Eanes ISD releases new info after teacher arrest
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A former elementary music teacher at Eanes Independent School District who was arrested in February on charges of Possession of Child Pornography is now being charged with Sexual Performance by Child under 14, according to court records.
In February the Texas Department of Public Safety executed a search warrant at Zachary Barnett’s residence and seized a total of 13 digital devices according to the affidavit. Among those files— the affidavit said DPS found more than 8,000 pictures and videos of female students from Barnett’s class.
“Violated our trust, exploited our students and naturally that is very upsetting,” said Eanes ISD Superintendent Jeff Arnett.
The affidavit states that the “images zoomed into the female students’ skirts, their underwear, and their crotch area.”
Parents KXAN spoke with tell us they worry about where the images could end up.
“They [DPS] have worked with national organizations to determine that none of our students images were uploaded and they have taken the additional step, making sure if there were any images of our children that were out there, those would be removed and we are trying to follow those processes with them as well,” Arnett said.
In a letter to parents at Cedar Creek Elementary, Arnett addressed the latest information released to the district.
“Especially upsetting, is the new detail revealed in the Travis County warrant that Department of Public Safety (DPS) authorities identified and began surveillance of Barnett on Jan. 13, 2025, while knowing he was a teacher in our school. This was a full month before Eanes ISD police and administrators were made aware of his crimes. Had we been notified at that time, we would have immediately removed him from the classroom and avoided further exploitation of our students. Regrettably, we were not informed for several weeks as the investigation of him began, which is dismaying. While we cannot correct DPS’s decision, we have told them of our extreme concerns regarding their delayed notification.”
– Jeff Arnett, Eanes ISD Superintendent
Some parents told KXAN they don’t believe the district is doing enough to keep them informed or keep their kids safe.
“This has now spanned about eight weeks for our district, so we have been living this along with the parents,” Arnett said. “We learned about it at the same time they did. We were disappointed in not being notified about the investigation until a month after DPS officials first learned about this activity.”
KXAN reached out to DPS for comment about the investigation, as well as what they are doing to make sure images were not shared online, but we have not heard back at this time. We will update this if a statement is received.
There are online resources that can help parents and victims dealing with similar cases. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offers a CyberTipline, as well as Take It Down, which helps remove nude, partially nude or sexually explicit photos and videos of underage people by assigning a unique digital fingerprint — called a hash value — to the images or videos.
