A Kell High School teacher has been charged by Cobb Police with three counts of battery and sexual battery against two students, and the retiring principal has been charged with failure to report two of the incidents.

Cobb Police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce said in a release issued late Thursday afternoon that James "Chad" Brigham, 37, of Woodstock, has been charged with two counts of misdemeanor battery and a single count of felony sexual battery.

Trudie Donovan, who announced earlier this month she was stepping down at the end of June, was charged for failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor offense.

Donovan and Brigham, who is listed as a teacher with the Kell social studies department, have not been processed through the Cobb Adult Detention Center and are not in custody, Pierce said.

He said that the investigation began when a Kell student was reportedly the victim of battery and sexual battery incidents at the school on May 17. The student reported the incidents the following day to school officials. The Cobb Police Crimes against Children Unit began investigating on May 22, according to Pierce.

Two days later, on May 24, Pierce said another student went to school officials with a battery complaint, which was forwarded to police for investigation the same day.

Donovan, 61, who had been in her post at Kell for six years, abruptly announced her retirement on June 8, after what Cobb school superintendent Michael Hinojosa told The Marietta Daily Journal was "a situation involving the reporting of a student matter."

He did not elaborate, saying it was a personnel matter. 

Donovan has been a teacher an administrator in the Cobb County School District for 34 years, with a long tenure at Walton High School. She also was at Harrison High School before being appointed at Kell in 2006.