Candidate barred from substitute teaching for ‘nefarious’ conduct

A Seminole County Commission candidate made inappropriate comments to middleschool students while working as a substitute teacher, including telling them he was shot “in the private areas” while serving in the Navy during the 1983 Grenada invasion, a school district investigation found.

In another incident, firstgraders in a class Paul Cooper was assigned to watched a music video showing a boy drowning in a lake and dying in a car fire. One student became so upset he told his parents, according to the district.

Cooper was barred from working as a substitute teacher for Seminole public schools after district officials said his actions and conversations with elementary and middle school students could be considered “nefarious.”

Cooper, of Casselberry, is running in the Nov. 6 election with no party affiliation for the commission seat from District 2. His opponents are Republican Jay Zembower and Democrat Katrina Shadix. Current Commissioner John Horan decided not to seek another term.

According to the school district, Cooper, 56, also told an eighth-grade girl at Milwee Middle School last February that she could be a good candidate for an internship at an engineering company. But when district investigators asked Cooper the name of the company, he refused, saying that it “might be detrimental to the named company,” said a March 30 letter to Cooper from Boyd Karns Jr., the district’s executive director of human resources and professional standards.

The letter added that Cooper also encouraged middle school students in his classroom to contact him for more information about his candidacy for the commission.

In an interview, Cooper, a first-time candidate, said the incidents were harmless. He explained that he told students about how he “took a bullet” in the leg during the Grenada invasion — in which 19 American servicemen were killed and 116 wounded — after the children “were remarking about how great war is.”

Cooper quickly became angry and said he didn’t want to provide additional details about the incident, explaining he doesn’t like to talk about his military service.

Regarding the video, Cooper said he told Longwood Elementary first-graders that after they completed the class assignment they could choose music videos to play on a classroom monitor.

One of the students put on the music video “Let You Down” by rapper NF that shows a man watching as a teenager drowns in a lake, a boy burning alive in a car fire and a man opening a coffin to find a dead body, according to a summary of the district’s findings about Cooper’s classroom behavior.

Cooper said he told the students to shut off the video after realizing what it was about.

School district officials said Cooper should have better managed his classrooms.

“As a substitute within the school system, you are expected to maintain awareness, exhibit appropriate professionalism, properly supervise and manage a classroom environment that is conducive to goals of academic integrity in order to maintain the respect and confidence of colleagues, of students, of par-