🔵 NJ teacher texted ex-students
🔵 State finds grounds for revoking license
🔵 Texts to girls ‘unwanted, inappropriate’


A longtime teacher and coach in Burlington County has been ordered to hand over his license to instruct due to “inappropriate” and “unwanted” text messages sent to former students.

Ray Morison has remained at Willingboro Memorial Middle School as a gym teacher. He has been qualified to teach for over 20 years, as his first certification was issued in 2001.

He said that his communication with a young woman in 2016, whom he had coached in softball two years prior, was “careless.”

Those texts included the message “I want to f*** u,” which the girl reported to the school district.

Read More: NJ high school basketball coach accused of student sex assault

Willingboro, NJ (Google Maps, Canva, Townsquare Media Illustration)
Willingboro, NJ (Google Maps, Canva, Townsquare Media Illustration)
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Morison said his 2020 texts to a different former student were “misconstrued.”

That exchange with a girl who he had taught and coached in soccer, included that he was “Down the shore laying here!”

Writing about the incidents in 2021, an arbitrator found that Morison “simply has no understanding of why his conduct was unwanted, unprofessional and inappropriate.”

She said he was “insensitive – even oblivious – to how his conduct as a white man of middle years would be perceived by the young black women he approached, whom he knew only because he was their teacher.”

Willingboro NJ (Google Maps, Canva, Townsquare Media Illustration) (2)
(Google Maps, Canva, Townsquare Media Illustration)
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Following several years of back and forth between the school board and Morison, the State Board of Examiners voted in December to revoke Morison’s standard certificate and student personnel services certificate.

On Jan. 16, the board voted to adopt its formal written decision, which makes it an order that Morison’s certificates be revoked immediately.

Morison had argued that his conduct does not warrant action on his certificates due to his lengthy, effective career, his coaching and volunteer efforts in the district.

In officially adopting its decision, the board said this month that “Using a previous teacher-student and coach-student player relationship to initiate a new personal relationship is highly inappropriate and unprofessional behavior in that it crosses the line from friendly, professional, and supportive of former students to extremely poor judgment and potentially predatory behavior.”

Morison must return his teaching certificates to the state within 30 days of the mailing date of this decision.

In 2023, his salary with the Willingboro School District was $73,492 according to public records.

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