Parents, Teachers Tell St. Tammany School Board Trust Has Been Broken Following Lyon Elementary Reporting Failures

September 22, 2026 | APR•St Tammany

ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. Parents, teachers, employees and community members addressed the St. Tammany Parish School Board Monday night during a special meeting centered on the failures surrounding mandatory reporting at E. E. Lyon Elementary School in Covington.

The criminal cases involving former Lyon Principal Lauryn Faciane and former Assistant Principal Tanya Barth provided the backdrop for the meeting, but much of the public comment focused on a broader concern: whether problems involving child safety, communication and mandatory reporting extend beyond the actions of two former administrators.

Faciane and Barth pleaded guilty September 2 to violating Louisiana mandatory reporting laws. Faciane pleaded guilty to two counts and Barth to one. According to St. Tammany District Attorney Colin Sims, two of the incidents involved serious sexual conduct between children approximately 8 and 9 years old on the Lyon campus. Sims said those incidents were not reported to the school resource officer, law enforcement or the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, despite the administrators having received specific training concerning mandatory reporting.

Monday night, several speakers told the School Board that the issue has damaged their trust in the school system.

One parent told the board that Lyon is her child’s home school, but she chose not to enroll her 4 year old this year because she no longer trusted the system to keep her child safe.

Another parent spoke about her 8 year old nonverbal autistic child who attends Lyon. She described unexplained injuries, including an injury that resulted in an emergency room visit, and told board members that her son had undergone significant behavioral regression. She also described an incident in which he attempted to get off a moving school bus rather than return to school. Those statements are the parent’s account given during public comment. APR has not independently verified the circumstances surrounding those individual incidents.

Other speakers questioned whether employees are given clear instructions about mandatory reporting and whether teachers and staff feel they can report concerns without fear of consequences.

That concern is not new to APR•St Tammany.

Months before Monday’s meeting, teachers employed at Lyon Elementary contacted APR privately about conditions at the school. Those employees asked APR not to identify them in any reporting, telling us they were afraid of retaliation if their names became public. APR agreed to protect their identities.

The similarities between those private conversations and concerns voiced publicly Monday night are significant. Multiple speakers described what they believe is a culture in which employees may be reluctant to speak openly when they believe something is wrong.

Court records surrounding the criminal cases have also raised questions about how mandatory reporting was being handled.

During the September 2 plea hearing, First Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Authement read text messages recovered during the investigation into the court record. One message discussed concerns among employees about having to “report everything.” Another message acknowledged that child on child incidents were an area that administrators were “not necessarily reporting.”

Judge Ellen Creel reacted strongly to those messages and the facts presented during the hearing, telling the former administrators that mandatory reporting requirements exist to protect children and stating, “The buck stops with you people.” Creel also questioned what she described as an apparent lack of concern for the children reflected in the communications presented to the court.

The underlying Covington Police investigation identified three incidents connected to the charges. Records describe a 2024 physical abuse case involving a child with special needs and two later incidents involving sexual conduct between children. One occurred in December 2025. Another was reported on April 28, 2026. According to the police report, one parent involved in the April incident was notified while another told investigators they learned what happened from their child.

Police records also referenced other concerning incidents at the school involving additional administrators who were not criminally charged. Those records contributed to questions raised Monday night about whether the failures at Lyon were isolated or part of a larger breakdown in procedures and communication.

Parents and community members repeatedly returned to the same issues Monday: who knew what, when they knew it, whether reports were properly made, whether employees felt safe speaking up and what safeguards now exist to prevent another child from falling through the cracks.

The School Board meeting itself was a special meeting, which district policy allows the board president to call outside of the regular monthly meeting schedule. Official School Board meetings are streamed and archived by St. Tammany Parish Public Schools.

For the families who addressed the board Monday night, however, the discussion was about more than policies and procedures. Their testimony centered on whether parents can trust that when a child cannot speak for themselves, an adult will speak for them, and whether the employees who do speak up can do so without being afraid of what happens next.