Impact of Redmond School Arrest Widens

School officials said Tuesday that the arrest of the Redmond Proficiency Academy director on sex abuse charges against one of his students is now affecting plans for the program to expand to another Oregon school district.

Meanwhile, a simple Internet search on the 39-year-old director shows how closely he worked with his students.

Michael Bremont was arrested Saturday on 12 charges, including attempted rape, sodomy, sex abuse and official misconduct.

Last Thursday night, a student came forward to Patrick MacKelvie, the Redmond Proficiency school board chairman, about Bremont. The board immediately contacted police.

“The board was contacted by a student at the Redmond Proficiency Academy, who asked to meet with us and essentially ended up reporting some of the things that have come out, in the allegations and charges that came out against Michael Bremont,” MacKelvie said.

But it’s a past education article on the Internet that could be more telling.

Before Bremont was the vice principal at Redmond High School, he worked for Central Linn School District in Halsey, Oregon. In 2005, he was featured on a website called “Education World” for his commitment to his students and his family.

He’s quoted as saying he worked such long hours, he and his family made the choice to move to a renovated day care center on the Halsey high school campus. The article says students felt comfortable stopping by the Bremont’s home, even on nights and weekends if they needed something.

After opening the Redmond Proficiency Academy just a few years ago, the 39-year-old planned to help open another charter school, this one through the Salem-Keizer School District.

“It certainly is surprising to see those allegations,” said Salem-Keizer spokesman Jay Remy. “But everyone is entitled to due process, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty, so we’re not making any presumptions.”

Bremont would have helped oversee programs the school would offer and how they would recruit students. But now that he’s been accused of sexual abuse of a student, the new school may not open for about a year.

“He was the central person working on behalf of the academy to come to an agreement with us,” Remy said. “We’re in kind of a wait-and-see process, to see what the proficiency academy is going to do.”