When School Leaders Cross Boundaries: What Parents Need to Know After the Keith Ervin Incident
I was folding my 16-year-old daughter Lila’s half-eaten granola bar wrapper into my canvas tote, zoning out to the superintendent’s drawl about new bus route schedules, when a mom in the back row of the PTA meeting stood up and said Keith Ervin’s name. The room went quiet fast. The overhead fluorescent lights hummed louder, and I gripped the edge of my scratchy plastic folding chair. I’d heard the rumors for a month, but this was the first time anyone said it out loud at a public meeting: back in April, at the district-wide high school art show, Ervin – our long-time school board member – pulled 15-year-old Mia Carter into a hug that lasted too long, pulled back, and told her she looked “hot.”
Mia’s mom said Mia tried to step away, laughed awkwardly, and he didn’t get the hint. He asked if she was going to prom, said he was sure all the boys would be lining up to ask her. When she finished talking, she sat down, and the room erupted in quiet murmurs. I heard a man behind me say “C’mon, he’s 68, he doesn’t mean anything by it, that’s just how he talks.” Another woman hissed back “It doesn’t matter what he meant, she’s 15.” That split felt familiar, the same one we have every time an adult trusted with our kids crosses a line.
I thought about last December, at Lila’s varsity basketball game. Ervin was there, representing the board, handing out awards to winter athletes. Lila got an award for art, she’d painted all the banners for the gym that year. When she walked up, he took her hand to shake it, then held it for two extra beats, told her her dress was “really something, very pretty on you.” Lila stepped back so fast she almost tripped over the bleacher step, and didn’t say a word until we were in the car driving home. When I asked her what was wrong, she just said “He’s weird. I don’t like how he looks at people.” I told her it was okay, she didn’t have to talk to him if she didn’t want to, but I didn’t do anything more than that. I didn’t write it down, I didn’t tell anyone. That’s the thing about these small, uncomfortable moments – they feel too small to make a fuss over, until they add up.
After the meeting, I got in the car where Lila was waiting, scrolling through TikTok with the heat cranked up. I told her what happened, and she looked up and said “Told you. Half the girls in my art class have a story like that.” Most of them aren’t the big, scary incidents we warn our kids about. They’re extra long hugs, comments about bodies, jokes that make you shift uncomfortably that everyone brushes off because the person doing it is “just like that.”
I’ve been a PTA volunteer for four years, and I’ve seen how these things go. Everyone splits into two loud sides: one yells that he’s a predator who needs to go immediately, the other says it’s a misunderstanding, he’s a good guy who does a lot for the district, this is just cancel culture. But for parents, the question isn’t just what happens to Keith Ervin. It’s what do we do for our kids, every day, to keep this from being a common story.
The first thing I changed after that meeting was how I talk to my kids about adult boundaries. For years I told them “be polite to grown ups” and that was it. Now I have a specific line I repeat: you never have to touch anyone you don’t want to, no matter who they are. If an adult tries to hug you and you don’t want it, you can just say “I’m not a hugger” and step back. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, you don’t have to be nice about it if you don’t want to. We even practiced it last Sunday, while we were waiting for the laundry to dry. I played the part of a friendly coach, board member, or distant relative who goes in for a hug, and Lila practiced saying the line and stepping back. It took five minutes, no big deal.
Another small change I made is what I say when Lila comes to me with an uncomfortable story. I used to default to “Are you sure he meant it that way?” I don’t do that anymore. Now the first thing I say is “That sounds terrible. Thank you for telling me.” It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a one-off comment. If your kid feels weird, that’s enough. You don’t have to run and confront someone that second, but you have to validate their feeling first. Because if you brush it off once, they won’t come to you the next time, when it’s worse.
For the school side, you don’t have to organize a protest to make a change. I sent a short email to the superintendent and my district representative this week, asking two specific things: that all elected school board members complete annual child boundary training, same as teachers and coaches do, and that the district update its public policy to ban comments on students’ personal appearance beyond neutral feedback like “great to see you” or “nice job on your project.” A dozen other parents I know sent the same email, it took five minutes out of our day.
The district’s investigation into Ervin is still open, as of this week. No one knows if he’ll resign, be suspended, or if nothing will change at all. Some of my neighbors still say it’s all a big overreaction. I get it, Ervin has done a lot of good things for this district over the years. He helped get the new middle school gym built, he coaches little league every spring. But good people can cross lines, especially when no one ever tells them the rules are the same for them as they are for everyone else.
Lila already used her “I’m not a hugger” line on my great aunt at the family barbecue last weekend, and no one made a big deal out of it. That’s the point, isn’t it? It’s not about one bad incident, it’s about teaching kids they get to control their own bodies, long before something worse happens. No one can promise it will never happen again, but that’s the work we do, one small conversation at a time.
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