Ryan leaves trail of allegations, complaints at previous school jobs
Inappropriate comments, unprofessional behavior among criticisms of Coweta County Commission candidate
Trouble seems to follow Tim Ryan.
Ryan is running for the District 3 seat on the Coweta County Commission. He will face off against Dakota Caldwell in a June 16 Republican runoff election. The winner will go against Democrat Render A. Godfrey in the fall general election.
Last March, Ryan resigned from Coweta County Schools following allegations of making inappropriate comments, breaching teacher-student boundaries and engaged in unprofessional classroom behavior.
The Citizen reported that Ryan had a 150-plus-page personnel file that included complaints from students, teachers and administrators as well as disciplinary records.
One female student alleged that he pulled her into a supply closet when she was crying and made a comment about dating her if he were her age, and he later joked about being a “pedophile.” Several students also alleged that Ryan made inappropriate sexual comments during class. Administrators ultimately determined that Ryan had behaved in an unprofessional manner.
In January 2024, district officials found Ryan had made inappropriate remarks that went beyond approved curriculum guidelines when teaching sex education earlier that month.
In February 2025, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office investigated Ryan after a Smokey Road Middle School student attempted suicide and listed Ryan as one of the reasons. She told investigators that he had made comments about her appearance that made her uncomfortable and repeatedly referred to female students with inappropriate terms. While he was not found to have committed criminal physical or sexual abuse, the Sheriff’s Office documented the concerns and referred the matter back to the school system. He wrote a poem to a student mocking her appearance and behavior.
There were also numerous complaints from students who claimed Ryan singled them out for verbal abuse and humiliation.
According to records, administrators took action to restrict Ryan’s contact with certain students. Per a Sheriff’s Office report, in May 2025 after Ryan resigned, Smokey Road Middle School Principal David Demant contacted a school resource officer saying that Ryan “had been let go from the school system due to allegations of touching a student earlier this year” and that there were “previous allegations from another school.”
Demant also said that Ryan had written letters to students after he left encouraging them to stay in touch with him.
After The Citizen’s coverage of those incidents, former students, parents and a former colleague came forward with further details and allegations about Ryan.
One of these students was the girl Ryan had allegedly said he’d date. She told The Citizen Ryan tried to keep her from leaving the closet. She also said he made comments about her mother’s body, including about her chest, and that he routinely touched and rubbed female students’ backs.
She also said Ryan had suggested she engage in self-harm to get her mother’s attention. The mother said her daughter began cutting herself, and she said Ryan did not report it despite knowing it was happening.
The mother also said Ryan repeatedly ignored contact restrictions imposed upon him by the school and continued to put himself in close proximity to her daughter.
The mother of a girl who had been a student at Madras Middle School during Ryan’s only year there said she spoke with other neighborhood parents about their children’s experiences with Ryan and in his gifted science class, he regularly cursed in front of students, berated them and humiliated them, often reducing them to tears.
When her daughter became overwhelmed and began to cry, the mother said Ryan yelled at her to get out of the room. The mother said the girl’s resulting anxiety led her parents to put her into therapy.
A Smokey Road student said Ryan had physically restrained her and a friend in a hallway, had her pulled out of another class to join him in his classroom with a small group of girls and talked about inviting certain students to his beach house. She described his repeated humiliation of a male student who had a difficult home life.
A former colleague at Madras Middle School said Ryan made a crude sexual comment to a school secretary and that administrators told him that he was not allowed to be alone with a female teacher after he had asked to carpool with her alone to a conference.
In 2020, according to another Citizen story, three Atlanta Public Schools seventh-grade students and a school employee said Ryan placed a student’s sandwich in his groin area before removing it and eating it in front of students, according to personnel records.
Ryan omitted the Atlanta Public Schools job from his application to teach in Coweta County, according to The Newnan Times-Herald.
And before that, in Gwinnett County, school records show Ryan was removed from substitute teaching assignments at Summerour Middle School in Norcross following written complaints submitted by a number of female students in February 2009.
Among the complaints were that Ryan ogled their bodies and made sexual remarks about them. Gwinnett County Public Schools told Ryan not to accept any subbing assignments “under any circumstances,” and he also was permanently prohibited from returning to Summerour Middle School.
Controversies involving Ryan extend beyond the classroom as well.
In May 2025, Ryan reportedly launched a public fundraiser using Meals on Wheels’ name without their authorization, a violation of Georgia law.
At first, he said the fundraiser was to help Meals on Wheels purchase a large mixer, but he later said it was for the benefit of an individual chef “who works at a local charity feeding Cowetians.”
The 30-quart mixer purchased at Amazon with the funds wound up being too large for Meals on Wheels’ facility. When Amazon refused to take it back, Meals on Wheels gave it to a local catering company. An attorney for Meals on Wheels subsequently sent cease-and-desist letters to Ryan, and the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office eventually barred Ryan from returning to the facility.
Additionally, the largest single donor to the unauthorized fundraiser was Krista Frost, the wife of Brant Frost IV, whose firm First Liberty Building and Loan was identified by the SEC as a Ponzi scheme that had defrauded investors out of more than $155 million.
Ryan told The Newnan Times-Herald his actions had been mischaracterized.
He told the paper he pulled that girl into a close because he “was trying to help a kid who was having a breakdown” and that the supply closet had windows.
Concerning inappropriate/sexual comments, he said he was taken out of context and that they were just part of his teaching style and efforts to engage in classroom rapport and that “that’s how kids talk.”
Regarding the poem mocking a female student’s appearance, he said “That was just sort of a fun little thing that we would do” and was just part of the classroom’s dynamic and was only intended as mild teasing.
Concerning his overall teaching approach, he referred to himself as a “20th century teacher in a 21st century environment,” and he said that concerns about his style were due to it being direct and unconventional.
During an April candidate debate, Ryan said he was a victim of “smears, half truths and attempts to destroy people’s reputations” for “(challenging) the establishment,” vowing that “I will not be canceled.”
On his campaign website and Facebook page, Ryan says he is a two-time graduate of Georgia State University who spent 10 years in the corporate world before serving 17 years in education. Ryan describes himself as a business professional and community advocate. He and his family moved to Coweta County in 2022 “for its quality of life, strong schools and close-knit community.”