Rape Charges Suspend Teacher in Fallbrook : Arrest: School trustees decide to put Fallbrook High School band instructor on unrequested leave without pay in wake of accusations that he raped two students.

A Fallbrook High School band teacher accused of raping two of his students, ages 16 and 17, will be suspended without pay after his arraignment today, school trustees decided Monday night.

Kevin McLean, 32, a band teacher at the school for a year and a half on probationary status, was arrested Friday by sheriff’s deputies after a 17-year-old girl student made the allegations to school officials earlier in the week.

McLean was charged with five counts of unlawful intercourse, three counts of rape with a foreign object and one count of oral copulation with a person under 18, said Sheriff Sgt. Glenn Revelle. Unlawful intercourse is intercourse with any person under 18 other than a spouse.

“At least a couple” of the alleged sexual encounters “occurred toward the end of the last school year,” said Robert Thomas, superintendent of the district.

The school board, in a closed session Monday night, put McLean on unrequested leave effective immediately.

“Under these charges, you have no choice but to do this. It’s very clear. If he is innocent, he gets his salary. And, if he isn’t, he forfeits it,” Thomas said.

The arrest came as a shock to the 2,200-student school in the rural town.

“The staff is very distraught this morning. This is something that nobody ever hopes happen to their faculty,” Thomas said Monday.

“Band is like an athletics team, and you’re the coach of a team, and some kids develop relationships with the coach, or in this case, the band director. And I’m sure some of the kids are very upset,” Thomas said.

Robert Burton, the school’s activities director, said students are very concerned.

“Students feel that this is a very serious situation. They are obviously very disappointed and very concerned, and they realize that a person is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty,” Burton said.

The 17-year-old student who first leveled the charges against McLean was a student of his last year, and is still a student at the school, Thomas said. She was was not in his class this semester, he said.

She made the molestation allegations to school officials Jan. 7, and they contacted sheriff’s investigators. A second student, a 16-year-old girl, later came forward as well, Revelle said.

Thomas described McLean as “a young teacher trying to establish himself, and we were working with him as a probationary person. He spent a lot of time with the band and the band program.”

McLean, who is single, taught at Wasco High School near Bakersfield during the 1989-90 school year before going to Fallbrook.

“All of his recommendations were fine, and all of his records were in order,” Thomas said.

Thomas Blum, superintendent of the Wasco Union High School District, said McLean left the district on his own volition, although there had been disagreements between him and the district over the direction of the band program.

“It was mutual. He wasn’t happy with us, and we weren’t totally happy with him,” Blum said, adding that his contract with the district would have been renewed had McLean wanted to stay.

McLean was being held in lieu of $165,000 bail at the County Jail in Vista on Monday, Revelle said.