For the second time in as many months, police in Iowa have arrested a public school teacher on charges of public intoxication.
This month’s allegedly tanked teacher is Carissa Bryant, a sixth-grade teacher at Lenihan Intermediate School in Marshalltown, a charming hamlet about an hour northeast of Des Moines.
A Marshall County Sheriff’s deputy arrested Bryant, 33, on Wednesday afternoon, reports The Times-Republican, the local newspaper.
Conveniently, the deputy happened to be at school providing substance abuse training for a D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program.
Bryant was in the middle of teaching students at the time of her arrest.
“The deputy detected the odor of an alcoholic beverage on her breath, bloodshot and watery eyes and slurring of her words,” said sheriff’s office spokesman Steve Hoffman.
Sheriff’s deputies then delivered Bryant to the Marshall County Jail, where a blood-alcohol test administered to her registered 0.190 percent.
The legal limit for driving drunk in Iowa is .08 percent.
Bryant posted a $300 bond and was released from jail. She is currently on paid leave from her job pending a school district investigation.
A search of Bryant’s classroom and the school turned up no evidence of alcohol.
Hoffman, the sheriff’s office spokesman, tried to downplay the obvious similarity between Bryant’s alleged public intoxication and last month’s arrest of a kindergarten teacher in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny.
“A fairly significant distinction between the two events are the ages of the students involved,” he told The Times-Republican.
Sixth-grade kids are totally able to take care of themselves, he suggested.
The crocked kindergarten teacher was Jennifer Lynn Rich, police say. Lynn was arrested on a very unlucky Friday the 13th after a concerned parent called in a tip that the teacher may have been drinking beer in class during the always-stressful class Valentine’s Day party. (RELATED: Iowa Kindergarten Teacher Got HAMMERED In Class)
Rich, 40, was charged with public intoxication after she blew a 0.145 on a preliminary breathalyzer test administered by the cops.
When police arrived to Rich’s classroom, they found a leather bag containing four full cans of beer and two empty brewski cans.
Rich told the officers she had consumed two beers during her lunch break.
Her beer of choice in her kindergarten classroom was Busch Light.
Teachers show up drunk to work at taxpayer-funded public schools across America with some frequency. In August, for example, a rural Oklahoma high school teacher allegedly showed up on her first day of work drunk and wearing no pants. (RELATED: Back To School: High School Teacher Shows Up On First Day Drunk, WITHOUT PANTS)
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