A Long Island art teacher under investigation for allegedly “sexting” a student “weirded out” other females in his class, sources told The Post.

Bay Shore High School’s John Kennedy, 52, was labeled a “favorite teacher” by many, but he made two female class members feel uncomfortable with his physical contact and approach before Suffolk Police opened an investigation into him last week, The Post has learned.

“At first you think he’s funny and nice but then … he would do weirder and weirder stuff,” one of Kennedy’s current high school students told The Post. She spoke with the permission of her parents and claimed he repeatedly made her uncomfortable.

“This one time he came up behind me and put his arm, like, around my shoulder and he came up really close, he was, like, hugging me from behind,” the student said, adding she froze in shock.

A second student told her parents last year she didn’t want to finish an art project in Kennedy’s classroom after school, and she would deliberately put her headphones on to block him out and discourage him from chatting with her.

The mother of the second student said she felt Kennedy was “flirting” with students and her daughter “felt creepy at times when he would interact with her,” she told The Post, although she did not report the behavior to the school.

The mother also said she had reached out to Suffolk police, but had yet to speak with a detective on Monday.

Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment on these specific allegations from The Post. The divorced father-of-two has been on administrative leave since last week while Suffolk Police investigate alleged child abuse, according to a letter from a detective from the Special Victims Section to district parents, which was also obtained by the Post.

It stated that SVS “commenced a Confidential Investigation into a Report of Suspected Child Abuse, of a student by a teacher, filed on October 12, 2025, by a student at the Bay Shore High School.”

The letter was first sent to parents of students in Kennedy’s classes, a source said, and will eventually go to all the parents in the school.

Neither of the students who spoke to The Post received the explicit text messages Kennedy is alleged to have sent, leading to the investigation by police.

“The Bay Shore School District has been made aware of allegations … [and] took immediate action, placing the staff member on administrative leave and barring the individual from District property,” the school said in a statement last week.
“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement and will not share any details that could interfere with their work. The safety and trust of our school community are always our focus,” Bay Shore Superintendent of School Dr. Steven Maloney added to The Post.

Before teaching art at the high school, Kennedy taught kindergarten through second grade at an elementary school in the district, Brook Avenue Elementary.