A former Windham High School teacher will serve one year and one day in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of possessing child pornography.

David Tanguay, 61, was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court in Portland. He also must pay a $6,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release. Tanguay pleaded guilty April 30.

Tanguay was one of a group of individuals who were charged by federal authorities after obtaining paid subscriptions to Internet sites containing child pornography, said U.S. Attorney Paula D. Silby. The discovery was made during a nationwide investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in 2003.

Silsby said investigators conducted an interview with Tanguay in June 2004 in which he identified himself as a subscriber to the sites. Tanguay admitted to downloading the images from Web sites, but claimed the material did not interest him, Silsby said, quoting court records.

After the interview, Tanguay allowed agents to take a computer and compact discs kept in his basement. Silsby said examination of the computer and discs revealed images and captions of child pornography and Web site addresses of known child pornography sites.

Tanguay, a former science teacher, resigned from Windham High School in the summer of 2007, according to Superintendent Sandy Prince. The school district was not aware of a criminal investigation until the story was reported, he said.

“When you learned about it, that’s probably when we learned about it,” Prince said after Tanguay pleaded guilty in April.

One of his former students said Tanguay was a good biology teacher who loved the subject and wanted to challenge students.

“He wanted us to come to the conclusions on our own rather than have him give them to us,” said Doug Butler, who was in Tanguay’s biology class during the 2003-04 school year. He was surprised to see his former teacher charged with possessing child pornography.

“I would never expect it from him,” said Butler, who remembers seeing Tanguay, a Vietnam veteran and past commander of Windham’s American Legion Post, leading Memorial Day events. “It really undermines the image I had of him previously. It’s pretty shocking to see it from someone who was an authority figure.”