Peoria Unified School District Superintendent Dr. K.C. Somers said the district initially lacked enough information to trigger a formal abuse probe, then reopened its investigation after more details surfaced in a case involving two former Centennial High School teachers and one underage student. His letter to parents came as police sent their findings to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and the matter remained under review there.
The case centered on Haley Beck and Angela Burlaka. The district’s summer investigative report said Beck exchanged more than 4,000 texts with the student, including messages about oral sex, meeting to have sex, drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, recording sexual acts and showing them to other students. Peoria police said the case first came to light when the victim’s grandmother found an explicit video of Burlaka on her grandson’s phone, and Burlaka is accused of recording videos of herself naked while saying the student’s name.
Somers wrote that the district’s initial information at the time “did not meet the legal threshold for reasonable suspicion of abuse.” He told parents he was committed to keeping schools safe and said the district is reinforcing protocols for how staff respond when student safety information comes through students, social media or the community. He also said Centennial principal Scott Hollabaugh “has the full support of the Peoria Unified School District’s administration.”
The allegations have already cost both teachers their jobs and put their licenses under scrutiny. Burlaka worked at Centennial High School for 25 years before voluntarily surrendering her Arizona teaching certificate. Beck, who was hired in 2020, was fired by a unanimous vote of the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board, and her certificate remains under investigation and pending before the State Board of Education. The district did not say when the police investigation was relaunched, but the county attorney’s office is still reviewing the case.
Somers cast the matter as a test of the district’s standards, saying student safety is the foundation of everything Peoria Unified does and the standard parents should expect every time they send a child to one of its schools. For families in the Coyote community, the next step is now in the hands of prosecutors and state education officials, who will decide whether the allegations against the former teachers lead to further action.
