School employee arrested for alleged inappropriate contact with 14-year-old

SAN MATEO >> An employee of the private Nueva School in Hillsborough has been arrested on suspicion of inappropriate conduct with a child, San Mateo police said.

Ian Thomas Whiteman, 39, of Redwood City, turned himself in Friday at San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City in response to a warrant for his arrest, police reported.

He was released on $150,000 bail.

Whiteman had been an information technology staffer at the school for two years, and parents of a 14-year-old child discovered allegedly inappropriate communication between Whiteman and their daughter on Aug. 24.

They notified the Nueva administration, which placed Whiteman on administrative leave and notified San Mateo police. Nueva, a K-12 school that operates campuses in San Mateo and Hillsborough, employed Whiteman at both campuses.

The San Mateo Daily Journal quoted San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti as saying that the actions allegedly occurred between July 1 and Aug. 22 and included hugging and kissing on campus.

“If these allegations are true, we are saddened that anyone associated with our school would have inappropriate communications with one of our students,” the school said in a written statement.

According to Nueva spokesman Bill Halldin, the school had conducted a background check on Whiteman before he was hired in 2015 and has been cooperating with investigators.

Whiteman was charged with committing lewd acts with a child, contact with a minor for the purpose of committing a sexual offense and misdemeanor child annoyance and molestation, the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office told the Daily Journal.