Olathe ? A former Overland Park teacher accused of having third-grade girls take photos of each other in the school bathroom in exchange for “tickets” they could use to buy candy has pleaded no contest.

Neal Byron Lenarcic, 33, entered his plea in Johnson County District Court recently to two counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child. Sentencing was set for Feb. 2.

Lenarcic was charged in January 2005 with three counts of sexual exploitation of a child. If he had been found guilty of the original charges, the sentence would likely have been time in prison, defense attorney Dionne Scherff said.

As part of a plea agreement, defense and prosecuting attorneys are recommending that Lenarcic serve 45 days of “shock time” in jail and be placed on probation on the reduced charges, Scherff said Thursday. If he violated that probation, she said, he would serve from 11 to 34 months in prison.

The allegations date to the spring of 2002 when Lenarcic taught at Harmony Elementary School in Overland Park.

Two girls, third-graders at the time and now 12 years old, testified in June 2005 that they took pictures of each other and a third girl inside a school bathroom, using a digital camera. One girl said Lenarcic asked them to take the pictures of their private areas.

The girl estimated that the other girls took more than 30 pictures of her. The second girl who testified said she thought she was photographed nine to 14 times.

The girls testified that Lenarcic rewarded them with “tickets,” which students could use to buy such things as candy and school supplies. They said they had approached Lenarcic and asked if there was a way they could earn extra tickets.

The girls said the pictures were taken while other children were outside for recess, and they never talked about it with their schoolmates.

The allegations came to light in 2004, when Lenarcic was living in suburban St. Louis. When FBI agents talked to Lenarcic about the allegations at his home, he fainted, an agent testified at the 2005 hearing. The agent said Lenarcic told them he had possessed and viewed the photographs, but that taking them was the girls’ idea.