A high school dean was charged with sex crimes against children. Parents say school failures enabled the alleged behavior.

A Wisconsin high school dean’s recent arrest on multiple charges of sex crimes against children has triggered an uproar among parents who say school leaders dismissed warning signs and failed to alert authorities to at least one credible claim.

The parents say administrators allowed a troubling pattern of predatory behavior to fester after they mishandled a tip from a senior at Sun Prairie West High School who had raised alarms about Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier — the fourth person who worked in Sun Prairie schools to be accused of sex crimes against children in the last decade. Two were sentenced within the last year.

Now, parents are calling for top leaders in the school system, which employs nearly 1,400 people, to enact meaningful change or resign as police investigate whether staff members followed state-mandated protocols to report reasonable suspicions that a child had been abused.

“Parents are very outraged right now, because if not now, when?” said Kristy Yang, whose two daughters and son attend a different high school in the Sun Prairie Area School District. “When are we going to do something about it? I don’t want to wait until it’s my kid.”

Dana Ujor, another parent, said the latest incident was the “tip of the iceberg” after a series of alarming arrests that she said signaled severe oversight issues.

In April, an anonymous senior warned the school district in a letter that Gilkey-Meisegeier’s behavior toward at least one girl was “disturbing,” prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.

The senior said the dean followed the girl on social media, regularly texted with her, drove her around, often spent time with her in his office and was “constantly hovering” around her, according to the letter included in the complaint.

“I am deeply concerned about the appropriateness of their relationship,” the student wrote.

The student urged the administration to investigate the matter thoroughly, saying it has long created an “uncomfortable” atmosphere at the school, which has 1,300 students. But school officials found the claim to be “unsubstantiated” after Gilkey-Meisegeier denied the allegations, the complaint said.

The school district closed the case without reporting it to law enforcement and instructed the dean not to be alone with students in his office or have one-on-one closed-door meetings, according to the complaint.

Then, months later, Gilkey-Meisegeier was arrested on July 24 and charged with more than a dozen counts of possession of child pornography and child sexual exploitation, court records show.

A school resource officer who worked for the police department had become aware of alleged misconduct in late May, and Instagram flagged Gilkey-Meisegeier’s account for suspicious activity.

The charges involve at least three child victims, according to the complaint. Prosecutors alleged that Gilkey-Meisegeier bought alcohol for one of the victims in exchange for topless photos. Investigators found dozens of explicit photos of an “early pubescent female” in a secret folder on his Snapchat account, the complaint shows.

Text messages, obtained by police through a search warrant and included in the criminal complaint, appear to show Gilkey-Meisegeier enticing a student — the subject of the anonymous senior’s warning in April — to secretly meet up multiple times, as well as to send nude photos.

Even though it received the anonymous senior’s tip in April, the school district said it became aware of some allegations involving Gilkey-Meisegeier on May 30, according to a website it created to address the incident. The district said Gilkey-Meisegeier was placed on administrative leave on June 2 and fired on June 9.

Sun Prairie Police Chief Kevin Warych said the police department did not become aware of the issue until May 29. Around that time, a school resource officer who worked for the department had learned about allegations of misconduct, according to the complaint. Warych said the department was informed by the school resource officer, not the school district.

Separately, on May 31, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received a report from Instagram about suspicions related to Gilkey-Meisegeier’s account and tipped off local police, the complaint said. Sun Prairie police received that report on June 5, according to the criminal complaint.

“We are investigating whether mandatory reporting protocols were followed,” Warych said.

Gilkey-Meisegeier, 30, is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 2, the first day of school. His attorney did not comment.

The school district told NBC News in a statement that it will fully cooperate with police while it focuses on supporting students, families and staff members. The district declined to comment further or respond beyond what it has already said on its webpage.

Since Gilkey-Meisegeier’s arrest, the school system’s hiring processes have come under fire.

Gilkey-Meisegeier did not have a teaching license, which is typically required for the position he held as dean of students, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which reviews applications for such licenses.

An agency spokesperson said Gilkey-Meisegeier had applied for a teaching license last year but failed to complete the necessary steps to be granted one. The agency declined to specify which steps, citing state and federal law.

Gilkey-Meisegeier had also been arrested in connection with impaired driving and driving with a revoked license in 2018 and 2019, court records show.

Yet he was hired in August 2022 to work in the athletics department, including as a basketball coach and a concession stands manager, according to his LinkedIn page. He became acting dean of students in January 2023 and formally assumed the role in May 2024.

The school district did not comment on the lack of a license or Gilkey-Meisegeier’s priors.

On its webpage, it said that it had completed a background check on Gilkey-Meisegeier and that he was trained in having appropriate boundaries with students.

Lisa Goldsberry, a former school board member, told NBC News she resigned in December in part because of what she described as the school system’s poor vetting process and systemic inaction on complaints from the community.

The school board governs the district, but Goldsberry said she felt the board did not have enough authority over it.

“We were taking directions from the district as opposed to the other way around,” she said.

While the board has final approval over all administrative hires in the district, Goldsberry said the elected members of the school board were given only candidates’ résumés to make their decision.

Goldsberry said the board did not have the critical information needed to verify candidates’ credentials or histories. She said it did not even receive basic information, such as the names of other candidates or how final candidates answered interview questions.

“We’re basically signing off on something that we don’t have enough information to be signing off on,” she said. “I was so disgusted by the way that we were doing things.”

Goldsberry was among several speakers to skewer the administration at a public school board meeting on Aug. 11 after Gilkey-Meisegeier’s arrest.

By the end of the meeting, the school board had voted to determine that Superintendent Brad Saron was not in compliance with policies about communicating to the board or the community. It is unclear whether the vote comes with disciplinary action or any consequences. Saron, the school district and the school board did not comment.

At the meeting, Saron said he was committed to improving. “It never, ever, ever feels good when you don’t meet the expectations of the people you’re working on behalf of,” he said.

In a message to the community on Aug. 15, the school board said it had hired an attorney to lead an independent investigation. It did not state a focus of the investigation.

“As we move forward, the Board remains steadfast in our commitment to transparency, accountability, and the safety of every child,” it said in the message. “We recognize that restoring trust requires both openness and responsible action, and we will provide updates as information becomes available.”

School board President Katey Kamoku resigned Monday, effective immediately, citing a need to prioritize her children and other job, the district confirmed. Kamoku did not immediately comment.

Gilkey-Meisegeier was arrested after two men who worked with Sun Prairie students were sentenced for crimes against children within the last year.

In April, Matthew Quaglieri, a former middle school teacher, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for possessing child pornography after he pleaded guilty and admitted to recording boys in the school bathrooms for four to five years. Investigators had found videos on his iPad of at least 39 minors using the urinals, federal prosecutors said.

Lamont Crockett, who was a school resource officer, was sentenced to four years for child enticement in September 2024, WKOW-TV of Madison reported. In 2017, Brett Berryman, a former school janitor, was sentenced to three years in prison for possession of child pornography, according to The Associated Press.

The school district said on its webpage that the “number of unsettling situations” does not represent a trend.

“In a school community of nearly 9,000 students and nearly 1,400 employees, there are rare but deeply troubling instances when an individual violates the trust we’ve placed in them and the training we’ve had them engage in,” it said.

Many parents disagreed and said the district was shifting accountability.

Yang, whose three children attend school in the district, said it showed a “continuous dismissive attitude” and unwillingness to change.

Kaleena Stephan, 37, whose son attends a Sun Prairie elementary school, echoed the call for action.

“What happened at West is a severe symptom of a disease that is throughout the district,” she said.