it’s possible we would have opened an investigation.”
Grail’s lawyer, Thomas Lesser, said Grail had been one of Mohawk’s finest teachers for the three years before Grail became ill and needed psychiatric help this year.
“He couldn’t be more sorry for what he did,” Lesser said. At the arraignment, said Lesser, “he apologized to the community, to the school and to the students. He said that he was suffering from an illness and was admitted to Brattleboro Retreat shortly afterward. He’s being treated and he’s seeing a psychologist. He has rededicated himself to his family and has returned to another profession.”
At the time of the school investigation, Mohawk was also providing counseling services to impacted students, families and staff.
When the school yearbook was published in late spring, another controversy arose over the deletion of a page that included Grail’s photograph during Booster Week last fall. An administrator had sliced the page out of the published yearbooks, leading some students to complain to the American Civil Liberties Union about the deletion and censorship issues. The Mohawk superintendent defended the action, saying it wanted to protect the emotional needs of students “who have already been victimized by a trusted adult.”