Jason Argo was fired in June 2016 after confessing to investigators that he received oral sex from a female student on two occasions inside his classroom. Later, he had sexual intercourse with the girl at his then-Mulberry home on his 34th birthday.

BARTOW — Two civil lawsuits against Polk County Public Schools over former Mulberry High School English teacher Jason Argo's inappropriate texting of one girl and sexual battery on another 15-year-old girl have been settled through mediation.

Kent Lilly, an attorney for the family of the girl in the sexual assault case, said the cases were settled out of court for $10,000 and $175,000, respectively. The Polk County School Board must still approve the settlement offers.

“Within months of becoming superintendent, I moved to terminate Jason Argo's employment,” PCPS Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd said in a written statement. “There is absolutely no place in our school system for someone who abuses children. We trust teachers to care for their students and protect them. Jason Argo took advantage of his position of authority. His actions are deplorable, and do not represent the character displayed by our educators and schools.”

According to one of the lawsuits, Argo touched a 15-year-old student inappropriately and sent her provocative Twitter messages. Her mother found the messages on her daughter's cellphone in October 2014 and notified school authorities, the lawsuit states. He was suspended for three days for “serious misconduct,” just prior to and following the winter break. He almost immediately began texting with the second girl when he returned to school in January 2015, Lilly said.

The girl told law enforcement investigators that she gave Argo, her English teacher, her cellphone number as a joke, knowing he had gotten into trouble with the first girl.

Argo was fired in June 2016 after confessing to investigators that he received oral sex from a female student on two occasions inside his classroom. Later, he had sexual intercourse with the girl at his then-Mulberry home on his 34th birthday — June 30, 2015, according to a Polk County Sheriff's Office arrest report.

Lilly, from the Lakeland firm of Lilly & Brown, provided The Ledger depositions from three Polk County Public Schools investigators and the director for employee relations, Tony Kirk. In those depositions, it was revealed that the district had no system in place to track the various types of cases their office investigates, including inappropriate relationships with students or those who were criminally charged with sexual abuse of students. They added that once law enforcement becomes involved — they do not conduct their own investigations.

Kirk was deposed in August 2017. Before moving to Polk County to work for the school district, he served as the deputy chief of police in Topeka, Kansas, for 28 years.

“There is no system to categorize the cases,” Kirk said, explaining that the investigators track their own individual cases, but there wasn't a list of the different types of cases. “They would just have to go through all of their individual cases to see if they had anything that would meet that criteria. We do not have a case management system. We want one. We need one. But currently, we do not have one ... there's no central repository that you could go to and extract that information.”

School district spokesman Jason Geary said the human resources department put an electronic tracking system in place beginning with the 2018-19 school year. Prior to that, there was not a searchable system.

“Our district has thousands of employees, and our investigators handle hundreds of investigations each year,” Geary said in an email.

Kirk also told attorneys during his 2017 deposition that social media and the ability to communicate discreetly with students is contributing to the problem of sexual predation.

Lilly created a list of 15 school district employees who were arrested for sex crimes against children or possession of child pornography since 1999. The Ledger identified three more cases, bringing the total to 18.

As for the number of cases in Polk County, “I think that there's far too many than there should be,” Kirk said. “Coming back from my law enforcement background, I've seen quite a few, a whole lot more than I would have anticipated ... I don't think it's any more abnormal or excessive here than you may see elsewhere … it's one of those deals where oftentimes you don't know what's going on until after the fact. And it could've been going on for quite some time.”

The Polk County Sheriff's Office conducted the investigation on Argo. Sheriff Grady Judd said he was glad the victim was spared a trial when Argo pleaded guilty in August 2017 to sexual battery and lewd battery on a minor.

“Children are physically and emotionally vulnerable, and Jason Argo used that to his advantage,” Judd said. “What he did caused emotional trauma which will always be with the victim and family. It also damaged his own family. Lives were forever changed.”

According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Argo is serving a 12-year prison sentence at the Hamilton Correctional Institution in Jasper. When he is released in August 2029, he will then serve five years' probation as a sexual offender. His plea agreement allowed him to be labeled a sexual offender, rather than a sexual predator, which is more serious.

Kimberly C. Moore can be reached at kmoore@theledger.com or 863-802-7514. Follow her on Twitter at @KMooreTheLedger.