A US teacher sacked from a school over a nearly year long affair with a 17-year-old student says officials are to blame for not stopping the relationship.

Mary Beth Haglin was sacked from a substitute teaching job at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after the school became aware she had been having regular sex with the teenage boy.

Although the school did not report the affair to police, someone else did which sparked police intervention, The Gazette at Cedar Rapids reports.

View photos Mary Beth Haglin, 24, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says school authorites could have stopped her sexual relationship with a teenager boy. Photo: Facebook More

According to the 24-year-old substitute teacher, the school had known of the affair for months without taking action.

“These people all knew what was going on, but they turned a blind eye because they wanted to protect their school and didn't want it to get into the limelight,” Haglin told CBS 2 in the US.

"They allowed this to happen. They knew in February."

Despite the school finally sacking Haglin on May 17, she maintained access to SubCentral, a directory site for substitute teachers that allowed her to continue finding work at other schools.





She blamed past abuses in her life for the affair and said the school shared some of the blame for putting her in an environment that “didn't help to curb anything”.

According to Haglin, she should have been banned from the substitute teaching service but the school wanted to keep the scandal secret.

“They didn’t ban me,” she told newspaper.

View photos Mary Beth Raglin is due to face court next month. Photo: Facebook More

“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 feet of any school."

After she was stopped from working at Washington High School, Raglin went on to teach at more schools, Harrison Elementary, Oak Ridge and Prairie Creek Intermediate until June 2.

She handed herself in to local sheriffs on July 23, and has since said she regretted the affair with the boy.

But the SubCentral database that allowed her to continue applying for work was not told.

Raglin has since been released from Linn County Jail and is due to face court next month accused of sexual exploitation of a minor.

School administrators say they did report Haglin’s conduct to local school boards. SubCentral says it was not informed of the teacher’s conduct until June 14.