Loopholes and failed investigations allowed a former Henry M. Jackson High School teacher to skirt accountability
Picture Attribution: The outside of Henry M. Jackson High School on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 in Mill Creek, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
May 2, 2026
By Moe K. Clark and Eliza Aronson / The Daily Herald
In April 2024, the Mill Creek Police Department launched an investigation into Kevin Kukla, an AP physics teacher at Everett’s Henry M. Jackson High School.
A custodian had found 47-year-old Kukla receiving a back massage from a student in his locked classroom, according to the police report. Although the teacher and student, then 18, denied they were romantically involved, text messages between the two spanning years reference kissing, loving and missing each other, and being afraid someone saw them lying in the back of the teacher’s car.
The police investigation lasted less than two weeks. The detective said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a physical relationship between the two. Kukla resigned from his position in June 2024 amid the school district’s third-party investigation, which he refused to participate in.
Later that year, Kukla found another job as an adjunct instructor at Shoreline Community College, just north of Seattle.
A review of thousands of text messages and investigation documents by InvestigateWest and The Daily Herald shows how school leaders and law enforcement failed to recognize and properly investigate common sexual grooming behaviors Kukla displayed as he grew closer and closer to the student.
The case reveals how local and state school officials protected Kukla once his inappropriate relationship was discovered: Everett Public Schools signed a separation agreement containing a confidentiality clause, which is supposed to be banned under a 2004 state law that later became a model for other states. Emails obtained by InvestigateWest and The Daily Herald show that an investigator with the state’s education oversight agency suggested Kukla voluntarily surrender his K-12 teaching license — a move that stopped a pending state investigation and kept the allegations from being included in a public-facing database.
Kukla did not respond to multiple emails from InvestigateWest and The Daily Herald. The student is not identified in this story to protect her privacy.
A 10-day police investigation
When the MCPD Detective Rod Fleming, called the teacher, Kukla acted confused as to why the case had been referred to law enforcement, according to the police report. Fleming spoke to the student earlier that day, who denied the teacher had subjected her to any sexual contact but admitted that “boundaries had been crossed.” She described Kukla as a “teacher, friend and mentor” and said that the two were “very close.”
Kukla told the detective “he never did anything sexually with the student,” according to the police report. He said he cared for her and her family and had known them for years.
Kukla agreed to meet with the detective three days later for a formal interview, but he didn’t show. A day after their scheduled interview, Fleming received a call from Kukla’s lawyer, saying he likely wouldn’t be participating in an interview. Fleming never heard from him again.
“When someone has an attorney and calls me and says that he’s not going to talk to me, there’s nothing else I can do,” Fleming told InvestigateWest.
The complete article including emails and exhibits, is available at www.investigatewest.org.
