CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – A substitute teacher in Iowa is blaming the Cedar Rapids Community School District for a year-long affair with a 17-year-old student that she claims district officials “allowed” to happen.

“These people all knew what was going on, and yet they turned a blind eye because they wanted to protect their school. They didn’t want it to get into the limelight,” Haglin told KGAN. “They allowed this to happen. They knew in February.”

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The 24-year-old admitted to having sex regularly with a 17-year-old student at George Washington High School from last October through the end of the school year. Haglin contends that school officials learned about the relationship in February but did not move to dismiss the long-term sub until May 17, though they did not revoke her access to a district substitute database and allowed her to continue to work at other schools, The Gazette reports.

Haglin continued to substitute teach at Harrison and Madison elementaries through the end of the school year.

“They didn’t ban me,” she said. “They never actually said they were banning me from school grounds, they never said they were banning me from working at any other school, they never said they were banning me from thus-and-so many of any school. They never said any of that.”

Haglin told KGAN her past relationships, and her placement at Washington High School, contributed to her actions.

“Previous abusive relationships led me into this. The environment that the school put me in didn’t help to curb anything,” she said.

District superintendent Brad Buck contends Washington High School officials investigated allegations that Haglin was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a student but found the allegation unfounded. He claims to not have learned about that investigation until a second investigation in May prompted officials to ask her to leave, according to the news site.

District officials did not report Haglin’s alleged misconduct to police, but did notify the state board of education on May 26, Buck said.

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Regardless, someone did report the alleged abuse to police, and Haglin was arrested Friday for sexual exploitation by a school employee. District officials contend Haglin was permitted to continue to substitute teach because of a miscommunication between district officials and the Grant Wood Area Education Agency, which runs the substitute database, KGAN reports.

“”The communication from the attendance centers school did come through accurately, what we didn’t get was the larger communication and districts take care of that in different ways, in this situation it would have come from the HR office of the district,” Grant Wood AEA spokeswoman Renee Nelson said.

Cedar Rapids Community School District spokeswoman Marcia Hughes claims that school officials notified the Grant Wood AEA on May 18, “however, follow-up did not occur to confirm that the substitute was removed from the system entirely.

“This confirmation would have come from the District Department of Human Resources,” Hughes said in a statement to KGAN. “The District currently is taking steps to improve the District’s Human Resources forms and communications processes to address this so that this will not occur in the future.”

“School board documents show the human resources director, Jill Cirivello, retired June 30 at age 56,” The Gazette reports.

Haglin was eventually removed from the substitute teacher database on June 14, nearly a month after the Washington High School investigation.

Nelson told The Gazette that school officials asked to remove Haglin from a list of potential subs at Washington, but did not request that Grant Wood AEA take her out of the system entirely.

“We did receive notification from Washington High School to reassign the substitute, but we did not have additional context,” Nelson told KGAN. “So to us it looked like a reassignment.”

Haglin contends that was intentional, a move designed to cover up her embarrassing relationship with her student.

CRCSD officials “knew full well” Haglin continued to substitute teach at district elementary schools, she said.

“There was no way they could not have known,” she said. “I’m sure they were tracking me and checking me.”

“From April 17 to May 17, they knew and certainly probably longer than that, probably since February when they first questioned me,” she told The Gazette.

Haglin is scheduled to return to court on August 12. The sexual exploitation by a school employee charge carries a potential sentence of two years in prison and a decade on the state’s sex offender registry.