A former China Grove elementary school teacher has been convicted of sex crime charges against her filed in 2018 and 2019 for incidents involving minor students.

Brittany Leigh Howard (2018)

On Jan. 5, 33-year-old Brittany Leigh Howard pleaded guilty to three counts of felony sex act with a student.

Howard was sentenced to 13-25 months in prison and a consecutive active prison sentence of 10-21 months.

Upon release, Howard will face a “third judgment” of a 12-24 months suspended sentence and three years of supervised probation.

Probation for Howard will include being required to comply with sex offender laws and registering as a sex offender for a period of 30 years.

Records show Howard has been transferred to the custody of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety in Raleigh.

In November 2018, Brittany Leigh Howard was arrested and charged with two counts of statutory rape of a person 15 years of age or younger, two counts of sexual activity with a student, and two counts of statutory sex offense with a person 15 years or younger.

At the time of her 2018 arrest, Howard was 28 years old.

Additional related charges were added in 2019 after another victim came forward. Those charges included five counts of statutory rape of a person 15 or younger, five counts of statutory sex offense of a person 15 years or younger, and five counts of having sex with a student.

Arrest documentation said the victim was between the ages of 12 and 15 at that time, the incidents happened in 2017, and “the defendant was a teacher at China Grove Elementary School and the victim was a student at this same school.”

Howard was a teacher at China Grove Elementary from August 2012 to June 2013 and from 2014 to 2018. She also worked as a language arts teacher at West Rowan Middle School from August 2013 to June 2014.

Records show Howard was convicted on a misdemeanor larceny charge in 2017. She was given probation and a suspended sentence.