Teacher Gave Kids Drugs, Police Say

"This is still very much an ongoing investigation to find out if there are any other incidents," said officer Tenesha Jensen, a Montgomery police spokeswoman.

Kate Harrison, a spokeswoman for the school system, said Duarte had taught at Wootton since fall 2004. The school's principal said that Duarte did not teach English last year but worked part time as a yearbook adviser.

A former student of Duarte's at Wootton said last night that she was highly regarded.

"She's the best," said Chad Meyers, a sophomore at Virginia Tech, who graduated from Wootton in 2007. ''Everyone loved her," he said. "She's such a sweetheart.

"This story is crazy," he added. "It's the most ridiculous thing."

She began her Montgomery teaching career during the 2003-04 school year as a long-term substitute teacher at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Harrison said.

Duarte had just completed a master's degree in teaching at Johns Hopkins University when she joined the Wootton staff, according to an August 2004 newsletter published by the school's PTSA.

Before teaching, she had graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland and had earned an MBA from Johns Hopkins, the newsletter said. She had "left a highly successful business career in marketing to return to her first love, English," and she attended a Johns Hopkins program that allows students to earn their master's in teaching while working in Montgomery schools.

Supervisors and students at Einstein gave her "rave reviews" as an intern and teacher there, the newsletter said.

Staff writer Dan Morse and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.