CAMILLA, Ga. (WALB) - A Mitchell County middle school parent is raising concerns about transparency after a former school employee was arrested for child exploitation, saying her 12-year-old daughter broke the news before the school ever did.

Willie James Silas, 34, was arrested in Florida, extradited, and booked in the Mitchell County Jail, where he was charged with sexual exploitation of children, grooming of a minor for sexual offense, and child molestation, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). The GBI said that Silas was a teacher at Mitchell County Middle School. The Mitchell County School System released a statement that Silas was no longer on its campus.

>> READ MORE: Mitchell County teacher arrested in sexual exploitation of children investigation, GBI says <<

A parent, who wished to remain anonymous, said her sixth-grade daughter broke the news to her and her husband after hearing students talking about the incident in class.

“All I am going to say as a parent of a child that goes to school, we were not told about it at all,” the parent said. “She just came home and told me that this teacher got in trouble. All these kids were talking about it.”

As the conversation with her daughter continued, the parent said she realized the charges involved child sexual exploitation. The parent added that her daughter did not fully understand the allegations.

“I had to explain to her what it meant,” the parent said. “I wasn’t able to prepare myself and my husband to sit down and have a conversation like we should have had instead of just a blunt conversation right away.”

The parent said the school lacked in notifying parents before the information spread amongst students.

District responds

The Mitchell County School System provided WALB with a statement on June 1 in response to the parents’ concern.

The statement says that the district’s communication decisions are guided by “the nature of the incident, whether there is any direct impact to student safety, guidance from law enforcement, legal requirements, and the need to preserve the integrity of any investigation.” The district said the charges involved an alleged incident in another state and did not involve students within the Mitchell County school system.

When presented with the district’s reasoning, the parent pushed back.

“It doesn’t matter if it was in a different state,” she said. “We get notified about every little other thing... But that, to me, was extremely important, so we could talk to our children and explain to our children what it meant.”

The parent suggested a phone call or a parent meeting as alternatives for how the district could better notify families. She said she has experienced communication barriers with the school system in the four years her daughter has been in the district and hopes the situation prompts a change in how it alerts families about safety-related incidents.

Read the district’s full statement below:

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