2 Peoria Centennial High School teachers accused of grooming a student

A former Peoria high school teacher and soccer coach is facing federal charges and is under investigation for allegations that she groomed a student while he was a minor.

Haley Beck was fired from her job at Centennial High School in March.

And now text messages between Beck and the student that were collected by Peoria police are out. Hannah Dreyfus reported they are what one expert called a “playbook” of the predatory process.

Dreyfus is an investigative reporter at the Arizona Republic and she dug into the text messages and joined The Show to talk about it.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Hannah.

HANNAH DREYFUS: Good morning. Thank you guys for having me.

GILGER: Thank you for coming in. So you spoke with a child safety expert that I referenced there about these messages, which were text messages, but also via various social media apps. They called them like a playbook, right? Tell us more about what was said, what the patterns that were shown here through these messages.

DREYFUS: Sure. So grooming is a process. It's a manipulative process where an adult tries to progressively get into a child's life. And a lot of times you'll see patterns of boundary crossing behaviors, behaviors that show secrecy, favoritism, gift giving.

These are some of the signs of what is considered grooming. And all of these came up in the text messages that police collected over the course of their investigation into these Peoria teachers.

GILGER: Yeah. And these messages began, it sounds like quite a long time ago. The student, when the police investigation took place, was over the age of 18, but was not when these messages began, right?

DREYFUS: Exactly. These messages began when the student was a sophomore and about 16 years old. And what you'll see in grooming behavior patterns is a progressive movement towards more and more boundary-crossing behaviors. And so what began as sort of pushing the limits with the teacher-student relationship progressed into something a lot more nefarious.

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GILGER: There is a second teacher implicated in all of this too?

DREYFUS: Yes, there's a second teacher, Angela Burlaka, who is also facing federal charges for sending explicit content and videos to actually the same student.

GILGER: So what do we know about this teacher, Haley Beck? The story has gone viral, partly at least, because she's the sister of a TikTok star, right?

DREYFUS: Yeah, she is. She's the sister of a TikTok star, and she's the daughter of two other teachers and Peoria district employees, to the best of my knowledge. So, what we know about her is that she was relatively young, that she had a very social and casual relationship with her students, one that she was open about on social media. To the extent where students were sharing pictures of their teacher, sort of putting her hands around their waist, around their shoulders. And we know that she felt passionately about her job, and clearly it crossed into spaces that took it far too far.

GILGER: Yeah. So now she's facing one recommended count of pandering, which is not exactly the charge I expected to be talked about. But it appears to have to do with the money that she sent to this student.

DREYFUS: Yeah, so over the course of more than a year, she sent over $600 to the student in Apple payments and just, you know, $25 here, $30 here. Sometimes for alcohol, sometimes, you know, just for looking at a picture of her and commenting. And so it was a behavior of gaining control using finances.

GILGER: Yeah. What does that count entail in terms of a potential sentence here?

DREYFUS: So I think we're looking at — there is some potential jail time involved. I believe It's up to two years maximum. And I guess, right now, just to clarify, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has not yet decided whether to press charges. These are the recommended charges based on the Peoria Police Department. But if they do proceed, there are some really serious consequences that come along with that accusation and that charge.

GILGER: Yeah, so we're still waiting to see what the Maricopa County Attorney's Office does here. What has Beck said about this, or have you spoken with her attorney?

DREYFUS: So I did try and get in touch with Beck directly, as I always do. She did not want to talk. I heard from her attorney who said that his client has committed no crime. And that she ... has the due process ahead of her, like anyone accused of a crime, and that people should let that process play out before coming to conclusions.

GILGER: Yeah. What about school officials? What have they had to say about this? I said that she was let go from her job, but this has been going on for quite a while, this investigation. And the Republic found that school officials were alerted by, it sounds like, another student to some of this behavior, but didn't act on it for some time.

DREYFUS: Yeah, sure. So that's been actually one of the biggest focuses of my reporting, I'm always looking to do accountability journalism and looking at how school officials responded to what happened rather than just what happened. And what I found was that the school principal at Centennial High School was actually alerted by a former student to this teacher's behaviors six months before police got involved. And that email alerting him to these behaviors, including Beck sitting in a car with a student, exchanging Snapchats with them and giving gifts to the student — all typical of grooming behavior patterns — that was brought to the principal's attention in February of 2025.

Now, why no action was taken for a long time is a question that I'm continuing to explore. The school district has said in response to my questions that at the time that the principal found out about these things, they didn't rise to the level of abuse that would be necessary to report.

However, these grooming behavior patterns are specifically mentioned in training materials for reportable offenses in Arizona state materials when it comes to reportable mandatory reporting requirements. So questions are still, I'm still researching these questions.

GILGER: Right, and teachers are mandatory reporters, so it's raising questions about that?

DREYFUS: Absolutely.

GILGER: Let me ask you, just before I let you go here, what's next in this case? We mentioned we're still waiting on charges from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office if they decide to pursue action there. And are you waiting for more answers here, it sounds like, from the district.

DREYFUS: I'm absolutely waiting for more answers from the district, and not only that, please, you know, check back at azcentral to see more accountability journalism that goes all the way up to the state level, which should be publishing this week. Which looks at how state authorities, what they knew and if they acted. And if not, why not?

So once again, pushing the accountability level all the way past the district and up to the highest echelons of the folks in our state who are responsible for keeping students safe.