A beloved athletic director and head football coach at Celina Independent School District announced his retirement this week as district officials cleared him and other employees of wrongdoing in a sexual abuse case involving his son. 

But a report by the district, released late Friday night, found “systemic” hiring issues and other failures in the athletics department he oversaw and at the middle school where his son taught, including allegations that the coach improperly influenced his son’s hiring.

Bill Elliott, who had been employed by the district for more than three decades, was placed on administrative leave in October after his 26-year-old son Caleb, an assistant football coach and sixth-grade social studies teacher, was accused of secretly filming boys in the Celina middle school’s locker room and possessing child pornography. Caleb Elliott surrendered his teaching license and remains in Collin County Jail on multiple federal charges.

The elder Elliott, whose team narrowly missed a state championship win last year after winning the title in 2024, has been accused in civil lawsuits, along with school officials, of ignoring and covering up a pattern of his son’s concerning behavior that lawyers and families said should have spurred earlier intervention. The father does not face criminal accusations. An attorney for his son has said that there is a “ton of misinformation” about the case and more facts will emerge as his criminal case progresses.

The allegations shocked the tight-knit football-fanatic community of Celina, a fast-growing suburb about 50 miles north of Dallas. The case is the first test of a new state law passed this year that allows families to sue school districts during sexual abuse allegations in which educators are accused of negligence. Usually government entities are shielded from most civil litigation.

Days before the school district released a redacted version of a third-party investigation it ordered into the matter, its board president Jeff Gravley gave a three-page statement about its review of the findings late Tuesday.

Based on an investigation that included interviewing 39 witnesses, the Arlington lawyer leading it found no evidence that district officials knew about what the civil lawsuits claimed was an improper relationship Caleb Elliott had with a high school student while he was a substitute teacher there in the 2022-23 school year. District officials did not move the younger Elliott to Moore Middle School in the summer of 2023 to cover up such wrongdoing, according to the investigation. Witnesses also had no knowledge that he allegedly placed hidden cameras in the middle school locker rooms, as outlined in the criminal affidavit, or that he forced students to do naked jumping jacks and burpees, as victims claimed in civil suits. The report said it was not evaluating the criminal charges against the younger Elliott, only district officials’ knowledge of them.

“The investigation found neither current employee witnesses nor employees who left the District had knowledge of alleged prior incidents of misconduct” by the younger Elliott, according to the report.

The district’s expanded 85-page redacted review reaffirmed those overall findings, though it noted “systemic issues” in the district’s athletics department and at its middle school. Witnesses said the elder Elliott pressured the middle school principal, Allison Ginn, who also resigned this week, to hire his son even though he had failed a certification exam after several attempts. They recounted Ginn saying she wanted to “pass on” hiring Caleb Elliott, but that the head football coach told her she had to hold the position open until his son passed the exam. One witness recalled that the principal said she felt “forced” to hire him. He began teaching there in the 2023-24 school year.

The report underscored that there was no evidence to suggest middle school officials who hired Caleb Elliott knew of any wrongdoing at the high school. But it added that his father “exerting influence” in hiring “reflects poorly” on the district.

An examination of the younger Elliott’s phone confirmed that he started dating a student at the high school two months after the teen’s graduation in July 2024. Caleb Elliott’s partner was later hired at the middle school as a special education teacher, although the district did not say if it was a substitute or permanent role. 

In October 2024, according to the report, news that Caleb Elliott was in a same-sex relationship “had blown up everywhere,” with at least one witness sending the middle school principal a video of him with a male companion eating fast food. He was “very distraught about the situation,” the principal said, according to the report. His sexual orientation “became the talk of the town,” the report found, and one witness said his duties as an assistant football coach were moved from the locker room to the cafeteria for the rest of the 2024-25 school year, not because of any misconduct but because some board members were upset that he was gay, according to the report. It said he was never banned from the locker room, as previously alleged. 

Witnesses also told investigators that Caleb Elliott inappropriately sold an Apple Watch and cologne to at least one student in March 2025, and that the incident was reported to the principal, although she denied knowing about it until after his arrest. The following month, he received a coaching evaluation from his supervisor reflecting no concerns about his behavior, according to the report.

In early October, one witness recalled overhearing students saying that Caleb Elliott was recording them in the locker rooms. Investigators said the witness, whom they did not identify, called someone else who responded, “OK, I’ll take care of it.” The following day, a text was sent instructing all middle school coaching staff to “NOT have your phones out in the locker room.” Later that day, police arrested the younger Elliott on initial state charges of invasive visual recording.

State Rep. Mitch Little, a Republican who represents parts of North Texas neighboring Celina as well as victims in the civil litigation against the district, posted on X that its investigation was concluded “without talking to a single victim or their families.”

After the full report was released, Little added, “the investigator’s heavily-redacted report paints a picture of a school district in disarray and lacking institutional control … The people of Celina deserve to know the full scope of these failures, and we intend to expose them.”

The third-party investigator, Giana Ortiz, and a district spokesperson did not respond to questions. But the report noted that the district did not have the names of more than three dozen student victims identified by police.

“Since the District still does not have the identities of the students involved, it has erred on the side of caution by providing the required notification to parents as a group through various outlets,” the report said, including making “repeated efforts to encourage any victim, witness, and/or other third-party with information to come forward.”

After the district announced Bill Elliott’s retirement, state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from neighboring McKinney, said on X that “years of abuse and misconduct happened under” the elder Elliott’s watch.

“The Board is allowing him to resign instead of firing him. Not just no — but hell no!” Leach said. “As is so often the case – the institutional abuse and cover up is sometimes worse than the abuse itself. And it cannot be allowed to stand. The entire Celina ISD School Board needs to go. And now.”

Gravley, the board president, did not respond to questions about that allegation. Neither did the lawyer representing Caleb Elliott, who has known the family for years and used to be the father and son’s neighbor.

In his statement, the elder Elliott said that during more than three decades at the district, he was “blessed with the opportunity to create lasting memories and build meaningful relationships that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can receive confidential help by calling the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s 24/7 toll-free support line at 800-656-4673 or visiting its online hotline.

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