PENDLETON — Chelsie Speer, the former head volleyball coach for Pendleton High School, is the subject of an Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission investigation.

Speer, who also taught health and physical education, resigned from her position Aug. 12 for personal reasons, according to Kevin Dinning, Pendleton School District director of human resources.

Speer is a 2001 graduate of Pendleton High School. Her father is Dale Freeman, who serves on the Pendleton School Board.

The school district hired her in 2022 alongside her husband, Justin Speer, who teaches health and PE and is the PHS head baseball coach. He remains employed as of Aug. 27.

Before Pendleton she was head volleyball coach at Walla Walla Community College for eight years. She lost that position for failure to get a COVID-19 vaccination because of religious beliefs. She received a religious exemption to the vaccination from Pendleton.

The Teacher Standards and Practices Commission is in charge of licensing educators and school personnel in Oregon and is responsible for disciplining educators when they commit crimes or violate ethical standards. Consequences for these violations span from a letter of reprimand to a permanent revocation of an educator’s license.

Dinning said the school district has no comment on the commission’s investigation into Speer.

The TSPC conducts investigations for any number of reasons, such as gross neglect of duty or physical harm. However, the commission is not the primary reporting agency for instances of physical or sexual abuse of a student — those complaints, the TSPC says, should go to law enforcement or the Oregon Department of Human Services.

Cristina Edgar, director of professional practices with the TSPC, said the commission’s investigation into Speer is confidential per Oregon law because it is ongoing.

“TSPC cannot comment any further on this matter at this time,” she said.

Police say no law broken

Pendleton Police Chief Charles Byram said his department did receive a report involving “a PHS teacher and a former student,” who he said is 18.

“The student received communications from the teacher when this individual was no longer enrolled at PHS and was going to college,” Byram said. “However, while not criminal in nature, obviously ethics are involved, but people can do unethical things and it’s not criminal.”

Byram said police spoke with the individual who received the communication as well as that former student’s parent.

“Based on our investigation, nothing criminal was learned,” he said.

He also said there have been no reports of criminal conduct against a teacher, including nothing that has involved any current students or underage children.

“I understand that the rumor mill is going around,” he said. “If any new information is learned, or somebody comes to us with information, we will gladly accept that information and we will actively investigate it thoroughly.”

For now, he added, there is nothing further to investigate.

“Both, by law, are legal, consenting adults,” he said. “No other student, or parents, has been named or come forward with allegations that would be underage where DHS would need to be involved in this.”