Three former MCS Administrators indicted by a grand jury

MIDLAND, Texas (KOSA) - Three former Midland Christian School administrators were indicted by a grand jury Thursday morning.

Dana Ellis, Jared Lee, and Mathew Counts were three of the five MCS staff that were originally arrested and charged in February with failure to report with intent to conceal neglect or abuse.

Counts is no longer in administration but is still currently teaching at Midland Christian.

According to the indictment; Ellis, Lee, and Counts have been indicted for failure to make a required child abuse report, after an incident that occurred in November of 2021.

This is a separate incident from the original arrest back in February pertaining to alleged abuse that occurred in January 2022.

According to Counts attorney, Jeff Parras, the incident in November involved “a teenage student in a Midland Christian School classroom being struck in the head accidentally”

Parras also released a statement saying “Neither Matt Counts nor the other two educators charged today saw the student at all that day, and were only later made aware of the accident. Their only commonality is that they are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city and Midland Police Department personnel.”

All three have posted a bond of $5,000.

Midland Christian School released a statement Friday afternoon regarding the indictments.

According to the statement, the school is “intensely disappointed and frustrated” by the indictments.

Read the full statement by MCS below:

“Yesterday we learned that one of our employees, Matt Counts, along with two of our former employees, Jared Lee and Dana Ellis, were indicted on charges initiated by the Midland Police Department regarding an accident at school unrelated to the prior false charges that were dismissed in May. The accusations for these new charges were known prior to Wednesday’s Grand Jury decision, but we are intensely disappointed and frustrated by the decision to bring an indictment. We know Matt to be an upstanding member of the Midland community, an excellent teacher, coach, and mentor to our students and MCS families. The charges brought against Matt, Jared, and Dana are false based on the facts as we know them and we stand in complete support of an aggressive defense of their innocence. The Board of Trustees has diligently worked through the proper channels to ensure that Matt is allowed to remain on our campus, serving in his role as an educator and coach, while he awaits due process. We trust in the Lord and maintain our faith that He will be glorified through this tough situation. We pray that we see His deliverance for the people we care about to come quickly and solicit your support and prayers for the Counts, Lee, and Ellis families. As information becomes available, the Board of Trustees, along with President Anderson, will continue to update the Midland Christian School community. "

We will update this story as we know more.

You can read about the original arrests here.