Porter County Councilman Greg Simms, a Democrat seeking his third term representing District 3, took to video on social media this week in the face of mounting pressure to defend himself against allegations of inappropriate conduct while he was a teacher at Washington Township High School in 2019.
In the video posted to Simms’ campaign Facebook page Tuesday evening, Simms holds a copy of a disciplinary letter that states that the administration had received “reports of inappropriate conduct in regards to female students.” To protect Simms and the students, the Feb. 12, 2019, letter said he was being placed on paid administrative leave. He was also instructed not to discuss the matter with anyone other than local representation and not to have contact with students or their families.
“And this is 2026, so this is an old letter,” he said, looking into the camera.
The letter, from East Porter Township School Corporation Superintendent Aaron Case, has been widely shared online and with the media. In a phone interview with the Post-Tribune, Simms confirmed its authenticity. He said the letter had been leaked.
An attorney representing the East Porter Township School Corporation declined to comment, citing personnel matters. A spokesman for the Porter County Sheriff’s Department said the department was never asked to investigate allegations of inappropriate contact between Simms and students at Washington Township High School.
Simms, a former girls track coach and social studies teacher, resigned from Washington Township High School in September 2023. In a phone interview with the Post Tribune, Simms said that he left because there was a change in principals and a family member had cancer. He said he was with the school corporation for 24 years, starting in 1999, and taught for 10 years at the Hebron schools before that.
But mounting pressure against Simms has been growing in recent days for him to resign or quit the race in the May 5 Democratic primary. Two administrators for Nasty Women of Porter County created a petition that’s been circulating widely online, calling for accountability from Simms over the allegations, and Porter County Democratic Party Chair Don Craft released a statement Thursday afternoon encouraging individuals to file statements with the state’s Democratic Party since the party’s ethics committee will be conducting an investigation.
Early voting is already underway.
The “party takes this information very seriously,” Craft said in the statement. He said that a county party chair cannot remove an elected official, and the state party can’t remove a person from the Democratic Party without due process. Instead, state party officials will determine what happens next, Craft said.
“Hopefully, the state party will move judiciously,” he told the Post Tribune.
Meanwhile, Simms told the Post-Tribune in a phone interview he will neither resign nor quit the race for re-election. Instead, he called the allegations “a smear campaign.”
His opponent in the primary, Jack Tipold, said he has nothing to do with the allegations against Simms.
“People have been talking about it a long time, but people talk,” Tipold said. “I’ve been focused on knocking on doors and getting my message out.”
In the video Simms released Tuesday, he gave an overview of the letter’s contents and then went on to give his version of events on what allegedly happened.
“I gave a female junior student a $2 purse, literally $2. That’s all this thing was for. And somehow that $2 purse turned into this,” he said, wearing a shirt bearing the Indiana flag.
Simms said he went through an extensive investigation and interviews of students, faculty and staff. “The conclusion was the same. It was all identical,” he said. “I had given everybody something over a period of time.”
That, according to Simms in the video, included pencils, pens, T-shirts, sweatshirts, ice cream and other treats from school concessions, and bicycles.
“It was determined that I did absolutely nothing wrong and basically, go back to work,” he said. “So all this stems from 2019 over a $2 purse and it appears that this is a smear campaign. People are out for whatever reason to find some mud on me, so this is what they came up with. So I want to set the record straight that nothing was inappropriate.”
“This seems kind of silly that it was a $2 purse that caused all this grief and angst.”
He said people “overreacted” to lies and if the 2019 incident was that bad, he would have been fired then. Meeting agendas available on the East Porter Township School Corporation website reflect that Simms resigned as varsity girls track coach on Feb. 28, 2019, and that he was placed on paid administrative leave on Sept. 5, 2023, before he resigned.
Kathy Watts, one of two administrators for Nasty Women of Porter County who put together the change.org petition, which went online Monday night, said she was made aware of allegations against Simms on Sunday.
“Had I been made aware of credible information two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago, I would have come forward,” she said.
She also said she is “in no way” affiliated or associated with Tipold’s campaign against Simms in the primary, though she said she met Tipold once at an early campaign event and has one of his signs in her yard.
“We had no idea what we were going to crack open,” she said of the online petition.
Tipold, making his first bid for public office, also said he had no role in the release of the allegations against Simms.
Tipold called the allegations “a distraction” and said he doesn’t know Simms, though Tipold did meet him for coffee when he decided to run against him in the primary as a matter of respect.
“If those documents floating out there are accurate, well, OK, Greg, own up to it,” Tipold said. “If it’s true, then own it and move on. I don’t necessarily think this helps me in the primary.”
The winner in the primary will face Republican Dawn Miller in the general election.
After the primary, Simms said he plans to file a lawsuit to find out how a letter from his sealed personnel file was released. “Whoever leaked that document, there was an intent to harm,” he said.
He said he’s not guilty and he has every intention of winning the election and moving on.
“I did nothing to deserve all this crap,” he said. “The election is in less than two weeks and the timing – what a coincidence. Once you get an accusation to your name, good luck shaking it, even if it’s false.”
alavalley@chicagotribune.com
