Osceola teacher pleads guilty to child molestation charges

A 21-year-old man who’d taught at a private school in Kissimmee has pleaded guilty to molesting a student at the school and has been sentenced to 30 months in prison, Osceola County court records show.

Domynik Lewis, of Altamonte Springs, pleaded guilty to three felony charges this month, admitting he engaged in sex acts with the child.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said the incidents occurred in late 2016 at a classroom in Esther’s School of Kissimmee, when he was a teacher there, and involved a 12-year-old girl. Lewis was arrested Nov. 1, 2017.

By that time, Lewis and his mother, who’d also taught at Esther’s School, had left that school and opened a new one, Grace Excellence Academy, which operated out of a Kissimmee church. Both schools accepted Florida scholarships, or vouchers, which pay for students from low-income families or those with disabilities to attend private school.

After the Orlando Sentinel reported Lewis’ arrest, the Florida Department of Education revoked Grace Excellence’s scholarships. The school had fewer than 20 scholarship students enrolled, state figures show.

The school appealed the revocation with Lewis’ mother, Adrienne Grace, writing in December that “without the assistance of the scholarships we will be forced to close our doors.” Students at the school, she added, are “thriving in this environment and separating them at this time would probably do more harm than good.”

The school has not been reinstated in the scholarship programs, however, and has not received any state funds since it was suspended from participating in November, the department said Thursday.

The telephone numbers listed for the school were not working, and Grace, who in state documents is also called Adrienne Lewis, could not be reached.

Lewis and his mother’s positions in both the Kissimmee schools showcased some of the same problems the Sentinel detailed in its “Schools Without Rules” series.

The stories, published in October, documented how private schools that take state scholarships have falsified fire and health inspections, set up shop in rundown facilities and hired teachers without college degrees and with criminal records. State law imposes only limited rules on these private schools. But the investigation found that some schools ignored even those requirements and that state enforcement of them was sometimes lax.

This school year, about 2,000 private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in scholarships for about 140,000 students.

At Esther’s School, with 113 scholarship students enrolled last year, Lewis was hired as a teacher with a high school diploma as his only credential. For two other teachers at the school, 11th grade was their highest level of education, documents sent from the school to the state show. Unlike public schools, there are no state required teacher credentials at the private schools that take state-backed scholarships.

Lewis’ mother was hired at Esther’s, too, though she had not passed a required criminal background check, according to documents from the education department.

In March 2017, after discovering that, the department told Esther’s via letter to fire Adrienne Lewis. In a response letter, Esther’s School told the state she had been terminated.

Less than four months after that correspondence, the education department approved the new Grace Excellence as a scholarship school, with Adrienne Lewis listed as the school’s principal.

Department officials later said that Domynik Lewis — under investigation at that point but with no prior criminal record — was listed as the new school’s owner, and the state required background checks of the owners of new scholarship schools, not principals. So the department approved the new school to take state scholarships — Gardiner, McKay and Tax Credit — with a principal it had previously declared ineligible to work on a campus with scholarship students.

In announcing Domynik Lewis’ arrest, the sheriff’s office noted that during its investigation he’d operated Grace Excellence, “where he continued to have daily contact with children until the time of his arrest.”

On April 11, he pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation and one count of lewd and lascivious battery stemming from the 2016 incidents at Esther’s School.

A judge in Osceola circuit court sentenced him to 30 months in prison and then 10 years of probation, with special conditions for sex offenders, such as not living within 1,00 feet of a school, park or playground.

Annie Martin of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

lpostal@orlandosentinel.com 407-420-5273

State pulls scholarships from private schools after owner’s arrest “