The trial of a former Auburn Adventist Academy teacher charged with having sex with one of his female teenage students has been moved once again.

Scott Allen Spies was originally to go on trial Dec. 6 but Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts moved it to Feb. 14 at the request of Spies attorney, Jeffrey Cohen, and the King County Prosecutors’ office.

Last week, Roberts rescheduled the trial to March 17.

Spies’ file at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent offered only a small note to explain what lies behind the most recent rescheduling — the need to work out restitution. Local attorneys say that strongly suggests that a plea bargain is in the works.

Prosecutors in February of 2010 charged Spies, then 49, with one count of third-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor.

Spies, who had taught at the school since 2009, pleaded innocent March 3.

If he were convicted on all three counts, he could be looking at a maximum of five years in prison.

The school fired him after he allegedly admitted to the dean of women student what he had done. According to an Auburn police detective’s statement, Spies admitted during an interview at his apartment on the day the incident came to light that he had sex with the student, the last occasion being exactly one year earlier than the one-time Feb. 14 trial date.

According to his file, as police were arresting him, he admitted that what he had done was against the law but was surprised that he was being booked.

“He asked why he had to be arrested that night and why it couldn’t wait until morning,” according to his file.

Spies graduated from the Auburn Adventist Academy in 1979 and has a masters of arts degree in teaching. Before teaching at the academy, he taught eighth grade at nearby Buena Vista Elementary School from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2008. Buena Vista is a Seventh-day Adventist school.

Spies is free on $150,000 bail.