Board approves retirement of teacher involved in strip search

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The teacher who initiated a strip search of 23 third-graders over a missing $5 will be allowed to retire, rather than be fired, the Kansas City School Board decided.

Betty Bettis, a third-grade teacher at Pitcher Elementary School, had planned to retire at the end of the year.

But she asked to be allowed to leave early after controversy erupted over the strip search.

Bettis and Thomas Sims had been told they would be fired after the last month's strip search.

The board did not address Sims' fate at Tuesday's meeting.

Parents complained after their children told them the third-grade girls were taken to a bathroom and told to strip to their underwear.

The girls then were sent in pairs into bathroom stalls and told to look inside each other's underwear. Bettis did not go into the stalls.

Sims took the boys into the gym. They were led one at a time into a locker room, where they had to strip completely and shake their underwear.

The $5 was found but not as a result of the searches.