Second teacher at Missouri high school with OnlyFans account placed on leave

ST. CLAIR, Mo. — An English teacher and cheerleading coach at a Missouri high school said she believes she was placed on leave by district officials on Friday because she produced adult content on the OnlyFans website -- the second educator from the school to be sanctioned in less than a month.

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Megan Gaither, 31, who teaches at St. Clair High School southwest of St. Louis, said she expects to be fired after going public with the information that she produced content on the subscription site, which includes explicit adult content, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

“Because it’s ongoing, I’m actually not allowed to say according to the leave paper I got last week,” Gaither told KMOV-TV. “It is not for OnlyFans. It is for something technically completely unrelated.”

She did tell the television station that she believed she was disciplined because of her activity on the adult website.

“Yes,” she said.

In early October, another English teacher at the school, Brianna Coppage, said she was placed on leave after school district officials learned she was producing adult content on OnlyFans. The second-year teacher resigned a week later.

Gaither said she joined the subscription website in May to supplement her teaching salary and help pay back more than $125,000 in student loans, KTVI-TV reported. Her teaching salary, plus her stipend as a varsity cheerleading coach, amounted to $47,500, according to the television station.

“Teaching does not financially support a person,” Gaither told the Post-Dispatch. “It’s really hard to stretch those paychecks during the summer. That’s why I did it.”

Coppage’s subscription rate increased after her resignation and said she has made more than $1 million over the past six months.

After Coppage’s account was discovered by district officials, Gaither said she deactivated her OnlyFans account, the Post-Dispatch reported. She said he had approximately 1,500 subscribers and was making between $3,000 and $5,000 per month. Gaither added that she never showed her face on the site because she wanted to remain anonymous.

Rumors about Gaither’s moonlighting job began to surface after she appeared in a video that was filmed in a St. Louis hotel room and posted to Coppage’s OnlyFans account last week, according to the newspaper.

While the video did not include Gaither’s face, a photograph from the party was posted publicly online.

“I was in like maybe four minutes of the entire thing, and I definitely did not think this would be the thing that would ruin my entire career,” Gaither told the Post-Dispatch.

“They blurred my face but I didn’t realize that was going to be posted on Twitter,” Gaither told KMOV. “As soon as that picture was posted, almost immediately, I started getting messages and letters from students tacked on my door saying that they know my secret and that I was caught.”

Kyle Kruse, superintendent of St. Clair R-XIII School District, said this week that the district “does not have a statement to issue at this time,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

Gaither is in her fourth year of teaching at St. Clair High School. She has master’s degrees from Missouri Baptist University and Arizona State University, according to the newspaper.

Gaither said she and Coppage did not know the other person had an OnlyFans account until Gaither made an off-handed comment during a “Teacher’s Night” at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch reported.

OnlyFans, which launched in 2016, has more than 210 million paid subscribers worldwide and more than 2.1 million content creators, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Gaither said that her career at the high school “is over regardless of what I do.”

“I legitimately have love in my heart for each and every one of (my students),” she told the newspaper. “The students are why I told myself I would spend 30 years of my life at that school, and I feel like I am abandoning them. I know I will likely never see them again.”

Gaither added that her decision to go public about her activity on the adult site was not an attempt to piggyback on Coppage’s success, the Post-Dispatch reported. She has reactivated an OnlyFans account, noting that “This isn’t my first time on here, but this IS a new account.”

“In order to make change, you have to make noise. and I think that is what Brianna did,” Gaither told the newspaper. “And I think that’s what maybe I’m getting ready to do -- make noise about how unfair teacher pay can be.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other teachers out there (in Missouri),” Gaither added. “Teachers are probably freaking out right now because two teachers from the same school, in less than a month, have been caught.”