First-grade teacher busted for asking dealer to drop off meth package at school

Few parents of elementary school kids are naïve enough to think their children’s teacher is Mother Teresa.

Still, it would be nice to rely on a couple of things: one, keeping any decadent habits to their own time and outside of school; and two, staying on the right side of the law.   

Sadly, even that low bar proved too high for one first-grade teacher in Florida whose craving for meth while on the job has just gotten her in a whole load of trouble.

Valerie Lee Prince, a first-grade teacher at Jacksonville Heights Elementary School, agreed to buy an “eight ball”, or one eighth of an ounce, of methamphetamine for $85 from an undercover officer, according to Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

Prince, 43, called a dealer to bring her the eight ball to the school, even saying she was willing to duck out of her class to pick it up.

“You call me, I can just say I have to use the phone real quick — I could step out and come right back in,” she told the dealer, who was an informant working with narcotics officers to record the call. Parts of the audio recording were played at a press conference last Friday to announce Prince’s arrest.

Prince suggested that she planned to consume some of the meth and then go back to the classroom, officials said.

 “The situation is disturbing,” Lt. Domenic Paniccia of Clay County told the press conference. “This is someone that was in charge of kids, first-grade kids, and it’s something that was a priority to us.”

An undercover officer later delivered the teacher $85 of meth — outside of school hours — before Prince was arrested. She is charged with purchasing and possessing meth, a felony. She is being held in Clay County Jail with an arraignment set for next month, court records show.

Police said the teacher has now admitted to the use of methamphetamine on multiple occasions in the last six months and also acknowledged that she was prepared to have the drugs delivered to her school as she taught her first-graders.

Duval County Public Schools said it was also holding its own investigation and had removed the wayward teacher from the school.