A 42-year-old teacher and assistant coach at Skyline High School in Salmon Creek was fired by Vancouver Public Schools in August after disciplinary records revealed he exchanged between 50 and 300 messages with a female student, including late-night direct messages sent over the summer in which he asked her questions about her underwear and requested selfies of her in it. Eric Rice is now appealing that termination and seeking reinstatement, with a hearing still pending.
The Clark County Sheriff's Office investigated the allegations, according to spokesperson Matt Volker, but Rice has not been charged with any criminal offenses related to the communications, as reported by KOIN. The student was 18 years old at the time of the alleged messages, and Rice told district officials he believed she had already graduated when he sent them, per district records cited by the outlet.
But the records paint a fuller picture of Rice's relationship with the student well before those messages. The prior year, he allowed her significant unstructured time in his classroom and spent time alone with her there, petitioned her counselor to place her in a senior-year class, allowed her to walk his dog for six months, visited her at her job, and had her at his home.
A Pattern Stretching Back Over a Decade
Rice has worked for Vancouver Public Schools for 18 years, previously teaching at Hudson's Bay High School in Vancouver before moving to Skyline. District records show he was accused of several other inappropriate incidents with students long before this year's firing. In 2012, he contacted at least three former students, including reaching out to one late at night on Facebook, asking her to pick him up so they could go somewhere secluded, and attempting to talk her into making out with him.
Rice acknowledged his behavior at a meeting with district officials in 2013, and Vancouver Public Schools formally warned him about grooming behavior and boundary violations that same year. By 2015, the district noted an evolving pattern of poor decision making, issued him a written directive on staff-student boundaries and technology use, and denied his application to become head coach of the girls' golf team. In 2019, the district permanently removed him from coaching female teams altogether.
That 2019 action followed a parent complaint alleging Rice used his position to access and groom female students for future engagement, describing his conduct as predatory, per district records. The same year, he sent late-night Facebook and Snapchat messages to another former student and athlete, according to those records.
State Oversight Rules
Current rules require a formal complaint to open an investigation; possible complainants include district superintendents, ESD superintendents, and private- or charter-school chief administrative officers.
In July, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction proposed changes to clarify who counts as a student and what constitutes improper digital communication, according to Seattle Weekly.
Under state law governing discharged certificated employees, Rice had 10 calendar days from receiving written notice of termination to demand an appeal hearing before an independent hearing officer, who will determine whether sufficient cause existed for his dismissal. Washington was the first state in the country to pass a so-called “Don't Pass the Trash” statute in 2004, which requires districts to check prior employers for historical misconduct allegations and bars non-disclosure agreements that bury the records — a law aimed squarely at preventing cases like Rice's long, undisciplined tenure from going unnoticed.
A District Already Under Scrutiny
The Rice case lands in a district still reeling from other misconduct scandals. Hudson's Bay High School, where Rice once taught, came under scrutiny after another former teacher, Shadbreon Gatson, was arrested and charged in late 2024 with sexual misconduct involving a minor. That charge was later dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.
Vancouver Public Schools also dealt with the 2022 arrest of custodian James Mattson, who placed hidden cameras in the girls' locker room at Alki Middle School and in the female staff bathroom at Skyview High School. Police said the videos recovered dated back to 2013. Mattson pleaded guilty to 137 counts of voyeurism and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Statewide, an InvestigateWest analysis published in February found that of 349 Washington teachers added to the state misconduct database between 2015 and 2025, roughly 46 percent of cases involved sexual misconduct allegations, and nearly 45 percent of those teachers voluntarily surrendered their licenses — a move that shields detailed case records from public view. Vancouver Public Schools serves roughly 22,000 students across more than 35 facilities in Clark County, making it one of Southwest Washington's largest districts and placing added weight on how it handles cases like Rice's going forward.
