Inside the Rapid Decline of Berkley Maynard Academy in North Oakland
I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too
A Teacher Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. Why Did California Let Him Continue Teaching?
California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints
He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway
‘Our School Felt Sick’: Former Staff Allege Turmoil at Berkley Maynard Academy
Valley Fever Cases Skyrocket in Salinas Valley
Parents Say Lunch, Recess Changes at San José School Leave Kids Hungry, Confused
Former San José Principal Sues Alum Rock School District, Alleging Retaliation Over Abuse Report
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12057191/whistleblower-suits-allege-unsafe-unstable-conditions-at-oaklands-berkley-maynard-academy\">Berkley Maynard Academy\u003c/a>, a charter school in North Oakland serving predominantly Black students, is shutting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students’ final class on Tuesday marks a dramatic downfall for a school that teachers, until recently, considered a “crown jewel” of Aspire charter schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since opening more than two decades ago, generations of children have attended the school, which serves students from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, with parents commuting from cities like Antioch and Vallejo to drop off their kids on the way to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly 60% of Berkley Maynard students are Black, the largest percentage of any Bay Area Aspire school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In just two years, Aspire leadership made a series of staffing decisions that fractured that entrenched school community, leading to high teacher turnover and unsafe conditions on campus, according to interviews with nearly two dozen former school staff members, current employees and family members of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers said they feared retaliation for raising concerns about insufficient student services. Many quit, and substitutes filled classrooms, former staff said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then families started leaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057571\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They’re wondering why, because they’re not listening to the community,” said C’erah King-Polk, a Berkley Maynard alum whose siblings attend the school. She’s never gone a year without a sibling at the school. “They’re literally playing with a child’s future. Now you displaced so many kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only an estimated 225 students, or about half of those who enrolled this school year, planned to return, said Jenna Ogier-Marangella, acting Aspire Bay Area executive director, during a recent board of directors meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ogier-Marangella spent the past few months at Berkley Maynard’s campus, and said that staff and families told her they were “incredibly displeased with the quality of programming that we have been delivering the past two years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After announcing the closure in early May, school officials hosted an enrollment fair, but few participated, Ogier-Marangella said, suggesting those families had already found other schools and the number planning to return was even lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was no “fiscally responsible” way forward, Ogier-Marangella said. She did not respond to requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson said in a written statement that, like schools across California, its enrollment and financial challenges are driven by changing student demographics and broader shifts in K-12 education.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Why staff and families left the school\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Oakland charter schools are \u003ca href=\"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1773093367/ousdorg/f4cdl90laoyc2nsxr2od/FastFacts2025-26_final.pdf\">seeing enrollment drops\u003c/a>, but families, teachers and staff who spoke with KQED blame Berkley Maynard’s exodus on choices by school leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How can a school that was thriving all of a sudden get to where it is now in two years?” said Melinee Stewart, a former teacher at Berkley Maynard. “That’s not a school issue, that’s not a parent issue, that’s an administrative issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stewart and others interviewed by KQED said 2024 marked the start of Berkley Maynard’s unraveling. That fall, Javier Cabra Walteros, then-executive director of Aspire’s nine Bay Area schools, served as the school’s interim principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057550\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057550\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Iris Velasco at her home in Oakland on Sept. 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Months into the school year, Assistant Principal Iris Velasco was abruptly fired. Teachers wore black the next day in protest. Velasco later filed a whistleblower lawsuit, alleging she was retaliated against for raising the alarm that the school was failing to provide legally mandated services for students with disabilities. A teacher, Maryann Doudna, filed a similar complaint, alleging she had no choice but to leave when administrators ignored her pleas for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a previous statement, an Aspire spokesperson said the organization “vehemently denies the egregious allegations made by these former employees.” Aspire hired a permanent principal. By the fall of 2025, Aspire had brought on yet another principal, who previously worked at an Aspire school that is closing as part of a merger with another campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were like, ‘What?’ We didn’t even interview this person. Where did this person come from?’” said Deana Lundy, a parent of a fifth grader. Lundy said that experience reflected a pattern of school officials not communicating with families or making decisions based on what they needed.[aside postID=news_12086091 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/CA-Teacher-Discipline-Holly.jpg']“The community is just as important as teachers, as test scores. If you don’t have families, you don’t have a school,” Lundy said. “There were teachers who were well-qualified to be principals, who were down to support the community. But they let those teachers go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lundy said this school year was a “whole entire mess” where some classes lacked permanent teachers, and students faced no repercussions for fighting or bullying. Students stopped learning, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the closure was announced, Lundy had already decided her son would leave Berkley Maynard. Having attended school on the same campus as a child, she chose Berkley Maynard for her son when he started kindergarten during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one will get to experience the BMA that I experienced,” Lundy said. “The community of students and families will be forever lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, an Aspire spokesperson said the organization’s established processes for hiring school leadership include participation from regional leaders, staff, students and families. The spokesperson said Aspire communicated the decision to close as soon as leadership “became aware of the enrollment data and financial realities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For nearly three decades, we have partnered with families to provide high-quality public school options, and we will continue making thoughtful, responsible decisions that put scholars first,” the spokesperson wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers and parents had little time to prepare for the news. Aspire informed teachers of plans to close on May 1, months after \u003ca href=\"https://www.ousd.org/enroll\">open enrollment for students had ended.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m still angry,” said Monica Franco, the Berkley Maynard business manager. “If you have to close, you have to close. Got it. I understand. However, you let people know this is happening so people can figure out what they’re going to do with their lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086449\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1980\" height=\"1391\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187-1536x1079.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chalk art decorates pavement outside of an old bus operating as a preschool at the Aspire Monarch Academy school in Oakland, California, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. \u003ccite>(Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Franco helped start the school, and said when Berkley Maynard opened, founding staff went to churches, knocked on doors and stopped by daycares to spread the word. They asked the families of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kut.org/life-arts/2025-02-18/the-life-and-legacy-of-robert-c-maynard\">Robert C. Maynard\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-dec-31-me-19319-story.html\">Thomas L. Berkley\u003c/a>, two Black newspaper publishers in Oakland, for permission to name the school after them both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Franco said she never thought of leaving, even when conditions got tough. The school is her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a saying that rats are the first to get out of a boat when it’s sinking,” Franco said. “I wanted to make sure my kids were gonna be okay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said school officials asked administrators to stay on longer, but she plans to leave on her own terms — when the students and teachers do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are my family. They are my people,” Franco said. “I’m leaving with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>As Berkley Maynard closes, Aspire turns to its surviving schools\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Berkley Maynard is not the only Aspire school in trouble. Last year, the Oakland Unified school board voted against renewing the charter for Golden State College Preparatory Academy. An Aspire spokesperson said the organization is currently appealing that decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to address a $1.1 million deficit, nine positions with Aspire’s Bay Area regional office were eliminated, according to a May email sent by Ogier-Marangella to staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12037997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12037997\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Oakland Unified School District Offices in Oakland on April 28, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson said the organization also created five new roles and encouraged impacted employees to apply based on their qualifications, adding that the staffing changes were made to align resources with organizational needs while continuing to support students, schools and staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The eliminated positions include those in student services, academics, external affairs and hiring, said Aspire employees who spoke to KQED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The employees said that five out of nine people being laid off are Black and also lead the region’s pro-Black and anti-racist school programming initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All nine people are people that are vocal and speak up for families and for students,” one employee said. “A growing number of us would like for leaders to either figure out how to better serve students, families and teachers — or go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Berkley Maynard educators are preparing to say goodbye to their students. Families and alums are organizing a block party this evening to celebrate the school’s legacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One longtime Berkley Maynard teacher said the end of the school year is always hard, but this year the emotion is “turned up to a thousand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039588\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039588\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A student walks down a hallway at Fremont High School in Oakland on Oct. 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Laure Andrillon for Cal Matters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As her students will disperse to schools across the Bay Area, she won’t get to see them grow up and reach their potential in the same way, but she said her students will thrive anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students told her they’re sad they won’t get the chance to stop by her classroom and wave, as the older kids do. Some asked why the school was closing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘It’s not any kids’ fault,’” the teacher said she explained to her students. “‘Grown-ups didn’t do a good job, and we had to close the school.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Teachers, parents and staff say leadership turnover, staffing decisions and declining enrollment fueled the collapse of the North Oakland charter school.",
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"title": "Inside the Rapid Decline of Berkley Maynard Academy in North Oakland | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12057191/whistleblower-suits-allege-unsafe-unstable-conditions-at-oaklands-berkley-maynard-academy\">Berkley Maynard Academy\u003c/a>, a charter school in North Oakland serving predominantly Black students, is shutting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students’ final class on Tuesday marks a dramatic downfall for a school that teachers, until recently, considered a “crown jewel” of Aspire charter schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since opening more than two decades ago, generations of children have attended the school, which serves students from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, with parents commuting from cities like Antioch and Vallejo to drop off their kids on the way to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly 60% of Berkley Maynard students are Black, the largest percentage of any Bay Area Aspire school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In just two years, Aspire leadership made a series of staffing decisions that fractured that entrenched school community, leading to high teacher turnover and unsafe conditions on campus, according to interviews with nearly two dozen former school staff members, current employees and family members of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers said they feared retaliation for raising concerns about insufficient student services. Many quit, and substitutes filled classrooms, former staff said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then families started leaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057571\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They’re wondering why, because they’re not listening to the community,” said C’erah King-Polk, a Berkley Maynard alum whose siblings attend the school. She’s never gone a year without a sibling at the school. “They’re literally playing with a child’s future. Now you displaced so many kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only an estimated 225 students, or about half of those who enrolled this school year, planned to return, said Jenna Ogier-Marangella, acting Aspire Bay Area executive director, during a recent board of directors meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ogier-Marangella spent the past few months at Berkley Maynard’s campus, and said that staff and families told her they were “incredibly displeased with the quality of programming that we have been delivering the past two years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After announcing the closure in early May, school officials hosted an enrollment fair, but few participated, Ogier-Marangella said, suggesting those families had already found other schools and the number planning to return was even lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was no “fiscally responsible” way forward, Ogier-Marangella said. She did not respond to requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson said in a written statement that, like schools across California, its enrollment and financial challenges are driven by changing student demographics and broader shifts in K-12 education.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Why staff and families left the school\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Oakland charter schools are \u003ca href=\"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1773093367/ousdorg/f4cdl90laoyc2nsxr2od/FastFacts2025-26_final.pdf\">seeing enrollment drops\u003c/a>, but families, teachers and staff who spoke with KQED blame Berkley Maynard’s exodus on choices by school leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How can a school that was thriving all of a sudden get to where it is now in two years?” said Melinee Stewart, a former teacher at Berkley Maynard. “That’s not a school issue, that’s not a parent issue, that’s an administrative issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stewart and others interviewed by KQED said 2024 marked the start of Berkley Maynard’s unraveling. That fall, Javier Cabra Walteros, then-executive director of Aspire’s nine Bay Area schools, served as the school’s interim principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057550\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057550\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Iris Velasco at her home in Oakland on Sept. 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Months into the school year, Assistant Principal Iris Velasco was abruptly fired. Teachers wore black the next day in protest. Velasco later filed a whistleblower lawsuit, alleging she was retaliated against for raising the alarm that the school was failing to provide legally mandated services for students with disabilities. A teacher, Maryann Doudna, filed a similar complaint, alleging she had no choice but to leave when administrators ignored her pleas for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a previous statement, an Aspire spokesperson said the organization “vehemently denies the egregious allegations made by these former employees.” Aspire hired a permanent principal. By the fall of 2025, Aspire had brought on yet another principal, who previously worked at an Aspire school that is closing as part of a merger with another campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were like, ‘What?’ We didn’t even interview this person. Where did this person come from?’” said Deana Lundy, a parent of a fifth grader. Lundy said that experience reflected a pattern of school officials not communicating with families or making decisions based on what they needed.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The community is just as important as teachers, as test scores. If you don’t have families, you don’t have a school,” Lundy said. “There were teachers who were well-qualified to be principals, who were down to support the community. But they let those teachers go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lundy said this school year was a “whole entire mess” where some classes lacked permanent teachers, and students faced no repercussions for fighting or bullying. Students stopped learning, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the closure was announced, Lundy had already decided her son would leave Berkley Maynard. Having attended school on the same campus as a child, she chose Berkley Maynard for her son when he started kindergarten during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one will get to experience the BMA that I experienced,” Lundy said. “The community of students and families will be forever lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, an Aspire spokesperson said the organization’s established processes for hiring school leadership include participation from regional leaders, staff, students and families. The spokesperson said Aspire communicated the decision to close as soon as leadership “became aware of the enrollment data and financial realities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For nearly three decades, we have partnered with families to provide high-quality public school options, and we will continue making thoughtful, responsible decisions that put scholars first,” the spokesperson wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers and parents had little time to prepare for the news. Aspire informed teachers of plans to close on May 1, months after \u003ca href=\"https://www.ousd.org/enroll\">open enrollment for students had ended.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m still angry,” said Monica Franco, the Berkley Maynard business manager. “If you have to close, you have to close. Got it. I understand. However, you let people know this is happening so people can figure out what they’re going to do with their lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086449\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1980\" height=\"1391\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GettyImages-1408498187-1536x1079.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chalk art decorates pavement outside of an old bus operating as a preschool at the Aspire Monarch Academy school in Oakland, California, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. \u003ccite>(Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Franco helped start the school, and said when Berkley Maynard opened, founding staff went to churches, knocked on doors and stopped by daycares to spread the word. They asked the families of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kut.org/life-arts/2025-02-18/the-life-and-legacy-of-robert-c-maynard\">Robert C. Maynard\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-dec-31-me-19319-story.html\">Thomas L. Berkley\u003c/a>, two Black newspaper publishers in Oakland, for permission to name the school after them both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Franco said she never thought of leaving, even when conditions got tough. The school is her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a saying that rats are the first to get out of a boat when it’s sinking,” Franco said. “I wanted to make sure my kids were gonna be okay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said school officials asked administrators to stay on longer, but she plans to leave on her own terms — when the students and teachers do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are my family. They are my people,” Franco said. “I’m leaving with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>As Berkley Maynard closes, Aspire turns to its surviving schools\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Berkley Maynard is not the only Aspire school in trouble. Last year, the Oakland Unified school board voted against renewing the charter for Golden State College Preparatory Academy. An Aspire spokesperson said the organization is currently appealing that decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to address a $1.1 million deficit, nine positions with Aspire’s Bay Area regional office were eliminated, according to a May email sent by Ogier-Marangella to staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12037997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12037997\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/250428-OUSD-OFFICE-FILE-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Oakland Unified School District Offices in Oakland on April 28, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson said the organization also created five new roles and encouraged impacted employees to apply based on their qualifications, adding that the staffing changes were made to align resources with organizational needs while continuing to support students, schools and staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The eliminated positions include those in student services, academics, external affairs and hiring, said Aspire employees who spoke to KQED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The employees said that five out of nine people being laid off are Black and also lead the region’s pro-Black and anti-racist school programming initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All nine people are people that are vocal and speak up for families and for students,” one employee said. “A growing number of us would like for leaders to either figure out how to better serve students, families and teachers — or go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Berkley Maynard educators are preparing to say goodbye to their students. Families and alums are organizing a block party this evening to celebrate the school’s legacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One longtime Berkley Maynard teacher said the end of the school year is always hard, but this year the emotion is “turned up to a thousand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039588\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039588\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/101023_AI-College-Toby-Reed_LA_CM_05-copy-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A student walks down a hallway at Fremont High School in Oakland on Oct. 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Laure Andrillon for Cal Matters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As her students will disperse to schools across the Bay Area, she won’t get to see them grow up and reach their potential in the same way, but she said her students will thrive anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students told her they’re sad they won’t get the chance to stop by her classroom and wave, as the older kids do. Some asked why the school was closing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘It’s not any kids’ fault,’” the teacher said she explained to her students. “‘Grown-ups didn’t do a good job, and we had to close the school.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11928350/they-knew-legal-battle-over-a-los-gatos-elementary-schools-failure-to-prevent-sexual-abuse-could-go-to-trial\">parents had reported Houg\u003c/a> to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touching boys’ chests or stomachs and tapping one boy on the butt. I learned that the principal had twice warned Houg to stop touching students. But he was allowed to keep teaching. (The principal said in a deposition that while Houg’s actions crossed professional boundaries, they were not reported to her as sexual.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, I reported on similar cases of teachers remaining in the classroom after complaints of unwanted touching. Another Bay Area elementary school, in Benicia, reported a teacher to the state’s licensing body after he \u003ca href=\"https://www.vallejosun.com/benicia-unified-sued-over-alleged-sexual-abuse-by-former-teacher-with-previous-arrest/\">resigned due to accusations of misconduct\u003c/a>. Another school hired him, and his educator license remained in good standing until he was criminally charged. (He is currently fighting those charges.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This raised a whole different set of questions for me: Should these teachers have been allowed to keep teaching in new schools? How much about a teacher’s disciplinary history did potential employers know? And what was the state’s responsibility for acting on, and sharing, the information it had about these teachers?[aside postID=news_12085808 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg']After I entered journalism school at UC Berkeley in 2023, I wanted to investigate how common it was for teachers to continue working with kids after schools found that they had committed misconduct. California law bars the teacher licensing agency from releasing disciplinary records to the public, so my classmate and I requested records from the 300 largest school districts in California. We asked for complaints of teacher sexual misconduct made to schools in the five previous years. We also asked for any reports sent by schools to the state’s teacher licensing agency, which are required to be filed when public school educators are fired or resign due to alleged misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of districts responded within two months. We began building a spreadsheet of teachers against whom complaints were raised. Getting the records was slow: California requires public agencies to determine whether they have records to disclose within 10 days, and to release them promptly, but most dragged their feet. Whenever schools stopped responding, I copied school board members and attorneys on my emails, citing the law. By the time I graduated more than a year after filing the records requests, I had received more than 350 complaints, which I used in my \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">recent investigation\u003c/a> with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To this day, Los Angeles Unified, the largest school district in California, still has not released any records pertaining to teacher misconduct cases that it reported to the state. Instead, the district said it would charge me $8,000 ($100 an hour for 80 hours of work) for it to “investigate approximately 2,500 potentially responsive personnel files.” The First Amendment Coalition, a California nonprofit that advocates for free speech and government transparency, is \u003ca href=\"https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news/post/fac-sues-l-a-schools-for-concealing-teacher-misconduct-records/\">representing me in a lawsuit\u003c/a> filed in May. We argue that the Los Angeles school district is violating public records laws with its failure to release documents pertaining to alleged educator misconduct. A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told me in a written statement this week that its policies balance the public’s right to access records with “responsible stewardship of public resources” and the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Districts slow-walking their responses isn’t the only obstacle to getting records from schools. Districts typically notify teachers before releasing complaints to give them the opportunity to block the documents’ release. The former Benicia teacher who was criminally charged with sexually abusing students in 2024 sued to block the release of complaints made against him at two school districts. The First Amendment Coalition represented me in that case, too, and we won. It took nine months to get the records. In another case in which I had requested records, the court granted an injunction preventing release of the teacher’s records, but the legal filings contained the details of the allegations against him, so the nature of the complaint became public anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least four teachers have called or emailed me directly to ask why I’m requesting their disciplinary records. They wanted to share their side of the story, which I was more than happy to hear, and some argued that their cases were not worth my time. One asked me to retract my request. (I did not.) Another sent a 1,700-word email saying that the allegations were only partially true and lamented that he did not have the money to defend himself.[aside postID=news_12084681 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-19-BL_qed.jpg']While I appreciated the complexity of individual cases, I believed that those misconduct complaints might contain important truths. Undeterred by school districts’ recalcitrance, I followed the public record-seekers’ mantra: If you can’t get records from one agency, the answers you’re looking for may exist somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Records of state disciplinary hearings are presumed public when teachers object to their dismissals by school districts or appeal the suspension or revocation of their licenses. And those records reside in the Department of General Services, a state agency that houses another agency responsible for convening administrative hearings of public employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This agency proved helpful with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">case of Jason Agan\u003c/a>, a San Francisco Bay Area math teacher who KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> reported on last month. Agan had been fired for sexually harassing high school students but went on to teach at two more schools, even after an independent panel convened by the Office of Administrative Hearings deemed him “unfit to teach.” Because he had asked for an outside hearing after the district moved to fire him, I requested those records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I got them the next day. The documents contained summaries of testimony from students, administrators and Agan himself at his dismissal hearing. Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, admitted to touching students’ shoulders but denied any sexual motivation, stating during his dismissal hearing that he did so to offer them support and encouragement. He maintained his teaching license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting a response from the Department of General Services was like discovering a secret portal to obtaining records quickly and easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I requested five years’ worth of decisions about other teachers by independent panels from this agency, in search of further insights into how the state’s teacher disciplinary system works and where it falls short. I obtained a gold mine of documents in less than a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had learned some important lessons: What seems to be secret isn’t always so. Sometimes you just need to know who to ask, and for what.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11928350/they-knew-legal-battle-over-a-los-gatos-elementary-schools-failure-to-prevent-sexual-abuse-could-go-to-trial\">parents had reported Houg\u003c/a> to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touching boys’ chests or stomachs and tapping one boy on the butt. I learned that the principal had twice warned Houg to stop touching students. But he was allowed to keep teaching. (The principal said in a deposition that while Houg’s actions crossed professional boundaries, they were not reported to her as sexual.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, I reported on similar cases of teachers remaining in the classroom after complaints of unwanted touching. Another Bay Area elementary school, in Benicia, reported a teacher to the state’s licensing body after he \u003ca href=\"https://www.vallejosun.com/benicia-unified-sued-over-alleged-sexual-abuse-by-former-teacher-with-previous-arrest/\">resigned due to accusations of misconduct\u003c/a>. Another school hired him, and his educator license remained in good standing until he was criminally charged. (He is currently fighting those charges.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This raised a whole different set of questions for me: Should these teachers have been allowed to keep teaching in new schools? How much about a teacher’s disciplinary history did potential employers know? And what was the state’s responsibility for acting on, and sharing, the information it had about these teachers?\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After I entered journalism school at UC Berkeley in 2023, I wanted to investigate how common it was for teachers to continue working with kids after schools found that they had committed misconduct. California law bars the teacher licensing agency from releasing disciplinary records to the public, so my classmate and I requested records from the 300 largest school districts in California. We asked for complaints of teacher sexual misconduct made to schools in the five previous years. We also asked for any reports sent by schools to the state’s teacher licensing agency, which are required to be filed when public school educators are fired or resign due to alleged misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of districts responded within two months. We began building a spreadsheet of teachers against whom complaints were raised. Getting the records was slow: California requires public agencies to determine whether they have records to disclose within 10 days, and to release them promptly, but most dragged their feet. Whenever schools stopped responding, I copied school board members and attorneys on my emails, citing the law. By the time I graduated more than a year after filing the records requests, I had received more than 350 complaints, which I used in my \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">recent investigation\u003c/a> with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To this day, Los Angeles Unified, the largest school district in California, still has not released any records pertaining to teacher misconduct cases that it reported to the state. Instead, the district said it would charge me $8,000 ($100 an hour for 80 hours of work) for it to “investigate approximately 2,500 potentially responsive personnel files.” The First Amendment Coalition, a California nonprofit that advocates for free speech and government transparency, is \u003ca href=\"https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news/post/fac-sues-l-a-schools-for-concealing-teacher-misconduct-records/\">representing me in a lawsuit\u003c/a> filed in May. We argue that the Los Angeles school district is violating public records laws with its failure to release documents pertaining to alleged educator misconduct. A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told me in a written statement this week that its policies balance the public’s right to access records with “responsible stewardship of public resources” and the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Districts slow-walking their responses isn’t the only obstacle to getting records from schools. Districts typically notify teachers before releasing complaints to give them the opportunity to block the documents’ release. The former Benicia teacher who was criminally charged with sexually abusing students in 2024 sued to block the release of complaints made against him at two school districts. The First Amendment Coalition represented me in that case, too, and we won. It took nine months to get the records. In another case in which I had requested records, the court granted an injunction preventing release of the teacher’s records, but the legal filings contained the details of the allegations against him, so the nature of the complaint became public anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least four teachers have called or emailed me directly to ask why I’m requesting their disciplinary records. They wanted to share their side of the story, which I was more than happy to hear, and some argued that their cases were not worth my time. One asked me to retract my request. (I did not.) Another sent a 1,700-word email saying that the allegations were only partially true and lamented that he did not have the money to defend himself.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>While I appreciated the complexity of individual cases, I believed that those misconduct complaints might contain important truths. Undeterred by school districts’ recalcitrance, I followed the public record-seekers’ mantra: If you can’t get records from one agency, the answers you’re looking for may exist somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Records of state disciplinary hearings are presumed public when teachers object to their dismissals by school districts or appeal the suspension or revocation of their licenses. And those records reside in the Department of General Services, a state agency that houses another agency responsible for convening administrative hearings of public employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This agency proved helpful with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">case of Jason Agan\u003c/a>, a San Francisco Bay Area math teacher who KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> reported on last month. Agan had been fired for sexually harassing high school students but went on to teach at two more schools, even after an independent panel convened by the Office of Administrative Hearings deemed him “unfit to teach.” Because he had asked for an outside hearing after the district moved to fire him, I requested those records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I got them the next day. The documents contained summaries of testimony from students, administrators and Agan himself at his dismissal hearing. Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, admitted to touching students’ shoulders but denied any sexual motivation, stating during his dismissal hearing that he did so to offer them support and encouragement. He maintained his teaching license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting a response from the Department of General Services was like discovering a secret portal to obtaining records quickly and easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I requested five years’ worth of decisions about other teachers by independent panels from this agency, in search of further insights into how the state’s teacher disciplinary system works and where it falls short. I obtained a gold mine of documents in less than a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had learned some important lessons: What seems to be secret isn’t always so. Sometimes you just need to know who to ask, and for what.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "A Teacher Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. Why Did California Let Him Continue Teaching?",
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"headTitle": "A Teacher Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. Why Did California Let Him Continue Teaching? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Agan was a popular teacher at Angelo Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. But for years, students whispered about his behavior. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In late 2019, after multiple written complaints and an administrative hearing, the school district fired Agan. But he never lost his teaching license, and went on to teach at two more schools in California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Holly McDede, who reported this story for KQED and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, explains how a pattern of delays and a lack of transparency has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1025625890\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084681/california-teacher-previously-fired-for-sexual-harassment-is-no-longer-in-the-classroom-after-new-complaints\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Episode Transcript\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:00] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kylie Tatom was a sophomore at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, she started getting involved in student leadership. She helped organize things like pep rallies and prom, and through that, she worked with a popular teacher named Jason Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:28] \u003c/em>Everybody knew him. As a teacher, he was good. People would want to get on his good side. He was a very charismatic, like the cool teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:41] \u003c/em>Agan had been on campus for years. He taught AP Calculus and ran student government. Some considered him a mentor, even a second father. But behind the scenes, some students also talked about how they felt uncomfortable around him. They say that Agan touched them in public in ways that felt inappropriate, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders unprompted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>As a kid, you don’t realize it’s bad, because it’s like, oh, this is a teacher, this is somebody that’s like supposed to be older than you that knows everything. Like that’s, like, you’re supposed to look up to\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:26] \u003c/em>Tatom graduated in 2017. The following year, on the heels of the Me Too movement, at least 11 other students and one parent submitted written complaints to school administrators about Agan’s behavior. And in 2019, Agan was fired by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. But even though Agan was fired for sexually harassing students, he kept his license to teach in California, and he would go on to teach at two other schools. Kris Corey was the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:11] \u003c/em>I was just so angry about it. What a disservice it was to those girls. I was flabbergasted. I was like, how does this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:23] \u003c/em>According to reporting by KQED and ProPublica, Agan’s case is one of dozens where the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators, even after school districts determined that they had sexually harassed students or committed other misconduct of a sexual nature. Today, how a Bay Area teacher was fired for sexually harassing students. And how California allowed him to keep teaching anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:59] \u003c/em>Your story starts with this teacher at my old high school, actually, Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. Mr. Jason Agan, and I remember him for being the teacher who led the student government. He was also the only teacher who taught AP calculus on campus, as I remember. But why did he become the focus of your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:26] \u003c/em>What happened was I had requested records from 300 of the largest school districts in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:32] \u003c/em>Holly McDede is a reporter for KQED and ProPublica’s local reporting network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:38] \u003c/em>I got these records from Fairfield-Suisun, which got my interest immediately because the records described how the school had taken steps to fire this teacher named Jason Agan who ultimately was fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that got my attention immediately because it is very rare in California to fire teachers because it’s expensive, it’s also risky. So schools will often offer teachers settlements to allow them to resign instead. That way it’s a guarantee that the teacher won’t be back at your school. Whereas if you lose these dismissal cases, the teacher could end up back in the classroom all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Jason Agan had worked at Rodriguez High since 2001. He was there for almost the entirety of his teaching career. He called himself an “original Mustang” after the school’s mascot. And he was kind of this mathematician figure who you mentioned was in charge of leadership and student government. And so he describes himself as the man behind the curtain who organized things like pep rallies and prom. There were students who saw him as a mentor and a second father, and he was popular. But students had also talked for years about his behavior, making them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:04] \u003c/em>So, you spent time digging into these records on Jason Agan at Rodriguez High School. What exactly was he accused of?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:14] \u003c/em>The first documented complaint was by a student, a sophomore, who said that he took her cell phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down. So she reported this to administration at the school, and she also told the school that Agan would massage students’ shoulders during class. So Agan is warned by an administrator at the school to stop touching students, that he’s making students uncomfortable by touching them when he walks around during class. That was the first complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then a father complained to the school when he wears a t-shirt with a pi sign that spells out “pimp”. And so he’s warned by another administrator to be mindful about how he talks to students and jokes. And again, that administrator warns him to also not touch students during class, Agan has said that he would touch students during class but only to support them while they’re doing their math work. The next school year, more students end up filing complaints related to his behavior. There’s one student in particular who says that he had massaged her neck underneath her hair during class, so she complains about that. She asks to transfer out of his class. She ends up having a panic attack soon after that. Ultimately, the school puts him on leave without pay and starts the long process to fire him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:47] \u003c/em>And this is happening in and around 2018, sort of the height of the MeToo movement, right? And many of these complaints coming from young women at the high school, is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:02] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is soon after Me Too with the Harvey Weinstein allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:10] \u003c/em>He was my math teacher for my sophomore year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:16] \u003c/em>So I talked to Julia Steed and she was a sophomore, a 15 year old sophomore at the time. Now she’s 23.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>I, to be honest, had already got in like, kind of like word of mouth, like, things from other students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:32] \u003c/em>She had complained about Jason Egan. She said he had touched her head multiple times, and that she also saw him massage students’ shoulders during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:40] \u003c/em>I immediately was like, oh no, this is not feel good coming from a teacher that I was not close with whatsoever. I was like okay, this was very odd to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>She and her classmates were definitely talking about MeToo and just boundaries and consent and were less afraid to enforce those boundaries and speak up about behavior that was making them uncomfortable. And Julia was one of the students who also filed a written complaint\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:14] \u003c/em>I would have no desire whatsoever to do any of the actions that he did. Like, I don’t know, it’s like the older I get, the more messed up I realize it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:28] \u003c/em>What happens with these formal complaints that these students are filing, Holly? Like, what is the process from there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:36] \u003c/em>The school gathers all these complaints and moves to fire Agan, so they put him on leave without pay. Then that summer, so this is the summer of 2019, there is essentially a hearing. The superintendent of the school has recommended he be fired, but he objects to that. And in California, you can have a dismissal hearing, which means that Agan appoints a teacher, the school district appoints someone, and then there’s an administrative law judge. And so these three people here testimony from students, teachers, administrators, and then they have to make a decision whether to support the district’s effort to terminate him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:18] \u003c/em>And to be clear, this isn’t like a criminal trial. He’s not accused of a crime. And this is like a hearing, not a formal courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:27] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So Agan has not been accused of a crime. This is an administrative process to decide whether he can keep his job or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:36] \u003c/em>But there are people on both testifying on behalf of Agan, presumably positively and also students testifying against him. What are people saying in this hearing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:49] \u003c/em>Yeah, so there were former students who testified on Agan’s behalf, and they all said that Agan would also squeeze, rub, or massage their shoulders, but they said that that behavior did not make them uncomfortable. I did speak to one student who testified on his behalf at the time, and she said that as an adult, she came to see that his behavior at the times was not appropriate, and tells me that now she would have switched to the other side. And then there were students who testified against him. They said that they would avoid raising their hand or speaking up in class, because they didn’t want to get his attention. There was a student who said she would try to sit against the wall, that way he could not massage her shoulders. And students who ultimately said that it was impacting their education and making them not want to take advanced math classes, because as you mentioned, she was the school’s AP calculus teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:57] \u003c/em>What did this panel find and what ultimately were the consequences?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:02] \u003c/em>So the panel found that he had sexually harassed female students. They found he had massaged student shoulders during class. And they also found that he continued this behavior despite warnings to stop. In their judgment, their determination in the records, they ultimately say that he is unfit to teach and that he should be fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:24] \u003c/em>The district did their case, the teacher was there. The students were remarkably brave. They testified with the teacher sitting there. They testified against the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:41] \u003c/em>Kris Corey was the superintendent of the Fairfield-Suisun School District at the time, and she talked to how rare it is to fire teachers and just how it was surprising really to have this panel of three people come to this unanimous decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:58] \u003c/em>Couldn’t believe it. I mean, we just, like, celebrated. And everyone was like, ‘What? How’d you do that?’ Because it just didn’t happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:12] \u003c/em>Well, I want to zoom out from this one example, Holly, because I guess until you published this story, he was actually still teaching at another school district here in the Bay Area and, in fact, went on to teach at two more schools after Rodriguez, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:30] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. He’s fired December 2019 and by the next school year he already has a job teaching math at a middle school that’s about an hour away in Sacramento called Ephraim Williams College Prep. Even though he was fired he was able to keep his credential which allowed him to continue teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:55] \u003c/em>Coming up, how Jason Agan kept on teaching. If you appreciate these deep dives into local Bay Area news, consider becoming a KQED member. We can’t do this work without your support. So join your Bay Area neighbors and become a KQED member today at kqed.org slash donate. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[00:13:25] \u003c/em>Welcome back to The Bay. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. In the first part of this episode, we learned about Jason Agan, a former teacher at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. In late 2019, he was fired for sexually harassing students, but he still went on to teach at two more California schools. As reporter Holly McDede explains, despite Agan’s firing from Fairfield-Suisun, the state allowed him to keep his teaching credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:57] \u003c/em>One of the systems that is in place is this agency called the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which is where any public school teacher who resigns or is fired due to misconduct is reported to this agency. And then that agency decides what to do with their license. So it’s the agency that can take away licenses from teachers. So Fairfield-Suisun, they report Agan to the Commission of Teacher Credentialing. They’re investigating, but they don’t make a determination on what to do with Agan’s case for nearly 500 days later. During that time, when Agan applies for this other job in Sacramento, that school and schools in general, they can’t learn from the state that it’s investigating. I mean, schools can ask the school that the teacher has left and in this case, Agan did put in his job application that he had been fired. He put that he has been accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class and he wrote that while he disagreed with the dismissal, he did not mean to make anyone feel unsafe and he was offering student support and encouragement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:16] \u003c/em>Administrators at Ephraim Williams did not respond to questions about how the school vetted Jason Agan. The former principal at Rodriguez High, the school Jason Agan was fired from, did not respond to questions about a reference check. We do know that Agan received stellar letters of recommendation from former colleagues. Meanwhile, in April, 2021, 500 days after the Fairfield-Suisun District sent their investigation to the state, California’s teacher licensing board finally made a decision. Jason Agan’s license would be suspended for just seven days. The reason for his suspension was not made public and ultimately Agan would continue teaching in Sacramento. But the complaints about his behavior didn’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just so that I’m understanding, even if a teacher is fired for sexual harassment at a school, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they lose their credential in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:28] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So there’s no guarantee that teachers who are fired for sexual harassment will lose their teaching licenses. Instead, cases like that, that are not necessarily criminal conduct, they go before a committee within the state that reviews cases case by case and makes a determination. They make a recommendation, and this is a committee of about seven volunteers and so. They meet in Sacramento three days once a month, they review cases and they decide what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:03] \u003c/em>So in this case, Agan goes on to get hired at another middle school in Sacramento. He has his credentials suspended for seven days, and presumably he’s still allowed to teach. What was his experience like teaching at this middle school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:20] \u003c/em>Pretty early into the next school year, which is when students are going back to school for in-person learning, because this is all during the pandemic. So that fall, he ends up having another complaint from an eighth grader at his new school. That student had told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back. She says she asked him to to stop, he went to the front of the classroom, and then he touched her shoulder. And she says in the records that it felt like asking him to stop didn’t matter. So he gets a written warning, is told that he should not be touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Agan, in his response to that in the record, he does deny touching her lower back and says that he would have remembered doing so based on his previous experience. Agan continues teaching at that school. The student, she told me that the rest of the school year was so difficult, she ends up leaving middle school before the school-year ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Agan, he resigns by August, 2022. He ends up teaching at Clifford School in Redwood City. When Agan is hired at Redwood city, he does not put in his application that he had been fired. He said he left Rodriguez High because he was seeking new challenges and opportunities. Um, and I talked to the deputy superintendent at Redwood city, um, school district, Wendy Kelly, and she, she wouldn’t answer any questions related to his hiring, but she told me that the school district, they conduct reference checks and they also check credentialing statuses with the state’s teacher licensing agency. And she told me that schools rely on that agency to determine who’s fit to be in a classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And by the time Redwood City had hired Agan, he has a teaching license. He’s deemed by the state fit to work in any school in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>How many examples like Jason Agan are there, do we know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:33] \u003c/em>It is hard to quantify, but in putting in all these record requests from schools I did find at least 67 examples, including Agan’s case, of educators where the state has not revoked their licenses after a school district determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:02] \u003c/em>It seems like for students and school communities in the meantime, that means we’re sort of left with this less than transparent system. I guess, how would you sum up the problems with this system and your takeaways from your reporting about how this system works?\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:21] \u003c/em>I think there are a few issues that I found through my reporting. I mean, there is this issue of delay. I mean in this case, it took nearly 500 days for the agency to make a determination. And once there was the seven-day suspension, you can’t see the reason behind it. Whereas in at least 12 other states around the country, when teachers, educators are disciplined, you can see the reason for the discipline. And then, I mean, then there is the question of why a seven-day suspension after a school found sexual harassment. So I think that it’s just hard to understand how the agency makes these decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:03] \u003c/em>There should be a higher level of transparency. We should have expectations, we should have guidelines, we should have rules by which we lead our profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:12] \u003c/em>So I talked to a former commissioner who had left by the time the Agan decision came down, but her name is Alicia DeRollo. For her, the big problem or shortcoming she sees is that she feels like teachers are treated differently than other professions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:29] \u003c/em>We cannot be given a license to have responsibility over children that we could potentially harm. We can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:40] \u003c/em>For her, it doesn’t make sense and is not good that there isn’t this higher level of transparency. I mean, she thinks that if there’s this level of transparency where you can find out of why a dentist is disciplined, then the people who work in classrooms, you should be able access this basic information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:02] \u003c/em>Transparency would make it clear to teachers what they can’t get away with, would make clear to hiring agencies of what the person has done, and would set some higher standards for what we allow in the teaching profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:26] \u003c/em>Has Jason Agan commented on this story or for this story at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:31] \u003c/em>No. So I sent Jason Agan a certified letter with a list of questions. I went outside his apartment and a person at his apartment answered when I rang the buzzer and then hung up. So, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Jason Agan, but in previous statements in the records, he has denied massaging students’ shoulders. He has said that he had no sexual motivation in touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:01] \u003c/em>What about anyone from the state credentialing agency? Did anyone comment on how someone like Agan has continued to be able to teach at other schools after what happened at Rodriguez?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:16] \u003c/em>A spokesperson said that the state’s credentialing agency is not in charge of deciding what type of offenses lead to mandatory revocation. So it would need to be lawmakers who would decide, say, for example, that sexual harassment of students should lead to revoking licenses. But the teacher licensing agency isn’t responsible for that. And they have said that they stand ready to implement any changes that the legislature wants to put forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:53] \u003c/em>And as I understand it, Holly, there’s been some additional fallout since your story was published. What has been the impact since you published your story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:04] \u003c/em>The impact was pretty immediate, which I think shows what information and public knowledge can do. So in the hours after the story published, some parents went to Clifford School and pulled their kids out of the school during the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:21] \u003c/em>That’s the school that Agan was teaching at in Redwood City, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:24] \u003c/em>Yes. Parents went to the board meeting the next day. A parent there said he had filed a Title IX complaint against Agan, but he declined to talk to me about the specifics. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools. I talked to another parent who also filed a complaint against Agan. He said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class. Agan has been replaced by a substitute and he’s no longer teaching at Clifford the rest of the school year. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:01] \u003c/em>What are your takeaways from your reporting on this system and on this specific case?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:08] \u003c/em>This was an example worth reporting on because this teacher is not criminally accused of misconduct, but it was pretty clear in talking to students that he had made them uncomfortable over the years and it was impacting their education. There were students I talked to who at the time they tried to ignore it or looked away or didn’t say anything and regretted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they rely on. I mean, adults, administrators to do the right thing to protect them, but this case shows that a school can fire a teacher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t go and teach somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students had talked among themselves about his behavior, making them uncomfortable, and some of the students I talked to didn’t necessarily think anything of it at the time, but then when they had left that experience, when they’d gone to college and when they were talking to other people, they started to see that that behavior at the time was not normal. And there were students I talked to who said that’s why they wanted to talk to me now, because they regretted not saying something sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools have these policies in place that you should not touch students and things like that, but there were students I talked to who wish they had called it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:36] \u003c/em>Well Holly, thank you so much for your reporting and for sharing it with us on the show. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:41] \u003c/em>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED and ProPublica will continue reporting on how California handles cases of alleged teacher misconduct. We need your help to get the full picture, and we want to hear from you. You can share your experience with the state’s disciplinary process online at\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://propublica.org/kqed\"> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">propublica.org/kqed\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Agan was a popular teacher at Angelo Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. But for years, students whispered about his behavior. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In late 2019, after multiple written complaints and an administrative hearing, the school district fired Agan. But he never lost his teaching license, and went on to teach at two more schools in California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Holly McDede, who reported this story for KQED and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, explains how a pattern of delays and a lack of transparency has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1025625890\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084681/california-teacher-previously-fired-for-sexual-harassment-is-no-longer-in-the-classroom-after-new-complaints\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Episode Transcript\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:00] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kylie Tatom was a sophomore at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, she started getting involved in student leadership. She helped organize things like pep rallies and prom, and through that, she worked with a popular teacher named Jason Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:28] \u003c/em>Everybody knew him. As a teacher, he was good. People would want to get on his good side. He was a very charismatic, like the cool teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:41] \u003c/em>Agan had been on campus for years. He taught AP Calculus and ran student government. Some considered him a mentor, even a second father. But behind the scenes, some students also talked about how they felt uncomfortable around him. They say that Agan touched them in public in ways that felt inappropriate, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders unprompted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>As a kid, you don’t realize it’s bad, because it’s like, oh, this is a teacher, this is somebody that’s like supposed to be older than you that knows everything. Like that’s, like, you’re supposed to look up to\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:26] \u003c/em>Tatom graduated in 2017. The following year, on the heels of the Me Too movement, at least 11 other students and one parent submitted written complaints to school administrators about Agan’s behavior. And in 2019, Agan was fired by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. But even though Agan was fired for sexually harassing students, he kept his license to teach in California, and he would go on to teach at two other schools. Kris Corey was the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:11] \u003c/em>I was just so angry about it. What a disservice it was to those girls. I was flabbergasted. I was like, how does this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:23] \u003c/em>According to reporting by KQED and ProPublica, Agan’s case is one of dozens where the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators, even after school districts determined that they had sexually harassed students or committed other misconduct of a sexual nature. Today, how a Bay Area teacher was fired for sexually harassing students. And how California allowed him to keep teaching anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:59] \u003c/em>Your story starts with this teacher at my old high school, actually, Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. Mr. Jason Agan, and I remember him for being the teacher who led the student government. He was also the only teacher who taught AP calculus on campus, as I remember. But why did he become the focus of your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:26] \u003c/em>What happened was I had requested records from 300 of the largest school districts in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:32] \u003c/em>Holly McDede is a reporter for KQED and ProPublica’s local reporting network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:38] \u003c/em>I got these records from Fairfield-Suisun, which got my interest immediately because the records described how the school had taken steps to fire this teacher named Jason Agan who ultimately was fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that got my attention immediately because it is very rare in California to fire teachers because it’s expensive, it’s also risky. So schools will often offer teachers settlements to allow them to resign instead. That way it’s a guarantee that the teacher won’t be back at your school. Whereas if you lose these dismissal cases, the teacher could end up back in the classroom all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Jason Agan had worked at Rodriguez High since 2001. He was there for almost the entirety of his teaching career. He called himself an “original Mustang” after the school’s mascot. And he was kind of this mathematician figure who you mentioned was in charge of leadership and student government. And so he describes himself as the man behind the curtain who organized things like pep rallies and prom. There were students who saw him as a mentor and a second father, and he was popular. But students had also talked for years about his behavior, making them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:04] \u003c/em>So, you spent time digging into these records on Jason Agan at Rodriguez High School. What exactly was he accused of?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:14] \u003c/em>The first documented complaint was by a student, a sophomore, who said that he took her cell phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down. So she reported this to administration at the school, and she also told the school that Agan would massage students’ shoulders during class. So Agan is warned by an administrator at the school to stop touching students, that he’s making students uncomfortable by touching them when he walks around during class. That was the first complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then a father complained to the school when he wears a t-shirt with a pi sign that spells out “pimp”. And so he’s warned by another administrator to be mindful about how he talks to students and jokes. And again, that administrator warns him to also not touch students during class, Agan has said that he would touch students during class but only to support them while they’re doing their math work. The next school year, more students end up filing complaints related to his behavior. There’s one student in particular who says that he had massaged her neck underneath her hair during class, so she complains about that. She asks to transfer out of his class. She ends up having a panic attack soon after that. Ultimately, the school puts him on leave without pay and starts the long process to fire him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:47] \u003c/em>And this is happening in and around 2018, sort of the height of the MeToo movement, right? And many of these complaints coming from young women at the high school, is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:02] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is soon after Me Too with the Harvey Weinstein allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:10] \u003c/em>He was my math teacher for my sophomore year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:16] \u003c/em>So I talked to Julia Steed and she was a sophomore, a 15 year old sophomore at the time. Now she’s 23.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>I, to be honest, had already got in like, kind of like word of mouth, like, things from other students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:32] \u003c/em>She had complained about Jason Egan. She said he had touched her head multiple times, and that she also saw him massage students’ shoulders during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:40] \u003c/em>I immediately was like, oh no, this is not feel good coming from a teacher that I was not close with whatsoever. I was like okay, this was very odd to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>She and her classmates were definitely talking about MeToo and just boundaries and consent and were less afraid to enforce those boundaries and speak up about behavior that was making them uncomfortable. And Julia was one of the students who also filed a written complaint\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:14] \u003c/em>I would have no desire whatsoever to do any of the actions that he did. Like, I don’t know, it’s like the older I get, the more messed up I realize it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:28] \u003c/em>What happens with these formal complaints that these students are filing, Holly? Like, what is the process from there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:36] \u003c/em>The school gathers all these complaints and moves to fire Agan, so they put him on leave without pay. Then that summer, so this is the summer of 2019, there is essentially a hearing. The superintendent of the school has recommended he be fired, but he objects to that. And in California, you can have a dismissal hearing, which means that Agan appoints a teacher, the school district appoints someone, and then there’s an administrative law judge. And so these three people here testimony from students, teachers, administrators, and then they have to make a decision whether to support the district’s effort to terminate him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:18] \u003c/em>And to be clear, this isn’t like a criminal trial. He’s not accused of a crime. And this is like a hearing, not a formal courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:27] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So Agan has not been accused of a crime. This is an administrative process to decide whether he can keep his job or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:36] \u003c/em>But there are people on both testifying on behalf of Agan, presumably positively and also students testifying against him. What are people saying in this hearing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:49] \u003c/em>Yeah, so there were former students who testified on Agan’s behalf, and they all said that Agan would also squeeze, rub, or massage their shoulders, but they said that that behavior did not make them uncomfortable. I did speak to one student who testified on his behalf at the time, and she said that as an adult, she came to see that his behavior at the times was not appropriate, and tells me that now she would have switched to the other side. And then there were students who testified against him. They said that they would avoid raising their hand or speaking up in class, because they didn’t want to get his attention. There was a student who said she would try to sit against the wall, that way he could not massage her shoulders. And students who ultimately said that it was impacting their education and making them not want to take advanced math classes, because as you mentioned, she was the school’s AP calculus teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:57] \u003c/em>What did this panel find and what ultimately were the consequences?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:02] \u003c/em>So the panel found that he had sexually harassed female students. They found he had massaged student shoulders during class. And they also found that he continued this behavior despite warnings to stop. In their judgment, their determination in the records, they ultimately say that he is unfit to teach and that he should be fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:24] \u003c/em>The district did their case, the teacher was there. The students were remarkably brave. They testified with the teacher sitting there. They testified against the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:41] \u003c/em>Kris Corey was the superintendent of the Fairfield-Suisun School District at the time, and she talked to how rare it is to fire teachers and just how it was surprising really to have this panel of three people come to this unanimous decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:58] \u003c/em>Couldn’t believe it. I mean, we just, like, celebrated. And everyone was like, ‘What? How’d you do that?’ Because it just didn’t happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:12] \u003c/em>Well, I want to zoom out from this one example, Holly, because I guess until you published this story, he was actually still teaching at another school district here in the Bay Area and, in fact, went on to teach at two more schools after Rodriguez, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:30] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. He’s fired December 2019 and by the next school year he already has a job teaching math at a middle school that’s about an hour away in Sacramento called Ephraim Williams College Prep. Even though he was fired he was able to keep his credential which allowed him to continue teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:55] \u003c/em>Coming up, how Jason Agan kept on teaching. If you appreciate these deep dives into local Bay Area news, consider becoming a KQED member. We can’t do this work without your support. So join your Bay Area neighbors and become a KQED member today at kqed.org slash donate. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[00:13:25] \u003c/em>Welcome back to The Bay. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. In the first part of this episode, we learned about Jason Agan, a former teacher at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. In late 2019, he was fired for sexually harassing students, but he still went on to teach at two more California schools. As reporter Holly McDede explains, despite Agan’s firing from Fairfield-Suisun, the state allowed him to keep his teaching credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:57] \u003c/em>One of the systems that is in place is this agency called the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which is where any public school teacher who resigns or is fired due to misconduct is reported to this agency. And then that agency decides what to do with their license. So it’s the agency that can take away licenses from teachers. So Fairfield-Suisun, they report Agan to the Commission of Teacher Credentialing. They’re investigating, but they don’t make a determination on what to do with Agan’s case for nearly 500 days later. During that time, when Agan applies for this other job in Sacramento, that school and schools in general, they can’t learn from the state that it’s investigating. I mean, schools can ask the school that the teacher has left and in this case, Agan did put in his job application that he had been fired. He put that he has been accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class and he wrote that while he disagreed with the dismissal, he did not mean to make anyone feel unsafe and he was offering student support and encouragement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:16] \u003c/em>Administrators at Ephraim Williams did not respond to questions about how the school vetted Jason Agan. The former principal at Rodriguez High, the school Jason Agan was fired from, did not respond to questions about a reference check. We do know that Agan received stellar letters of recommendation from former colleagues. Meanwhile, in April, 2021, 500 days after the Fairfield-Suisun District sent their investigation to the state, California’s teacher licensing board finally made a decision. Jason Agan’s license would be suspended for just seven days. The reason for his suspension was not made public and ultimately Agan would continue teaching in Sacramento. But the complaints about his behavior didn’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just so that I’m understanding, even if a teacher is fired for sexual harassment at a school, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they lose their credential in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:28] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So there’s no guarantee that teachers who are fired for sexual harassment will lose their teaching licenses. Instead, cases like that, that are not necessarily criminal conduct, they go before a committee within the state that reviews cases case by case and makes a determination. They make a recommendation, and this is a committee of about seven volunteers and so. They meet in Sacramento three days once a month, they review cases and they decide what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:03] \u003c/em>So in this case, Agan goes on to get hired at another middle school in Sacramento. He has his credentials suspended for seven days, and presumably he’s still allowed to teach. What was his experience like teaching at this middle school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:20] \u003c/em>Pretty early into the next school year, which is when students are going back to school for in-person learning, because this is all during the pandemic. So that fall, he ends up having another complaint from an eighth grader at his new school. That student had told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back. She says she asked him to to stop, he went to the front of the classroom, and then he touched her shoulder. And she says in the records that it felt like asking him to stop didn’t matter. So he gets a written warning, is told that he should not be touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Agan, in his response to that in the record, he does deny touching her lower back and says that he would have remembered doing so based on his previous experience. Agan continues teaching at that school. The student, she told me that the rest of the school year was so difficult, she ends up leaving middle school before the school-year ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Agan, he resigns by August, 2022. He ends up teaching at Clifford School in Redwood City. When Agan is hired at Redwood city, he does not put in his application that he had been fired. He said he left Rodriguez High because he was seeking new challenges and opportunities. Um, and I talked to the deputy superintendent at Redwood city, um, school district, Wendy Kelly, and she, she wouldn’t answer any questions related to his hiring, but she told me that the school district, they conduct reference checks and they also check credentialing statuses with the state’s teacher licensing agency. And she told me that schools rely on that agency to determine who’s fit to be in a classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And by the time Redwood City had hired Agan, he has a teaching license. He’s deemed by the state fit to work in any school in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>How many examples like Jason Agan are there, do we know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:33] \u003c/em>It is hard to quantify, but in putting in all these record requests from schools I did find at least 67 examples, including Agan’s case, of educators where the state has not revoked their licenses after a school district determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:02] \u003c/em>It seems like for students and school communities in the meantime, that means we’re sort of left with this less than transparent system. I guess, how would you sum up the problems with this system and your takeaways from your reporting about how this system works?\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:21] \u003c/em>I think there are a few issues that I found through my reporting. I mean, there is this issue of delay. I mean in this case, it took nearly 500 days for the agency to make a determination. And once there was the seven-day suspension, you can’t see the reason behind it. Whereas in at least 12 other states around the country, when teachers, educators are disciplined, you can see the reason for the discipline. And then, I mean, then there is the question of why a seven-day suspension after a school found sexual harassment. So I think that it’s just hard to understand how the agency makes these decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:03] \u003c/em>There should be a higher level of transparency. We should have expectations, we should have guidelines, we should have rules by which we lead our profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:12] \u003c/em>So I talked to a former commissioner who had left by the time the Agan decision came down, but her name is Alicia DeRollo. For her, the big problem or shortcoming she sees is that she feels like teachers are treated differently than other professions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:29] \u003c/em>We cannot be given a license to have responsibility over children that we could potentially harm. We can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:40] \u003c/em>For her, it doesn’t make sense and is not good that there isn’t this higher level of transparency. I mean, she thinks that if there’s this level of transparency where you can find out of why a dentist is disciplined, then the people who work in classrooms, you should be able access this basic information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:02] \u003c/em>Transparency would make it clear to teachers what they can’t get away with, would make clear to hiring agencies of what the person has done, and would set some higher standards for what we allow in the teaching profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:26] \u003c/em>Has Jason Agan commented on this story or for this story at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:31] \u003c/em>No. So I sent Jason Agan a certified letter with a list of questions. I went outside his apartment and a person at his apartment answered when I rang the buzzer and then hung up. So, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Jason Agan, but in previous statements in the records, he has denied massaging students’ shoulders. He has said that he had no sexual motivation in touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:01] \u003c/em>What about anyone from the state credentialing agency? Did anyone comment on how someone like Agan has continued to be able to teach at other schools after what happened at Rodriguez?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:16] \u003c/em>A spokesperson said that the state’s credentialing agency is not in charge of deciding what type of offenses lead to mandatory revocation. So it would need to be lawmakers who would decide, say, for example, that sexual harassment of students should lead to revoking licenses. But the teacher licensing agency isn’t responsible for that. And they have said that they stand ready to implement any changes that the legislature wants to put forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:53] \u003c/em>And as I understand it, Holly, there’s been some additional fallout since your story was published. What has been the impact since you published your story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:04] \u003c/em>The impact was pretty immediate, which I think shows what information and public knowledge can do. So in the hours after the story published, some parents went to Clifford School and pulled their kids out of the school during the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:21] \u003c/em>That’s the school that Agan was teaching at in Redwood City, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:24] \u003c/em>Yes. Parents went to the board meeting the next day. A parent there said he had filed a Title IX complaint against Agan, but he declined to talk to me about the specifics. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools. I talked to another parent who also filed a complaint against Agan. He said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class. Agan has been replaced by a substitute and he’s no longer teaching at Clifford the rest of the school year. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:01] \u003c/em>What are your takeaways from your reporting on this system and on this specific case?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:08] \u003c/em>This was an example worth reporting on because this teacher is not criminally accused of misconduct, but it was pretty clear in talking to students that he had made them uncomfortable over the years and it was impacting their education. There were students I talked to who at the time they tried to ignore it or looked away or didn’t say anything and regretted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they rely on. I mean, adults, administrators to do the right thing to protect them, but this case shows that a school can fire a teacher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t go and teach somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students had talked among themselves about his behavior, making them uncomfortable, and some of the students I talked to didn’t necessarily think anything of it at the time, but then when they had left that experience, when they’d gone to college and when they were talking to other people, they started to see that that behavior at the time was not normal. And there were students I talked to who said that’s why they wanted to talk to me now, because they regretted not saying something sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools have these policies in place that you should not touch students and things like that, but there were students I talked to who wish they had called it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:36] \u003c/em>Well Holly, thank you so much for your reporting and for sharing it with us on the show. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:41] \u003c/em>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED and ProPublica will continue reporting on how California handles cases of alleged teacher misconduct. We need your help to get the full picture, and we want to hear from you. You can share your experience with the state’s disciplinary process online at\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://propublica.org/kqed\"> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">propublica.org/kqed\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "california-teacher-previously-fired-for-sexual-harassment-is-no-longer-in-the-classroom-after-new-complaints",
"title": "California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints",
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"headTitle": "California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">investigation by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints, as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica’s\u003c/em> investigation found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their necks or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEQ0ENCKoPfmKBvr096qhLho3DF2DWW02P2DWu_jnr_InRmQ/viewform\">public letter\u003c/a>, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets.[aside postID=news_12082980 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/CA-Teacher-Discipline-Agan-final.jpg']Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement, but that he did not massage them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13, but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agan started teaching at Clifford School in 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> published the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanni said Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> and KQED’s investigation on social media and \u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.com/@josh.becker.ca/post/DYSD6aJFGDL\">wrote\u003c/a>: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends that educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A KQED-ProPublica report revealed how Redwood City teacher Jason Agan was allowed to keep his credentials despite being deemed “unfit to teach.” Now he’s been replaced by a substitute for the remainder of the school year. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">investigation by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints, as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica’s\u003c/em> investigation found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their necks or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEQ0ENCKoPfmKBvr096qhLho3DF2DWW02P2DWu_jnr_InRmQ/viewform\">public letter\u003c/a>, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement, but that he did not massage them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13, but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agan started teaching at Clifford School in 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> published the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanni said Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> and KQED’s investigation on social media and \u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.com/@josh.becker.ca/post/DYSD6aJFGDL\">wrote\u003c/a>: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends that educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway",
"publishDate": 1778587223,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED",
"labelTerm": {},
"content": "\u003cp>This\u003cem> article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with \u003c/em>\u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">\u003cem>Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason Agan was impossible to miss at Angelo Rodriguez High School. The Bay Area teacher was loud and gregarious, a fixture on campus since the Fairfield school opened in 2001. He ran the student government and called himself the man behind the curtain, organizing pep rallies and prom. He taught AP calculus, so advanced math students ended up in his classroom, jostling for his approval and letters of recommendation. Some considered him a mentor who inspired a love of math — and even a second father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for years, students also whispered about Agan’s behavior, according to interviews with 14 Rodriguez High graduates, most of whom he had taught. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. And he seemed fixated on enforcing the dress code, calling out girls whose shorts were too short.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two decades into Agan’s tenure, and on the heels of the #MeToo movement, students had enough. At least 11 students and one parent submitted written complaints about his behavior to school administrators in 2018, drawing at least two warnings to stop, a KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> investigation found. By January 2019, the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District had taken steps to fire him, suspending him without pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan pushed back, and nearly a year later, an independent panel convened by the state to hear his case deemed him “unfit to teach.” The panel’s decision meant that the popular educator was officially out of the job where he had spent his entire teaching career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the panel’s review only addressed his employment at this one school district, and its finding was not shared publicly. It would be up to the state’s teacher licensing agency to determine whether additional discipline would be imposed, including whether Agan could keep teaching in California public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next three years, Agan was hired at a second school and then a third. During that period, the state issued a one-week suspension of his teaching license for his behavior at his first school. Then, Agan faced another accusation of unwanted touching — this time, by an eighth grader at his second school, according to school records. The state’s teaching credentialing agency did not inform the other schools or the parents of students in Agan’s classes of the full extent of what went on at Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082860\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082860 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg\" alt=\"A page in a yearbook that includes a photo of a man looking through a doorway and a feature on Jason Agan under the title, “Equations & Headaches.”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Math teacher Jason Agan, in the 2017-18 Rodriguez High School yearbook, said his goal is to “make RHS a place where all students can feel comfortable and safe.” The school district fired him in 2019 for sexually harassing students. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Agan, now 47, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and someone at his address hung up when a reporter rang his apartment buzzer and identified herself. Nor did he respond to questions sent via email or certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He previously denied any sexual motivation in touching students, telling the independent panel that he was simply offering students support and encouragement — not massaging them, according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A broad look at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> shows a pattern of delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, that has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state for sexual harassment or other misconduct of a sexual nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan’s case is one of at least 67 in which the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools, and of those, at least 12, including Agan, still work in education, according to a review of school websites and employment records provided by schools.[aside postID=news_12057191 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250924-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-03_qed.jpg']Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the state automatically revokes teachers’ credentials when they are convicted of sexual criminal offenses, but not necessarily when a district determines they have committed sexual misconduct. She said the state Legislature — not the licensing agency — determines the type of misconduct that results in automatic revocation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency appoints a committee to assess noncriminal cases of misconduct, she said. Agan has not been accused of a crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Commission’s authority balances protecting students as well as the legal rights of educators who have been accused but not convicted of specific crimes,” Fitzhugh said in a written statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s disciplinary process is unique among licensing bodies in California in how much is kept secret, Fitzhugh said. The fact that a teacher has been disciplined is noted on a state website of credentialed educators, but the database does not explain why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, the licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If our job as teachers is to keep children safe, we have to be held accountable for things we do that could harm them,” said Alicia DeRollo, a longtime teacher who served as one of 19 commissioners on California’s teacher licensing agency from 2011 to 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid this gap in oversight, Agan found two new jobs and remains in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Student complaints start piling up\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For 17 years, Agan taught at Rodriguez High, a sprawling open-air campus nestled alongside rolling hills where cows graze. The school serves the racially diverse commuter town of Fairfield, halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2018, several sophomores in his accelerated math class reported him to school administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One girl alleged that he took her phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down taking a test and that he would massage girls’ shoulders in class, according to school records. Assistant principal Gary Hiner cautioned Agan to be careful, sharing that students had told him they were uncomfortable when the teacher walked around class and touched them, according to a summary Hiner wrote about the spoken warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082859\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082859\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05.jpg\" alt=\"A sign that reads, “Rodriguez High School” and “Home of the Mustangs” outside surrounded by trees and bushes.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The entrance to Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, California. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In March 2018, a father emailed another administrator after Agan wore a shirt to school that used the Pi symbol to spell out “Pimp.” The father wrote that a teacher should not be wearing a shirt making light of someone who “sexually exploits people for profit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, assistant principal Allison Klein emailed Agan, reminding him that school was not the place for “physically touching students, inappropriate innuendo, or jokes in poor taste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the next school year, more students complained, records show. In October 2018, a student told her school counselor and then Hiner that Agan had come up behind her and started massaging her neck beneath her long hair. The student said she felt violated and froze, unsure of what to do, records show. She talked to her peers about Agan to see if others had similar experiences, and told Hiner that those classmates said he also made inappropriate comments and touched students in his leadership class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The student was so distraught that she asked to transfer out of the math class and had a panic attack two days later in the school psychologist’s office, school records show. Neither Hiner nor Klein agreed to be interviewed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within weeks, at least nine more students submitted written complaints, alleging that Agan had massaged their shoulders and singled out female students for what they wore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a case of someone overstepping boundaries, and we’re not afraid to call this person out,” said Julia Steed, who was a 15-year-old sophomore when she wrote to school administrators alleging that Agan “had tendencies to touch students,” including palming her head during class. “We were like, ‘Oh no, we’re not dealing with this.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082858\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082858 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in her twenties sits on a sofa and looks at the camera with a serious expression.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julia Steed, a Rodriguez High graduate, had complained to school administrators about Agan touching students. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steed, now 23, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she and her classmates were emboldened by the #MeToo movement to speak out as teenagers across the country were gaining more awareness of boundaries and consent. By the end of 2018, the Fairfield-Suisun school board approved the superintendent’s recommendation to fire Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan objected and demanded a hearing, something tenured California public school teachers facing termination are entitled to. His case would be evaluated by an independent panel, which would decide whether to uphold the district’s recommendation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School districts rarely fire tenured teachers because losing a case is expensive, and the teacher can wind up back in the job. Instead, many districts negotiate settlements that allow teachers to resign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in Agan’s case, Kris Corey, the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time, said she and the school board believed they had a strong case for termination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The board said, ‘We don’t care how much this costs. We are going to a hearing,’” Corey said. “It’s the principle of the matter. This is not OK.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For eight days in the Fairfield-Suisun district office beginning in July 2019, the three-member panel, including a teacher selected by Agan, heard testimony from students, teachers and administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven students, three administrators, a former guidance counselor and a parent spoke against Agan. Six of the students told the panel that Agan made them uncomfortable by touching them or commenting on their clothing, including calling one girl “short shorts.” Four of them, including Steed, said they did not feel comfortable going to Agan for extra help with math because they did not want to be alone with him. Several also said they refrained from speaking in class to avoid attracting his attention.[aside postID=news_12055955 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03248_TV-KQED.jpg']Four former students, three teachers and a staff member spoke on Agan’s behalf. The former students described Agan as a supportive mentor and caring teacher and said they felt at home in his classroom. All four students said he squeezed, rubbed or touched their shoulders, but that his actions did not make them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of those students told KQED and\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em> that her opinion about the teacher’s behavior has changed in recent years. She said she had considered his physical contact normal while in high school. But her perspective shifted as she got older, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went to college and talked to people and realized it wasn’t normal,” said the former student, now in her 20s. “Looking back at it, I would have jumped to the other side, to be quite honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the hearing, Agan testified that he would have stopped touching students’ shoulders if he had been clearly warned, according to a summary included in the panel’s decision. He said he became comfortable with his leadership students, and his actions carried over to math students even though he wasn’t as close with them. He denied massaging students’ shoulders and said students misinterpreted “squeezes or shakes” as massages. He said he did not intend to make students feel uncomfortable and regretted that some students did not feel safe in his class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the administrators, former director of human resources Mike Minahen, told the panel that the details students shared with him during his investigation “weighed heavy” on him. He said it was unusual for high school students to “break the code” and come forward to make a complaint about a teacher, “especially a leadership teacher who has influence over student activities throughout the entire school.” Minahen, who has retired, declined to comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November 2019, the panel unanimously decided Agan should lose his job. Even the teacher chosen by Agan agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The likelihood of recurrence is high,” the panel wrote in its decision. “Over time, he has shown that he cannot or will not exercise good judgment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the panelists told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she voted to terminate Agan’s employment in part because his alleged behavior continued even after administrators issued warnings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His actions were making students, particularly young women, want to not take advanced math classes. They didn’t want to be touched,” said the panelist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize her job in education. “All that directly impacts their access to good colleges because he was a calculus teacher.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2019, school district officials sent documentation of Agan’s firing, along with details of their investigation, to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, California’s educator licensing agency, as state law requires for public school teachers who resign or are fired for misconduct. The educator licensing agency would decide whether Agan would be disciplined further, such as receiving a public warning, facing a suspension or losing his license to teach in a California public school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disciplinary process typically takes one year, according to the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take the state licensing board nearly 500 days to decide what to do in Agan’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Agan returned to the classroom\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As the state considered the matter, Agan applied for a job at a Sacramento middle school about an hour away from Rodriguez High in May 2020. It was a time of heightened teacher shortages, especially in subjects like math, during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan provided stellar letters of recommendation from former teaching colleagues in his application, which school representatives provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> in response to a public records request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Any school searching Agan’s name on California’s credentialing database would have seen a clean record and valid credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach. That’s because while the state licensing agency knew Agan had been fired for what the district described as sexually harassing students, California law prevented the agency from disclosing information about the case. Nowhere \u003ca href=\"https://educator.ctc.ca.gov/siebel/app/esales/enu?SWECmd=GotoView&SWEView=CTC+Person+Adverse+Action+Public+View+Web&SWERF=1&SWEHo=&SWEBU=1&SWEApplet0=CTC+Public+Person+Detail+Form+Applet+Web&SWERowId0=1-27L-88&SWEApplet1=CTC+Adverse+Action+Applet+Web&SWERowId1=2-499IB5\">in the online public records\u003c/a> did it say that Agan remained under investigation by the agency — let alone any details of his employment record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his application for the middle school job, Agan acknowledged that he had been fired after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Math is a difficult subject for many and my actions were meant as a means of encouragement; a way to say, ‘It’s OK that you’re having trouble, keep trying,’” Agan wrote, adding that he recognized his actions “made some students feel uncomfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan started teaching at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School that fall. The 175-person school is part of the Fortune network of charter schools. Administrators at Ephraim Williams at the time of Agan’s hiring did not respond to questions about how the school vetted him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082857 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that shows a photograph of a student and text that reads, “Enroll Today! 6-8 grades.”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School, a charter school in Sacramento. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Former Fortune human resources consultant Rick Rubino, who helped the middle school recruit, interview and hire candidates at the time Agan was applying, said the school was not aware that Agan’s former employer concluded that he had sexually harassed multiple students. “Do you think any reasonable school district or principal would hire that person?” Rubino said. “No. So clearly, Fortune School did not get that information.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubino said he “would guarantee that somebody at Fortune called the principal at the school where Jason Agan was teaching in Fairfield and got a good report.” He said he does not remember making that call himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former principal at Rodriguez High did not respond to questions about a reference check. But a Fortune School spokesperson, Tiffany Moffatt, said school officials follow “all state guidelines and regulations and conduct thorough vetting, making decisions based on the information available to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until near the end of Agan’s first school year at Ephraim Williams that the state licensing agency issued its decision regarding his actions at his first school. In May 2021, the state suspended Agan’s license for seven days; two of those days fell on a weekend. The sanction — along with a red flag icon — appeared in the state’s public database of credentialed educators. This would be the only visible clue schools would have of anything amiss in Agan’s work history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corey, the former superintendent of Fairfield-Suisun Unified, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she was “flabbergasted” that he had only been suspended for seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a real mismatch of what happened,” Corey said. “What a disservice it was to those girls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steed, one of Agan’s accusers, said students had done the right thing and shared their concerns about Agan with their school, only for adults at the state level to give him the opportunity to teach elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s even the point of going through this whole process?” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A middle school student details unwanted touching\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In September 2021, a month after Fortune students returned to in-person learning, an eighth grader at Agan’s second school complained about his conduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The student told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back, according to a summary of the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girl’s mother told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she reported the incident to the principal, who connected mother and daughter with Rubino, Fortune’s human resources consultant. The mother told Rubino that Agan was giving her daughter a disproportionate amount of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girl, who is now 17, spoke to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> on the condition that only her middle name, Sherelle, be used because she is a minor. Leslie, the student’s mother, is also being identified by her middle name to protect her daughter’s identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082856\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082856 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09.jpg\" alt=\"A 17-year-old girl and a woman stand outside with their backs to the camera. The woman rests her hand on the girl’s back in an embrace.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sherelle, left, and her mother, Leslie, at their home. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In that same meeting, Sherelle told Rubino that Agan removed his hand from her lower back after she asked him to stop, and he returned to the front of the classroom. But he came back moments later and placed his hand on her shoulder, according to a letter of warning Rubino wrote to Agan after interviewing the girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt disrespected. I felt uncomfortable. I felt mad,” Sherelle told the news outlets about the incident. “I felt like even speaking up didn’t matter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his letter, Rubino directed Agan to stop touching students and “dial back” his praise for the girl. Rubino also cautioned that failure to comply could result in further disciplinary action, up to suspension or termination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan denied the allegations in a written response to Rubino obtained by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. “I would like to be on record that I dispute it being listed as a ‘fact’ that I touched [the student] on the lower back,” Agan wrote. “I have been extremely diligent in avoiding personal contact with scholars due to my previous experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leslie had texted Rubino expressing concern about how Agan was vetted for the job after she said she saw online posts by students at his former school alleging that he had touched them inappropriately.[aside postID=news_12053938 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-172_qed.jpg']“Actually, I was the one who investigated the matter in the Fairfield Suisun School District when Mr. Agan was a candidate,” Rubino texted back that same day in messages reviewed by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. “I also checked social media and Google to see if I could find any information about the incident in Fairfield, but I did not find anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubino did not answer subsequent questions about the details of his investigation or how much he knew about Agan’s conduct at the teacher’s previous school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the state licensing agency recommends that educators be disciplined, California law allows it to release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to current supervisors and prospective employers who request it within five years. Fortune appears never to have asked for such findings, according to the logs of these requests between 2020 and 2024 provided by the agency to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. A Fortune spokesperson did not say why the charter school did not ask for the information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leslie said her daughter’s experience at Ephraim Williams only worsened after she reported Agan. Math has always been Sherelle’s favorite subject. But as the school year went on, her grades in Agan’s class plummeted. She needed help but said Agan ignored her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With just weeks left in the school year, Leslie pulled her daughter out of Ephraim Williams to finish eighth grade at another school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She only learned about Agan’s disciplinary history when KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> contacted her in January. “The whole education system would rather protect him,” Leslie said. “You let him loose on all these kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fitzhugh, spokesperson for the teacher licensing agency, said the commission is “committed to keeping all students and schools safe,” but is bound by the law in how it disciplines teachers. “The Commission stands ready to implement any additional public protections that the Legislature authorizes,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting the following year, in 2022, records show that Fortune offered Agan a role supporting new teachers rather than assigning him his own classroom. Fortune administrators did not respond to questions about why he was offered the position, which he declined because he had received another job offer in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thank you for the last two years,” Agan wrote, resigning from the school. “It has meant more to me than you could ever know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082861 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade public school in Redwood City, California. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By August 2022, Agan would begin teaching at Clifford School, which serves students in pre-K through eighth grade in Redwood City. He received tenure in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Kelly, deputy superintendent at the Redwood City School District, declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said school districts rely on decisions by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to “put the best people in the classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was pleased to see that the suspension was only seven days,” Kelly said of Agan’s discipline. “I have to trust that when the CTC reinstates the teacher, that the issue has been either resolved, learned from, there’s been consequences in place, which is why they’re employable to the next organization.\u003cem>” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How we reported this story\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>KQED and\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em> obtained detailed teacher disciplinary records from school districts after filing public records requests with the 300 largest districts in California. We asked for records of sexual misconduct complaints from 2019 through 2025, including any reports to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. More than 150 districts provided records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the district determined that an educator had committed misconduct that it characterized as sexual, including sexual harassment by unwanted touching, sending sexual electronic messages and making sexual remarks, we checked the state licensing database to see whether the state had revoked the teacher’s license or imposed other discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cbr>\nShare Your Experience\u003cbr>\n\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was reported with support from the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism and the Fund for Investigative Journalism, with reporting contributions from Luiz H. Monticelli.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Math teacher Jason Agan was deemed “unfit to teach.” But the finding was never made public. This is how the state allowed him — and dozens of other educators found to have committed sexual harassment or misconduct — to keep their credentials.",
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"title": "He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This\u003cem> article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with \u003c/em>\u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">\u003cem>Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason Agan was impossible to miss at Angelo Rodriguez High School. The Bay Area teacher was loud and gregarious, a fixture on campus since the Fairfield school opened in 2001. He ran the student government and called himself the man behind the curtain, organizing pep rallies and prom. He taught AP calculus, so advanced math students ended up in his classroom, jostling for his approval and letters of recommendation. Some considered him a mentor who inspired a love of math — and even a second father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for years, students also whispered about Agan’s behavior, according to interviews with 14 Rodriguez High graduates, most of whom he had taught. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. And he seemed fixated on enforcing the dress code, calling out girls whose shorts were too short.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two decades into Agan’s tenure, and on the heels of the #MeToo movement, students had enough. At least 11 students and one parent submitted written complaints about his behavior to school administrators in 2018, drawing at least two warnings to stop, a KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> investigation found. By January 2019, the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District had taken steps to fire him, suspending him without pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan pushed back, and nearly a year later, an independent panel convened by the state to hear his case deemed him “unfit to teach.” The panel’s decision meant that the popular educator was officially out of the job where he had spent his entire teaching career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the panel’s review only addressed his employment at this one school district, and its finding was not shared publicly. It would be up to the state’s teacher licensing agency to determine whether additional discipline would be imposed, including whether Agan could keep teaching in California public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next three years, Agan was hired at a second school and then a third. During that period, the state issued a one-week suspension of his teaching license for his behavior at his first school. Then, Agan faced another accusation of unwanted touching — this time, by an eighth grader at his second school, according to school records. The state’s teaching credentialing agency did not inform the other schools or the parents of students in Agan’s classes of the full extent of what went on at Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082860\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082860 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg\" alt=\"A page in a yearbook that includes a photo of a man looking through a doorway and a feature on Jason Agan under the title, “Equations & Headaches.”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Math teacher Jason Agan, in the 2017-18 Rodriguez High School yearbook, said his goal is to “make RHS a place where all students can feel comfortable and safe.” The school district fired him in 2019 for sexually harassing students. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Agan, now 47, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and someone at his address hung up when a reporter rang his apartment buzzer and identified herself. Nor did he respond to questions sent via email or certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He previously denied any sexual motivation in touching students, telling the independent panel that he was simply offering students support and encouragement — not massaging them, according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A broad look at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> shows a pattern of delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, that has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state for sexual harassment or other misconduct of a sexual nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan’s case is one of at least 67 in which the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools, and of those, at least 12, including Agan, still work in education, according to a review of school websites and employment records provided by schools.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the state automatically revokes teachers’ credentials when they are convicted of sexual criminal offenses, but not necessarily when a district determines they have committed sexual misconduct. She said the state Legislature — not the licensing agency — determines the type of misconduct that results in automatic revocation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency appoints a committee to assess noncriminal cases of misconduct, she said. Agan has not been accused of a crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Commission’s authority balances protecting students as well as the legal rights of educators who have been accused but not convicted of specific crimes,” Fitzhugh said in a written statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s disciplinary process is unique among licensing bodies in California in how much is kept secret, Fitzhugh said. The fact that a teacher has been disciplined is noted on a state website of credentialed educators, but the database does not explain why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, the licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If our job as teachers is to keep children safe, we have to be held accountable for things we do that could harm them,” said Alicia DeRollo, a longtime teacher who served as one of 19 commissioners on California’s teacher licensing agency from 2011 to 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid this gap in oversight, Agan found two new jobs and remains in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Student complaints start piling up\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For 17 years, Agan taught at Rodriguez High, a sprawling open-air campus nestled alongside rolling hills where cows graze. The school serves the racially diverse commuter town of Fairfield, halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2018, several sophomores in his accelerated math class reported him to school administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One girl alleged that he took her phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down taking a test and that he would massage girls’ shoulders in class, according to school records. Assistant principal Gary Hiner cautioned Agan to be careful, sharing that students had told him they were uncomfortable when the teacher walked around class and touched them, according to a summary Hiner wrote about the spoken warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082859\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082859\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05.jpg\" alt=\"A sign that reads, “Rodriguez High School” and “Home of the Mustangs” outside surrounded by trees and bushes.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-05-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The entrance to Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, California. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In March 2018, a father emailed another administrator after Agan wore a shirt to school that used the Pi symbol to spell out “Pimp.” The father wrote that a teacher should not be wearing a shirt making light of someone who “sexually exploits people for profit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, assistant principal Allison Klein emailed Agan, reminding him that school was not the place for “physically touching students, inappropriate innuendo, or jokes in poor taste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the next school year, more students complained, records show. In October 2018, a student told her school counselor and then Hiner that Agan had come up behind her and started massaging her neck beneath her long hair. The student said she felt violated and froze, unsure of what to do, records show. She talked to her peers about Agan to see if others had similar experiences, and told Hiner that those classmates said he also made inappropriate comments and touched students in his leadership class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The student was so distraught that she asked to transfer out of the math class and had a panic attack two days later in the school psychologist’s office, school records show. Neither Hiner nor Klein agreed to be interviewed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within weeks, at least nine more students submitted written complaints, alleging that Agan had massaged their shoulders and singled out female students for what they wore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a case of someone overstepping boundaries, and we’re not afraid to call this person out,” said Julia Steed, who was a 15-year-old sophomore when she wrote to school administrators alleging that Agan “had tendencies to touch students,” including palming her head during class. “We were like, ‘Oh no, we’re not dealing with this.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082858\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082858 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in her twenties sits on a sofa and looks at the camera with a serious expression.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-CATeacherDiscipline-17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julia Steed, a Rodriguez High graduate, had complained to school administrators about Agan touching students. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steed, now 23, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she and her classmates were emboldened by the #MeToo movement to speak out as teenagers across the country were gaining more awareness of boundaries and consent. By the end of 2018, the Fairfield-Suisun school board approved the superintendent’s recommendation to fire Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan objected and demanded a hearing, something tenured California public school teachers facing termination are entitled to. His case would be evaluated by an independent panel, which would decide whether to uphold the district’s recommendation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School districts rarely fire tenured teachers because losing a case is expensive, and the teacher can wind up back in the job. Instead, many districts negotiate settlements that allow teachers to resign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in Agan’s case, Kris Corey, the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time, said she and the school board believed they had a strong case for termination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The board said, ‘We don’t care how much this costs. We are going to a hearing,’” Corey said. “It’s the principle of the matter. This is not OK.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For eight days in the Fairfield-Suisun district office beginning in July 2019, the three-member panel, including a teacher selected by Agan, heard testimony from students, teachers and administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven students, three administrators, a former guidance counselor and a parent spoke against Agan. Six of the students told the panel that Agan made them uncomfortable by touching them or commenting on their clothing, including calling one girl “short shorts.” Four of them, including Steed, said they did not feel comfortable going to Agan for extra help with math because they did not want to be alone with him. Several also said they refrained from speaking in class to avoid attracting his attention.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Four former students, three teachers and a staff member spoke on Agan’s behalf. The former students described Agan as a supportive mentor and caring teacher and said they felt at home in his classroom. All four students said he squeezed, rubbed or touched their shoulders, but that his actions did not make them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of those students told KQED and\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em> that her opinion about the teacher’s behavior has changed in recent years. She said she had considered his physical contact normal while in high school. But her perspective shifted as she got older, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went to college and talked to people and realized it wasn’t normal,” said the former student, now in her 20s. “Looking back at it, I would have jumped to the other side, to be quite honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the hearing, Agan testified that he would have stopped touching students’ shoulders if he had been clearly warned, according to a summary included in the panel’s decision. He said he became comfortable with his leadership students, and his actions carried over to math students even though he wasn’t as close with them. He denied massaging students’ shoulders and said students misinterpreted “squeezes or shakes” as massages. He said he did not intend to make students feel uncomfortable and regretted that some students did not feel safe in his class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the administrators, former director of human resources Mike Minahen, told the panel that the details students shared with him during his investigation “weighed heavy” on him. He said it was unusual for high school students to “break the code” and come forward to make a complaint about a teacher, “especially a leadership teacher who has influence over student activities throughout the entire school.” Minahen, who has retired, declined to comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November 2019, the panel unanimously decided Agan should lose his job. Even the teacher chosen by Agan agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The likelihood of recurrence is high,” the panel wrote in its decision. “Over time, he has shown that he cannot or will not exercise good judgment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the panelists told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she voted to terminate Agan’s employment in part because his alleged behavior continued even after administrators issued warnings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His actions were making students, particularly young women, want to not take advanced math classes. They didn’t want to be touched,” said the panelist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize her job in education. “All that directly impacts their access to good colleges because he was a calculus teacher.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2019, school district officials sent documentation of Agan’s firing, along with details of their investigation, to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, California’s educator licensing agency, as state law requires for public school teachers who resign or are fired for misconduct. The educator licensing agency would decide whether Agan would be disciplined further, such as receiving a public warning, facing a suspension or losing his license to teach in a California public school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disciplinary process typically takes one year, according to the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take the state licensing board nearly 500 days to decide what to do in Agan’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Agan returned to the classroom\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As the state considered the matter, Agan applied for a job at a Sacramento middle school about an hour away from Rodriguez High in May 2020. It was a time of heightened teacher shortages, especially in subjects like math, during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan provided stellar letters of recommendation from former teaching colleagues in his application, which school representatives provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> in response to a public records request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Any school searching Agan’s name on California’s credentialing database would have seen a clean record and valid credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach. That’s because while the state licensing agency knew Agan had been fired for what the district described as sexually harassing students, California law prevented the agency from disclosing information about the case. Nowhere \u003ca href=\"https://educator.ctc.ca.gov/siebel/app/esales/enu?SWECmd=GotoView&SWEView=CTC+Person+Adverse+Action+Public+View+Web&SWERF=1&SWEHo=&SWEBU=1&SWEApplet0=CTC+Public+Person+Detail+Form+Applet+Web&SWERowId0=1-27L-88&SWEApplet1=CTC+Adverse+Action+Applet+Web&SWERowId1=2-499IB5\">in the online public records\u003c/a> did it say that Agan remained under investigation by the agency — let alone any details of his employment record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his application for the middle school job, Agan acknowledged that he had been fired after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Math is a difficult subject for many and my actions were meant as a means of encouragement; a way to say, ‘It’s OK that you’re having trouble, keep trying,’” Agan wrote, adding that he recognized his actions “made some students feel uncomfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan started teaching at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School that fall. The 175-person school is part of the Fortune network of charter schools. Administrators at Ephraim Williams at the time of Agan’s hiring did not respond to questions about how the school vetted him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082857 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that shows a photograph of a student and text that reads, “Enroll Today! 6-8 grades.”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-20-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School, a charter school in Sacramento. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Former Fortune human resources consultant Rick Rubino, who helped the middle school recruit, interview and hire candidates at the time Agan was applying, said the school was not aware that Agan’s former employer concluded that he had sexually harassed multiple students. “Do you think any reasonable school district or principal would hire that person?” Rubino said. “No. So clearly, Fortune School did not get that information.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubino said he “would guarantee that somebody at Fortune called the principal at the school where Jason Agan was teaching in Fairfield and got a good report.” He said he does not remember making that call himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former principal at Rodriguez High did not respond to questions about a reference check. But a Fortune School spokesperson, Tiffany Moffatt, said school officials follow “all state guidelines and regulations and conduct thorough vetting, making decisions based on the information available to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until near the end of Agan’s first school year at Ephraim Williams that the state licensing agency issued its decision regarding his actions at his first school. In May 2021, the state suspended Agan’s license for seven days; two of those days fell on a weekend. The sanction — along with a red flag icon — appeared in the state’s public database of credentialed educators. This would be the only visible clue schools would have of anything amiss in Agan’s work history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corey, the former superintendent of Fairfield-Suisun Unified, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she was “flabbergasted” that he had only been suspended for seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a real mismatch of what happened,” Corey said. “What a disservice it was to those girls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steed, one of Agan’s accusers, said students had done the right thing and shared their concerns about Agan with their school, only for adults at the state level to give him the opportunity to teach elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s even the point of going through this whole process?” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A middle school student details unwanted touching\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In September 2021, a month after Fortune students returned to in-person learning, an eighth grader at Agan’s second school complained about his conduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The student told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back, according to a summary of the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girl’s mother told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that she reported the incident to the principal, who connected mother and daughter with Rubino, Fortune’s human resources consultant. The mother told Rubino that Agan was giving her daughter a disproportionate amount of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The girl, who is now 17, spoke to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> on the condition that only her middle name, Sherelle, be used because she is a minor. Leslie, the student’s mother, is also being identified by her middle name to protect her daughter’s identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082856\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082856 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09.jpg\" alt=\"A 17-year-old girl and a woman stand outside with their backs to the camera. The woman rests her hand on the girl’s back in an embrace.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260318-ProPublica-AnonymousPhotos-09-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sherelle, left, and her mother, Leslie, at their home. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In that same meeting, Sherelle told Rubino that Agan removed his hand from her lower back after she asked him to stop, and he returned to the front of the classroom. But he came back moments later and placed his hand on her shoulder, according to a letter of warning Rubino wrote to Agan after interviewing the girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt disrespected. I felt uncomfortable. I felt mad,” Sherelle told the news outlets about the incident. “I felt like even speaking up didn’t matter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his letter, Rubino directed Agan to stop touching students and “dial back” his praise for the girl. Rubino also cautioned that failure to comply could result in further disciplinary action, up to suspension or termination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan denied the allegations in a written response to Rubino obtained by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. “I would like to be on record that I dispute it being listed as a ‘fact’ that I touched [the student] on the lower back,” Agan wrote. “I have been extremely diligent in avoiding personal contact with scholars due to my previous experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leslie had texted Rubino expressing concern about how Agan was vetted for the job after she said she saw online posts by students at his former school alleging that he had touched them inappropriately.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Actually, I was the one who investigated the matter in the Fairfield Suisun School District when Mr. Agan was a candidate,” Rubino texted back that same day in messages reviewed by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. “I also checked social media and Google to see if I could find any information about the incident in Fairfield, but I did not find anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubino did not answer subsequent questions about the details of his investigation or how much he knew about Agan’s conduct at the teacher’s previous school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the state licensing agency recommends that educators be disciplined, California law allows it to release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to current supervisors and prospective employers who request it within five years. Fortune appears never to have asked for such findings, according to the logs of these requests between 2020 and 2024 provided by the agency to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>. A Fortune spokesperson did not say why the charter school did not ask for the information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leslie said her daughter’s experience at Ephraim Williams only worsened after she reported Agan. Math has always been Sherelle’s favorite subject. But as the school year went on, her grades in Agan’s class plummeted. She needed help but said Agan ignored her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With just weeks left in the school year, Leslie pulled her daughter out of Ephraim Williams to finish eighth grade at another school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She only learned about Agan’s disciplinary history when KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> contacted her in January. “The whole education system would rather protect him,” Leslie said. “You let him loose on all these kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fitzhugh, spokesperson for the teacher licensing agency, said the commission is “committed to keeping all students and schools safe,” but is bound by the law in how it disciplines teachers. “The Commission stands ready to implement any additional public protections that the Legislature authorizes,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting the following year, in 2022, records show that Fortune offered Agan a role supporting new teachers rather than assigning him his own classroom. Fortune administrators did not respond to questions about why he was offered the position, which he declined because he had received another job offer in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thank you for the last two years,” Agan wrote, resigning from the school. “It has meant more to me than you could ever know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12082861 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade public school in Redwood City, California. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By August 2022, Agan would begin teaching at Clifford School, which serves students in pre-K through eighth grade in Redwood City. He received tenure in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Kelly, deputy superintendent at the Redwood City School District, declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said school districts rely on decisions by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to “put the best people in the classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was pleased to see that the suspension was only seven days,” Kelly said of Agan’s discipline. “I have to trust that when the CTC reinstates the teacher, that the issue has been either resolved, learned from, there’s been consequences in place, which is why they’re employable to the next organization.\u003cem>” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How we reported this story\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>KQED and\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em> obtained detailed teacher disciplinary records from school districts after filing public records requests with the 300 largest districts in California. We asked for records of sexual misconduct complaints from 2019 through 2025, including any reports to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. More than 150 districts provided records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the district determined that an educator had committed misconduct that it characterized as sexual, including sexual harassment by unwanted touching, sending sexual electronic messages and making sexual remarks, we checked the state licensing database to see whether the state had revoked the teacher’s license or imposed other discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cbr>\nShare Your Experience\u003cbr>\n\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>***\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was reported with support from the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism and the Fund for Investigative Journalism, with reporting contributions from Luiz H. Monticelli.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "whistleblower-suits-allege-unsafe-unstable-conditions-at-oaklands-berkley-maynard-academy",
"title": "‘Our School Felt Sick’: Former Staff Allege Turmoil at Berkley Maynard Academy",
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"headTitle": "‘Our School Felt Sick’: Former Staff Allege Turmoil at Berkley Maynard Academy | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>C’erah King-Polk was among the first elementary school students to attend Berkley Maynard Academy, or BMA, when the North \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/oakland\">Oakland\u003c/a> charter school opened in 2005.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school felt like home, and teachers and classmates were like family. King-Polk met her best friend at BMA, still keeps in touch with her fourth-grade teacher, and she later returned to work at BMA as an after-school educator and substitute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You ride with BMA, you die with BMA,” said King-Polk, who worked at BMA until 2024. “I was one of those students who gave my teachers a hard time, but I grew to realize the teachers I had were the ones who really cared about my education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BMA is part of Aspire Public Schools, an organization of California charter schools founded to address inequities in education and prepare underserved students for success. Generations of families were drawn in by the school’s mission of inclusion and support for students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beginning in the 2024-25 school year, King-Polk, as well as former staff at the school, say support systems rapidly unraveled. The former employees allege students with Individualized Education Programs — legally binding written documents outlining the services each student with a disability is entitled to — were not receiving sufficient support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Polk said her younger siblings felt the changes too: her sister told her she wasn’t learning in class and her brother, who has an IEP, wasn’t consistently receiving the services he needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057402\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057402\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkeley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know where the ball was dropped. But I know it was dropped,” King-Polk, 28, said. “There were so many ‘wants’ that nobody really paid attention to the ‘needs.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement, Javier Cabra Walteros, executive director for Aspire Public Schools in the Bay Area, said students, especially those with IEPs, remain the organization’s top priority. He wrote that while staffing in special education roles is a nationwide challenge, Aspire is “proud of our teammates who commit every day to providing a high-quality, equitable education to all students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A total of 14 former or current educators at BMA who spoke with KQED described a culture on campus where those who raised concerns about students with disabilities were ignored, dismissed or blamed. Some asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation or jeopardizing future employment, and said that without needed support to learn, students would become disruptive or violent in class, or in some instances, leave their classrooms or the campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former assistant principal, who former colleagues described as a strong advocate for students with disabilities, was abruptly terminated midyear in 2024. Months later, a wave of educators decided to leave, finding the working environment unsustainable.[aside postID=news_12053938 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-172_qed.jpg']Now, two former employees — ex-assistant principal Iris Velasco (identified in court filings as Iris Velasco Wilkes) and former teacher Maryann Doudna — are suing Aspire Public Schools. They allege they were retaliated against for raising concerns about support for students with disabilities. They want justice for teachers and students, and say Aspire failed to live up to its mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I needed to do something to still try to advocate for those students even though I wasn’t going to be there to do it as their teacher,” Doudna said. “No kid should have to go through what a lot of these kids went through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to questions regarding the complaints, an Aspire Public Schools spokesperson wrote in an email that the organization “vehemently denies the egregious allegations made by these former employees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Aspire Public Schools said in a written statement that the organization could not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. The spokesperson said the California Department of Education found Aspire to be “broadly in compliance” with state and federal laws related to students with disabilities, and that an outside law firm determined all formal complaints alleging discrimination, harassment and retaliation were unsubstantiated and did not recommend any corrective action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s concerning that NPR is presenting a partial view of this issue based on allegations, some from anonymous sources, that we have proven to be false,” the spokesperson said. “This important topic deserves fair, informed reporting that reflects the full context of how public education and special education policies operate in schools at the systemic level, not assumptions and misconceptions that overlook the complexity of serving every student well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco filed a complaint with the California Department of Education, which records show found the school “in compliance” on five of the seven allegations and “out of compliance” on two.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The school where ‘people wanted to stay’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Until recently, BMA had a reputation as a jewel among Aspire campuses. Velasco became an assistant principal at BMA in 2023, drawn by the school’s strong reputation and long-serving principal, Jay Stack. She believed her experience in special education would be an asset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BMA is somewhere everyone wanted to be,” Velasco said. “And once you’re there, people wanted to stay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the 2023-24 school year, Stack was leaving after nearly two decades with BMA. The community braced for change. But once the hiring process began, former teachers said their perspectives on who should next lead their school were overlooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057571\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkeley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a statement, a spokesperson for Aspire said the organization “maintains a consistent hiring process that aligns with Aspire’s mission and values” and that there are “verifiable examples of where BMA staff provided feedback about the process, and that feedback was incorporated immediately and/or in future hiring processes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The principal who was initially hired to replace Stack did not last long: Daron Frazier left the school after allegedly making derogatory social media posts. The posts, reviewed by KQED, include tweets “Why do white people feel the need to speak to me AT ALL” and “White people couldn’t find the mind your got damn business button if that shit was on their forehead.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement, Frazier said BMA employees were not privy to confidential information regarding his separation, and the allegations are false.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wish the community nothing but the best and I pray for the success of the current leaders of BMA,” Frazier wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Frazier left, Cabra Walteros, executive director of Aspire Public Schools Bay Area, stepped in as BMA’s interim principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco said she had concerns early on. She alleges the school began seeing students with more moderate to extensive needs, but lacked staff and resources to provide the legally mandated services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without needed support, students wandered from classrooms or left campus, she said. Velasco recalled finding a kindergarten student who required a one-to-one aide but hadn’t been assigned one, crying in the middle of campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went to try to console him, and he just folded and really shut down,” Velasco said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco said the health of a school can often be measured by its special education department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our school felt sick,” Velasco said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco alleges that she repeatedly raised concerns with administrators, but was met with hostility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of Aspire campuses in the Bay Area, BMA has the largest Black student population, according to a review of demographic data from Aspire’s website and Ed-Data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BMA just happens to be our Blackest school, and for them to do wrong by our school with the most Black scholars is just particularly egregious,” Velasco said. “There were conscious choices made. I don’t want that message to get lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment on specifics in pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spokesperson said Aspire’s regional team meets weekly with BMA to provide coaching for teachers and leaders, as well as targeted support in special education, student services and operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire’s spokesperson also noted that the organization provides extensive data to the California Department of Education, and that Oakland Unified has the authority to review complaints, “ensuring multiple layers of oversight and accountability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Protesting an administrator’s firing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In October 2024, Velasco filed a complaint with Aspire’s human resources department, alleging whistleblower retaliation for reporting several issues at the school, including alleged violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weeks later, she learned the complaint was deemed unsubstantiated, according to her lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just over an hour later, she was terminated, a sequence she alleges was retaliatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of those folks who made the decision to terminate me saw firsthand how much that hurt students. They saw firsthand students crying, the families were asking questions, teachers were asking questions,” Velasco said. “I still cannot fathom that the decision was made to release me when there was clearly such a need for support. I was never told why.”[aside postID=news_12068035 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-12-BL-KQED.jpg']The day after Velasco’s firing, teachers wore black in protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was a huge advocate for special ed students at our school,” said Lili Kuchar, a former reading interventionist at BMA who considers Velasco a whistleblower. “You fire the person who knows what they are doing? It made no sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former and current educators said Velasco’s firing left them afraid of speaking out or raising concerns. Students asked about the missing administrator who checked in on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of the kids were like, ‘Where is she?’ They thought she died. We’re talking about kids with trauma. She didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody,” Kuchar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire said it upholds a comprehensive anti-retaliation policy and anyone who believes they are subject to or have witnessed retaliation is encouraged to report it to the organization’s HR department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As it relates to these claims, an independent law firm conducted an extensive investigation and determined that all formal complaints made to Aspire alleging discrimination, harassment, and retaliation were unsubstantiated and did not recommend any corrective actions,” an Aspire spokesperson wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The difficult choice to leave\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Doudna, the teacher who is suing Aspire, alleges in her lawsuit that during the 2024-25 school year, she also saw how lapses in IEP support made the campus less safe. One of her students, who she said wasn’t receiving mandated services, began hitting classmates and screaming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you are not feeling safe in your classroom, it’s hard to learn,” Doudna said. “And after a certain point in the year, there had been so much damage done that the support the student did receive — it still wasn’t the full services the student was entitled to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057570\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057570\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maryann Doudna outside her home in Oakland on Sept. 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She alleges that the more she raised concerns, the less support she received from administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was ignored,” Doudna said. “There would be fights in class. I would reach out to different administrators for support, and no one would come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the school year, she felt she could no longer keep students safe and made the painful decision to leave the school she had planned to retire from, a choice many of her colleagues also made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It makes me sick that the students in our community were not getting what they deserved. That’s why I felt like I had to be such a squeaky wheel,” Doudna said. “My squeaky wheel is no longer there to squeak. And I think that’s what they wanted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘What can we do to make this better?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several former educators who left BMA earlier this school year — and those who work there still — said the climate has continued to deteriorate. Some said that with so many staff leaving, substitutes are filling in the gaps, but without the training or support they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of January, Aspire’s website shows BMA is looking to hire positions including elementary teachers, an instructional aide and a principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One former BMA educator said she left this school year because the job was unsustainable. She said she did not trust administrators to address student behavior or protect teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was like nothing I have ever experienced before,” she said. “It was kind of like you were thrown in the woods and you just have to survive.”[aside postID=news_12055955 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03248_TV-KQED.jpg']Parents are noticing the instability. One parent has also complained to Oakland Unified’s Office of Charter Schools this school year, records show, alleging that her daughter has “not received any IEP services since the start of the school year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the parent spoke with the principal, she was allegedly informed that the school does not have a Special Education coordinator. The parent believes the lack of a SpEd lead is preventing her daughter from accessing required services,” a summary of the complaint reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire said its schools are supported either by on-site SPED coordinators or by regional teams responsible for overseeing processes and coordinating services for students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alexander Asefaw pulled his fifth-grade son out of BMA this school year. In previous years, his son returned from BMA animated and excited. The family knew the teachers, and the teachers seemed happy. But Asefaw said much of the familiar staff were gone this year, and his son came home describing fights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asefaw had enough when he said another student threatened his son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of like you’re sending your kids to do UFC or wrestling instead of getting an education,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Polk said the turnover has been devastating for her siblings and that the school needs to give teachers and families a reason to stay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My little sister didn’t even want to go back to BMA this year. Her thing is, ‘Why am I going to go back when I’m not going to learn anything?’” King-Polk said. “I understand there’s a teacher shortage. The school I care about is BMA. So what can we do to make this better?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Former staff at Berkley Maynard Academy allege the school failed to meet the needs of students with disabilities, saying Aspire Public Schools ignored Individualized Education Program requirements, created unsafe classrooms and retaliated against staff who raised concerns.",
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"title": "‘Our School Felt Sick’: Former Staff Allege Turmoil at Berkley Maynard Academy | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>C’erah King-Polk was among the first elementary school students to attend Berkley Maynard Academy, or BMA, when the North \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/oakland\">Oakland\u003c/a> charter school opened in 2005.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school felt like home, and teachers and classmates were like family. King-Polk met her best friend at BMA, still keeps in touch with her fourth-grade teacher, and she later returned to work at BMA as an after-school educator and substitute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You ride with BMA, you die with BMA,” said King-Polk, who worked at BMA until 2024. “I was one of those students who gave my teachers a hard time, but I grew to realize the teachers I had were the ones who really cared about my education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BMA is part of Aspire Public Schools, an organization of California charter schools founded to address inequities in education and prepare underserved students for success. Generations of families were drawn in by the school’s mission of inclusion and support for students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beginning in the 2024-25 school year, King-Polk, as well as former staff at the school, say support systems rapidly unraveled. The former employees allege students with Individualized Education Programs — legally binding written documents outlining the services each student with a disability is entitled to — were not receiving sufficient support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Polk said her younger siblings felt the changes too: her sister told her she wasn’t learning in class and her brother, who has an IEP, wasn’t consistently receiving the services he needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057402\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057402\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-01_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkeley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know where the ball was dropped. But I know it was dropped,” King-Polk, 28, said. “There were so many ‘wants’ that nobody really paid attention to the ‘needs.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement, Javier Cabra Walteros, executive director for Aspire Public Schools in the Bay Area, said students, especially those with IEPs, remain the organization’s top priority. He wrote that while staffing in special education roles is a nationwide challenge, Aspire is “proud of our teammates who commit every day to providing a high-quality, equitable education to all students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A total of 14 former or current educators at BMA who spoke with KQED described a culture on campus where those who raised concerns about students with disabilities were ignored, dismissed or blamed. Some asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation or jeopardizing future employment, and said that without needed support to learn, students would become disruptive or violent in class, or in some instances, leave their classrooms or the campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The former assistant principal, who former colleagues described as a strong advocate for students with disabilities, was abruptly terminated midyear in 2024. Months later, a wave of educators decided to leave, finding the working environment unsustainable.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Now, two former employees — ex-assistant principal Iris Velasco (identified in court filings as Iris Velasco Wilkes) and former teacher Maryann Doudna — are suing Aspire Public Schools. They allege they were retaliated against for raising concerns about support for students with disabilities. They want justice for teachers and students, and say Aspire failed to live up to its mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I needed to do something to still try to advocate for those students even though I wasn’t going to be there to do it as their teacher,” Doudna said. “No kid should have to go through what a lot of these kids went through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to questions regarding the complaints, an Aspire Public Schools spokesperson wrote in an email that the organization “vehemently denies the egregious allegations made by these former employees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Aspire Public Schools said in a written statement that the organization could not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. The spokesperson said the California Department of Education found Aspire to be “broadly in compliance” with state and federal laws related to students with disabilities, and that an outside law firm determined all formal complaints alleging discrimination, harassment and retaliation were unsubstantiated and did not recommend any corrective action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s concerning that NPR is presenting a partial view of this issue based on allegations, some from anonymous sources, that we have proven to be false,” the spokesperson said. “This important topic deserves fair, informed reporting that reflects the full context of how public education and special education policies operate in schools at the systemic level, not assumptions and misconceptions that overlook the complexity of serving every student well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco filed a complaint with the California Department of Education, which records show found the school “in compliance” on five of the seven allegations and “out of compliance” on two.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The school where ‘people wanted to stay’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Until recently, BMA had a reputation as a jewel among Aspire campuses. Velasco became an assistant principal at BMA in 2023, drawn by the school’s strong reputation and long-serving principal, Jay Stack. She believed her experience in special education would be an asset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BMA is somewhere everyone wanted to be,” Velasco said. “And once you’re there, people wanted to stay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the 2023-24 school year, Stack was leaving after nearly two decades with BMA. The community braced for change. But once the hiring process began, former teachers said their perspectives on who should next lead their school were overlooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057571\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-02-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aspire Berkeley Maynard Academy in Oakland on Sept. 23, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a statement, a spokesperson for Aspire said the organization “maintains a consistent hiring process that aligns with Aspire’s mission and values” and that there are “verifiable examples of where BMA staff provided feedback about the process, and that feedback was incorporated immediately and/or in future hiring processes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The principal who was initially hired to replace Stack did not last long: Daron Frazier left the school after allegedly making derogatory social media posts. The posts, reviewed by KQED, include tweets “Why do white people feel the need to speak to me AT ALL” and “White people couldn’t find the mind your got damn business button if that shit was on their forehead.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement, Frazier said BMA employees were not privy to confidential information regarding his separation, and the allegations are false.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wish the community nothing but the best and I pray for the success of the current leaders of BMA,” Frazier wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Frazier left, Cabra Walteros, executive director of Aspire Public Schools Bay Area, stepped in as BMA’s interim principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco said she had concerns early on. She alleges the school began seeing students with more moderate to extensive needs, but lacked staff and resources to provide the legally mandated services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without needed support, students wandered from classrooms or left campus, she said. Velasco recalled finding a kindergarten student who required a one-to-one aide but hadn’t been assigned one, crying in the middle of campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went to try to console him, and he just folded and really shut down,” Velasco said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco said the health of a school can often be measured by its special education department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our school felt sick,” Velasco said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Velasco alleges that she repeatedly raised concerns with administrators, but was met with hostility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of Aspire campuses in the Bay Area, BMA has the largest Black student population, according to a review of demographic data from Aspire’s website and Ed-Data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BMA just happens to be our Blackest school, and for them to do wrong by our school with the most Black scholars is just particularly egregious,” Velasco said. “There were conscious choices made. I don’t want that message to get lost.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment on specifics in pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spokesperson said Aspire’s regional team meets weekly with BMA to provide coaching for teachers and leaders, as well as targeted support in special education, student services and operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire’s spokesperson also noted that the organization provides extensive data to the California Department of Education, and that Oakland Unified has the authority to review complaints, “ensuring multiple layers of oversight and accountability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Protesting an administrator’s firing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In October 2024, Velasco filed a complaint with Aspire’s human resources department, alleging whistleblower retaliation for reporting several issues at the school, including alleged violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weeks later, she learned the complaint was deemed unsubstantiated, according to her lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just over an hour later, she was terminated, a sequence she alleges was retaliatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of those folks who made the decision to terminate me saw firsthand how much that hurt students. They saw firsthand students crying, the families were asking questions, teachers were asking questions,” Velasco said. “I still cannot fathom that the decision was made to release me when there was clearly such a need for support. I was never told why.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The day after Velasco’s firing, teachers wore black in protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was a huge advocate for special ed students at our school,” said Lili Kuchar, a former reading interventionist at BMA who considers Velasco a whistleblower. “You fire the person who knows what they are doing? It made no sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former and current educators said Velasco’s firing left them afraid of speaking out or raising concerns. Students asked about the missing administrator who checked in on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of the kids were like, ‘Where is she?’ They thought she died. We’re talking about kids with trauma. She didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody,” Kuchar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire said it upholds a comprehensive anti-retaliation policy and anyone who believes they are subject to or have witnessed retaliation is encouraged to report it to the organization’s HR department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As it relates to these claims, an independent law firm conducted an extensive investigation and determined that all formal complaints made to Aspire alleging discrimination, harassment, and retaliation were unsubstantiated and did not recommend any corrective actions,” an Aspire spokesperson wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The difficult choice to leave\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Doudna, the teacher who is suing Aspire, alleges in her lawsuit that during the 2024-25 school year, she also saw how lapses in IEP support made the campus less safe. One of her students, who she said wasn’t receiving mandated services, began hitting classmates and screaming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you are not feeling safe in your classroom, it’s hard to learn,” Doudna said. “And after a certain point in the year, there had been so much damage done that the support the student did receive — it still wasn’t the full services the student was entitled to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057570\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057570\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250923-ASPIRE-SAFETY-CONDITIONS-MD-06-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maryann Doudna outside her home in Oakland on Sept. 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She alleges that the more she raised concerns, the less support she received from administrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was ignored,” Doudna said. “There would be fights in class. I would reach out to different administrators for support, and no one would come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Aspire spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the school year, she felt she could no longer keep students safe and made the painful decision to leave the school she had planned to retire from, a choice many of her colleagues also made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It makes me sick that the students in our community were not getting what they deserved. That’s why I felt like I had to be such a squeaky wheel,” Doudna said. “My squeaky wheel is no longer there to squeak. And I think that’s what they wanted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘What can we do to make this better?’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several former educators who left BMA earlier this school year — and those who work there still — said the climate has continued to deteriorate. Some said that with so many staff leaving, substitutes are filling in the gaps, but without the training or support they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of January, Aspire’s website shows BMA is looking to hire positions including elementary teachers, an instructional aide and a principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One former BMA educator said she left this school year because the job was unsustainable. She said she did not trust administrators to address student behavior or protect teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was like nothing I have ever experienced before,” she said. “It was kind of like you were thrown in the woods and you just have to survive.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Parents are noticing the instability. One parent has also complained to Oakland Unified’s Office of Charter Schools this school year, records show, alleging that her daughter has “not received any IEP services since the start of the school year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the parent spoke with the principal, she was allegedly informed that the school does not have a Special Education coordinator. The parent believes the lack of a SpEd lead is preventing her daughter from accessing required services,” a summary of the complaint reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aspire said its schools are supported either by on-site SPED coordinators or by regional teams responsible for overseeing processes and coordinating services for students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alexander Asefaw pulled his fifth-grade son out of BMA this school year. In previous years, his son returned from BMA animated and excited. The family knew the teachers, and the teachers seemed happy. But Asefaw said much of the familiar staff were gone this year, and his son came home describing fights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asefaw had enough when he said another student threatened his son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of like you’re sending your kids to do UFC or wrestling instead of getting an education,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Polk said the turnover has been devastating for her siblings and that the school needs to give teachers and families a reason to stay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My little sister didn’t even want to go back to BMA this year. Her thing is, ‘Why am I going to go back when I’m not going to learn anything?’” King-Polk said. “I understand there’s a teacher shortage. The school I care about is BMA. So what can we do to make this better?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, September 17, 2025…\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/g-s1-88926/fbi-director-patel-testimony-congress\">In his first Senate oversight hearing since taking office,\u003c/a> FBI Director Kash Patel called California Senator Adam Schiff, quote “a political buffoon.” Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee days after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">Santa Barbara Senator Monique Limón is set to become the leader of the California Senate this November, and \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/budget-bill-santa-barbara-housing-project/\">a recent housing bill she authored is raising some eyebrows.\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">California has been experiencing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12001920/valley-fever-california-bay-area-fungus-symptoms-cases-map-diagnosis-and-treatment\">a record number of cases of Valley Fever\u003c/a>, a fungal infection that’s caused by breathing in spores that live in the soil.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cdiv class=\"ArticlePage-main-content\">\n\u003carticle class=\"ArticlePage-mainContent\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"ArticlePage-headingContent\">\n\u003ch3 class=\"post-card__title\">Adam Schiff and Kash Patel Get Into Heated Confrontation\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff questioned FBI Director Kash Patel on the details related to the transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison. Patel began shouting during the exchange, saying that was not his job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic leadership, and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you,” Patel said, adding that Schiff was “the biggest fraud to ever sit in the U.S. Senate” and an “utter coward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schiff later described Patel as “an Internet troll.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/budget-bill-santa-barbara-housing-project/\">Carveout for Building Rules Appears to Target Single Project\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>The California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA, which requires government agencies to review the environmental impact of any development, including new housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many developers argue that the CEQA review process has turned into a tactic to block or delay new housing. That’s why it was a big deal this summer \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312092189.html\">when state lawmakers approved a bill that would roll back CEQA requirements for a lot of urban housing developments.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A proposal that went to Governor Newsom over the weekend would keep these CEQA requirements in place \u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.com/2025/09/15/big-build-behind-santa-barbara-mission-slated-for-environmental-review/\">on one tiny plot of land in Senator Monique Limón’s Santa Barbara district.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senator Limón wrote the carve out. In a statement through her office, she denied that it’s targeting any one project, although she wasn’t able to point to any other projects that it would apply to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Limón becomes the state Senate leader in November, and housing activists say the 11th-hour carve-out could be a bad sign for pro-development legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Valley Fever Hits Salinas Valley Hard\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As California experiences a record number of cases of Valley Fever cases, the Salinas Valley is seeing one of the largest spikes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds of dust rise up behind trucks and tractors in the fields and sweep across Highway 101 in the wind, creating the perfect conditions to spread spores of the fungus that causes Valley Fever. People who work outside, like farm and construction workers, are especially at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jessica Bader, though, doesn’t work outside. She and her husband Brian Bader live with their two children in Paso Robles, on the southern end of the Salinas Valley. Late last year, Jessica started feeling sick with symptoms similar to the flu or COVID-19, but she tested negative. Her doctor gave her antibiotics for pneumonia, but she kept getting worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven months pregnant on New Year’s Eve, she rushed to the emergency room. By the time she was diagnosed with Valley Fever, the infection had spread to her spinal cord and brain, a form of the illness called cocci meningitis. Bader survived, and she now takes a powerful anti-fungal every day to keep the disease at bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most cases are so mild they don’t require any treatment at all. But anyone who inhales the spores can get a severe infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/article>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, September 17, 2025…\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/g-s1-88926/fbi-director-patel-testimony-congress\">In his first Senate oversight hearing since taking office,\u003c/a> FBI Director Kash Patel called California Senator Adam Schiff, quote “a political buffoon.” Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee days after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">Santa Barbara Senator Monique Limón is set to become the leader of the California Senate this November, and \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/budget-bill-santa-barbara-housing-project/\">a recent housing bill she authored is raising some eyebrows.\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">California has been experiencing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12001920/valley-fever-california-bay-area-fungus-symptoms-cases-map-diagnosis-and-treatment\">a record number of cases of Valley Fever\u003c/a>, a fungal infection that’s caused by breathing in spores that live in the soil.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cdiv class=\"ArticlePage-main-content\">\n\u003carticle class=\"ArticlePage-mainContent\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"ArticlePage-headingContent\">\n\u003ch3 class=\"post-card__title\">Adam Schiff and Kash Patel Get Into Heated Confrontation\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff questioned FBI Director Kash Patel on the details related to the transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison. Patel began shouting during the exchange, saying that was not his job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic leadership, and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you,” Patel said, adding that Schiff was “the biggest fraud to ever sit in the U.S. Senate” and an “utter coward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schiff later described Patel as “an Internet troll.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/budget-bill-santa-barbara-housing-project/\">Carveout for Building Rules Appears to Target Single Project\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>The California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA, which requires government agencies to review the environmental impact of any development, including new housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many developers argue that the CEQA review process has turned into a tactic to block or delay new housing. That’s why it was a big deal this summer \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312092189.html\">when state lawmakers approved a bill that would roll back CEQA requirements for a lot of urban housing developments.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A proposal that went to Governor Newsom over the weekend would keep these CEQA requirements in place \u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.com/2025/09/15/big-build-behind-santa-barbara-mission-slated-for-environmental-review/\">on one tiny plot of land in Senator Monique Limón’s Santa Barbara district.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senator Limón wrote the carve out. In a statement through her office, she denied that it’s targeting any one project, although she wasn’t able to point to any other projects that it would apply to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Limón becomes the state Senate leader in November, and housing activists say the 11th-hour carve-out could be a bad sign for pro-development legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Valley Fever Hits Salinas Valley Hard\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As California experiences a record number of cases of Valley Fever cases, the Salinas Valley is seeing one of the largest spikes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds of dust rise up behind trucks and tractors in the fields and sweep across Highway 101 in the wind, creating the perfect conditions to spread spores of the fungus that causes Valley Fever. People who work outside, like farm and construction workers, are especially at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jessica Bader, though, doesn’t work outside. She and her husband Brian Bader live with their two children in Paso Robles, on the southern end of the Salinas Valley. Late last year, Jessica started feeling sick with symptoms similar to the flu or COVID-19, but she tested negative. Her doctor gave her antibiotics for pneumonia, but she kept getting worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven months pregnant on New Year’s Eve, she rushed to the emergency room. By the time she was diagnosed with Valley Fever, the infection had spread to her spinal cord and brain, a form of the illness called cocci meningitis. Bader survived, and she now takes a powerful anti-fungal every day to keep the disease at bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most cases are so mild they don’t require any treatment at all. But anyone who inhales the spores can get a severe infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/article>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Parents Say Lunch, Recess Changes at San José School Leave Kids Hungry, Confused",
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"content": "\u003cp>When the school year began at Ruskin Elementary School in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> last month, students returned to a changed campus. Enrollment nearly doubled, from about 370 to more than 700, after a nearby elementary school closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Cherrywood Elementary students — from one of three Berryessa Union schools shuttered amid declining enrollment — transferred to Ruskin. Cherrywood’s principal, its Dual Immersion Mandarin Program and its teachers also relocated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now parents and their children are adjusting to what several describe as a chaotic, confusing transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My concern was trial and error, which is what they’re doing this year with our kids,” said Tina De Vera, a Ruskin parent for more than a decade who now has two children at the school. “There wasn’t a contingency, proactive plan put in place. So now they’re just going to try and go each day and see what works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new principal for the larger student body has introduced new routines and protocols. Some of the changes have upset parents who never wanted the closures. Several said their children have been rushed through lunch to accommodate the additional students, and many worry about safety as traffic worsens during drop-off and pick-up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055486\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12055486 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play at Ruskin Elementary School in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. Parents at Ruskin Elementary School in San José say school consolidations have caused chaos on campus, leading to unsafe traffic and hurried school lunches. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’ve seen three students over the course of the beginning of the school year almost get run over at crosswalks,” De Vera said. Parents are making dangerous U-turns, she added. “Cars are just illegally blocking traffic so that they can let their kids run out of their cars onto the campus. There is no order.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District spokesperson Perla Rodriguez said officials remain committed to promoting safe routes to schools. As a “Walk n’ Roll District,” Rodriguez said Berryessa Union partners with San José to teach safe walking and biking skills. San José will also conduct a formal traffic study this month at the district’s request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We remain committed to listening with care, learning from one another, and working side by side with all of our Ruskin families,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “Together, we will build a united community that honors the strengths of both schools and ensures the very best for our students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>School lunches and growing pains\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several parents are also concerned about the allotted time for school lunches. They said their children have felt pressure to finish meals in less than 15 minutes after sitting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Justin Chaudoin, another Ruskin parent, said during the first week of school, his third-grade daughter came home hungry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055485\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055485\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Chaudoin, a parent who is vocal about the impact of school district changes on his child, poses for a portrait at Ruskin Elementary School in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“She was like, ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ Usually, that’s her ploy to get me to take her to McDonald’s or something,” Chaudoin said. But his daughter told him she didn’t have enough time to eat, and that the staff urged students to hurry. “She said, ‘It made me nervous and angry because I wanted to eat my food, and I couldn’t. And I didn’t know what was happening. They were just telling us to leave.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Department of Education recommends students \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/sn/timetoeat.asp\">have at least 20 minutes to eat\u003c/a> lunch once seated.[aside postID=news_12053938 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-172_qed.jpg']In the school’s newsletter, Principal Tina Tong Choy wrote that Ruskin is now feeding more than 700 students in under two hours, and students who need more time may stay to finish their meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another practice unsettling some parents is a recess protocol where students are told to “freeze” when the bell rings. Some children thought they were supposed to sit, squat or kneel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anything that is not a norm for Ruskin and is a norm now should have been communicated ahead of time, especially things like this,” parent Jessica Bustos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodriguez, the district spokesperson, said routines for recess and lunch breaks are still new and evolving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the school newsletter, Tong Choy acknowledged “growing pains,” adding that what worked last year “may or may not work for our school community now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t an overnight change, but one that gets better and smoother day by day,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bringing Mandarin Immersion to a new home\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before Cherrywood Elementary closed, parents pushed to keep it open and preserve its \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2022/dual-immersion-programs-show-promise-in-fighting-enrollment-declines/677296\">Mandarin Immersion program\u003c/a>, built from the ground up since 2018. Parent Karen Khasymska joined the push to keep Cherrywood open, collaborating with others on a paper arguing enrollment was strong and moving the program would disrupt its success and future district funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Cherrywood closed, she prepared to enroll her daughter at Ruskin for the second grade, encouraged that many classmates would transfer too. Her optimism faded when she learned her daughter would be placed in a “combination class” with first graders because other second-grade classes were full. She transferred her daughter to a private school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055490\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055490\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ruskin Elementary School stands on 1401 Turlock Lane in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. Parents at Ruskin Elementary School in San José say school consolidations have caused chaos on campus, leading to unsafe traffic and hurried school lunches. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We wanted our public school to work out for us,” Khasymska said. “It was disappointing and certainly a lot of scrambling that first week. We had to consider a Plan B that we hadn’t thought we’d have to consider.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khasymska said she knows other Cherrywood families who turned to private schools. “Things are happening at such an accelerated rate or they’re not giving the teachers or school administration the chance to plan or think things through or look at their numbers,” Khasymska said. “I think there was just so much happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all parents describe the same disruption. Former Cherrywood parent Chandan Bhat said the school year at Ruskin has been “so far, so good” for his third-grade son.[aside postID=news_12040597 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/02172023_ksuzuki_tkprogress-010_qed-1-1020x679.jpg']“He’s still in the Mandarin Immersion program. His teachers haven’t changed, his classmates haven’t changed, even the principal for Ruskin [was] the principal at Cherrywood,” Bhat said. “So in some sense, some things have changed, but a lot of the things are the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to the program, both his daughter and son are learning Mandarin, achieving success in competitions and making him proud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His main concern is the traffic, which he hopes will be addressed soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodriguez said Berryessa Union is now on a stronger financial footing and the budget has stabilized after closures and other fiscal measures. She said funding can fluctuate with state allocations and enrollment trends, but there are “currently no plans for additional closures in the near future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across California, public school enrollment \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12041122/california-public-school-enrollment-continues-post-pandemic-decline\">continues to decline\u003c/a> due to lower birth rates, families moving out of state and rising private and home school enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means more school districts will face the challenge of closing and consolidating schools — and doing so without breaking parents’ trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Parents Say Lunch, Recess Changes at San José School Leave Kids Hungry, Confused | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When the school year began at Ruskin Elementary School in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> last month, students returned to a changed campus. Enrollment nearly doubled, from about 370 to more than 700, after a nearby elementary school closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Cherrywood Elementary students — from one of three Berryessa Union schools shuttered amid declining enrollment — transferred to Ruskin. Cherrywood’s principal, its Dual Immersion Mandarin Program and its teachers also relocated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now parents and their children are adjusting to what several describe as a chaotic, confusing transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My concern was trial and error, which is what they’re doing this year with our kids,” said Tina De Vera, a Ruskin parent for more than a decade who now has two children at the school. “There wasn’t a contingency, proactive plan put in place. So now they’re just going to try and go each day and see what works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new principal for the larger student body has introduced new routines and protocols. Some of the changes have upset parents who never wanted the closures. Several said their children have been rushed through lunch to accommodate the additional students, and many worry about safety as traffic worsens during drop-off and pick-up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055486\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12055486 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03241_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play at Ruskin Elementary School in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. Parents at Ruskin Elementary School in San José say school consolidations have caused chaos on campus, leading to unsafe traffic and hurried school lunches. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’ve seen three students over the course of the beginning of the school year almost get run over at crosswalks,” De Vera said. Parents are making dangerous U-turns, she added. “Cars are just illegally blocking traffic so that they can let their kids run out of their cars onto the campus. There is no order.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District spokesperson Perla Rodriguez said officials remain committed to promoting safe routes to schools. As a “Walk n’ Roll District,” Rodriguez said Berryessa Union partners with San José to teach safe walking and biking skills. San José will also conduct a formal traffic study this month at the district’s request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We remain committed to listening with care, learning from one another, and working side by side with all of our Ruskin families,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “Together, we will build a united community that honors the strengths of both schools and ensures the very best for our students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>School lunches and growing pains\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several parents are also concerned about the allotted time for school lunches. They said their children have felt pressure to finish meals in less than 15 minutes after sitting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Justin Chaudoin, another Ruskin parent, said during the first week of school, his third-grade daughter came home hungry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055485\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055485\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03238_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Chaudoin, a parent who is vocal about the impact of school district changes on his child, poses for a portrait at Ruskin Elementary School in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“She was like, ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ Usually, that’s her ploy to get me to take her to McDonald’s or something,” Chaudoin said. But his daughter told him she didn’t have enough time to eat, and that the staff urged students to hurry. “She said, ‘It made me nervous and angry because I wanted to eat my food, and I couldn’t. And I didn’t know what was happening. They were just telling us to leave.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Department of Education recommends students \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/sn/timetoeat.asp\">have at least 20 minutes to eat\u003c/a> lunch once seated.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In the school’s newsletter, Principal Tina Tong Choy wrote that Ruskin is now feeding more than 700 students in under two hours, and students who need more time may stay to finish their meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another practice unsettling some parents is a recess protocol where students are told to “freeze” when the bell rings. Some children thought they were supposed to sit, squat or kneel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anything that is not a norm for Ruskin and is a norm now should have been communicated ahead of time, especially things like this,” parent Jessica Bustos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodriguez, the district spokesperson, said routines for recess and lunch breaks are still new and evolving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the school newsletter, Tong Choy acknowledged “growing pains,” adding that what worked last year “may or may not work for our school community now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This isn’t an overnight change, but one that gets better and smoother day by day,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bringing Mandarin Immersion to a new home\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before Cherrywood Elementary closed, parents pushed to keep it open and preserve its \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2022/dual-immersion-programs-show-promise-in-fighting-enrollment-declines/677296\">Mandarin Immersion program\u003c/a>, built from the ground up since 2018. Parent Karen Khasymska joined the push to keep Cherrywood open, collaborating with others on a paper arguing enrollment was strong and moving the program would disrupt its success and future district funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Cherrywood closed, she prepared to enroll her daughter at Ruskin for the second grade, encouraged that many classmates would transfer too. Her optimism faded when she learned her daughter would be placed in a “combination class” with first graders because other second-grade classes were full. She transferred her daughter to a private school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055490\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055490\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250909-BERRYESSAUNIONCLOSURES_03267_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ruskin Elementary School stands on 1401 Turlock Lane in San José on Sept. 9, 2025. Parents at Ruskin Elementary School in San José say school consolidations have caused chaos on campus, leading to unsafe traffic and hurried school lunches. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We wanted our public school to work out for us,” Khasymska said. “It was disappointing and certainly a lot of scrambling that first week. We had to consider a Plan B that we hadn’t thought we’d have to consider.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khasymska said she knows other Cherrywood families who turned to private schools. “Things are happening at such an accelerated rate or they’re not giving the teachers or school administration the chance to plan or think things through or look at their numbers,” Khasymska said. “I think there was just so much happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all parents describe the same disruption. Former Cherrywood parent Chandan Bhat said the school year at Ruskin has been “so far, so good” for his third-grade son.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“He’s still in the Mandarin Immersion program. His teachers haven’t changed, his classmates haven’t changed, even the principal for Ruskin [was] the principal at Cherrywood,” Bhat said. “So in some sense, some things have changed, but a lot of the things are the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to the program, both his daughter and son are learning Mandarin, achieving success in competitions and making him proud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His main concern is the traffic, which he hopes will be addressed soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodriguez said Berryessa Union is now on a stronger financial footing and the budget has stabilized after closures and other fiscal measures. She said funding can fluctuate with state allocations and enrollment trends, but there are “currently no plans for additional closures in the near future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across California, public school enrollment \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12041122/california-public-school-enrollment-continues-post-pandemic-decline\">continues to decline\u003c/a> due to lower birth rates, families moving out of state and rising private and home school enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means more school districts will face the challenge of closing and consolidating schools — and doing so without breaking parents’ trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "former-san-jose-principal-sues-alum-rock-school-district-alleging-retaliation-over-abuse-report",
"title": "Former San José Principal Sues Alum Rock School District, Alleging Retaliation Over Abuse Report",
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"headTitle": "Former San José Principal Sues Alum Rock School District, Alleging Retaliation Over Abuse Report | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>More than two years ago, parents of children at Adelante Dual Language Academy in San José called on the district to bring back their principal, Maria Gutierrez. Now, Gutierrez is suing Alum Rock Union School District, alleging she was placed on leave and eventually terminated in retaliation for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11990571/east-san-jose-school-conspired-to-hide-teachers-sexual-abuse-11-victims-allege-in-lawsuit\">reporting the school’s music teacher\u003c/a>, Israel Santiago, to authorities for suspected abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gutierrez said she was a well-respected principal, known for her dedication to student success and fostering a supportive school culture. But she claims district administrators responded with hostility, engaging in a systemic effort to discredit, intimidate and isolate her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alum Rock Union School District declined to comment on pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the complaint, Gutierrez reported Santiago to Child Protective Services and law enforcement in November 2022, triggering a criminal investigation that led to his arrest for multiple counts of molestation and lewd acts on a child by force. Santiago is currently serving a prison sentence for the abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Days after reporting Santiago, Gutierrez said she was placed on administrative leave and later terminated. She alleges the district reported her to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing in an effort to damage her career prospects and prevent future employment in education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Defendants made Plaintiff a scapegoat for their systemic failures in addressing Santiago’s misconduct,” the suit reads. “Rather than taking accountability, they shifted blame onto Plaintiff to protect their reputations and evade responsibility for their inaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053963\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053963\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign outside Adelante Dual Language Academy is pictured in San José, California on June 8 2023. Records obtained by KQED show a music teacher arrested this year for sexually abusing 10 students at Adelante Academy had complaints at a different school for inappropriately touching students before he was transferred. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Records obtained by KQED show that students at two other district schools had reported Santiago’s behavior from 2012 through 2014. Despite repeated complaints of inappropriate touching, the district issued a letter of reprimand and transferred him to another school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After transferring Santiago to Adelante, the district did not inform site leadership or parents about his history of complaints, according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez alleges she was punished for exposing the district’s institutional failures, while those who failed to report or shielded Santiago were not disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imee Almazan, the former Sheppard Middle School principal who investigated Santiago in 2014, was appointed interim superintendent in 2024, though she is no longer with the district, according to her LinkedIn.[aside postID=news_11990571 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/RS66175_20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-111-KQED-1020x678.jpg']The Alum Rock school board is also facing scrutiny over its decision to close or consolidate schools, and the abrupt firing of its most recent superintendent. In an interview with \u003ca href=\"https://sanjosespotlight.com/east-san-jose-alum-rock-union-school-district-leader-fired-for-looking-into-questionable-expenses/\">\u003cem>San José Spotlight\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, former superintendent German Cerda said he was let go after asking board members to reimburse questionable expenses billed to the district. Cerda said Board Vice President Andres Quintero received more than $27,000 in reimbursements from the district for an online doctorate program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Quintero called the claims “baseless,” saying every reimbursement request he submitted followed proper procedures and was approved by district administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is calling on Cerda to release his own personnel file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Alum Rock community deserves facts, not insinuations. While I remain committed to transparency and accountability, I will not be silent in the face of false and damaging accusations,” Quintero wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Clara County Office of Education has \u003ca href=\"https://www.sccoe.org/news/NR/Pages/audit-request-ARUSD.aspx\">requested an audit\u003c/a> of the Alum Rock Union School District in response to concerns regarding the “reimbursement of board members for education and training.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next Alum Rock board meeting is scheduled for Thursday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Former San José Principal Sues Alum Rock School District, Alleging Retaliation Over Abuse Report | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>More than two years ago, parents of children at Adelante Dual Language Academy in San José called on the district to bring back their principal, Maria Gutierrez. Now, Gutierrez is suing Alum Rock Union School District, alleging she was placed on leave and eventually terminated in retaliation for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11990571/east-san-jose-school-conspired-to-hide-teachers-sexual-abuse-11-victims-allege-in-lawsuit\">reporting the school’s music teacher\u003c/a>, Israel Santiago, to authorities for suspected abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gutierrez said she was a well-respected principal, known for her dedication to student success and fostering a supportive school culture. But she claims district administrators responded with hostility, engaging in a systemic effort to discredit, intimidate and isolate her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alum Rock Union School District declined to comment on pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the complaint, Gutierrez reported Santiago to Child Protective Services and law enforcement in November 2022, triggering a criminal investigation that led to his arrest for multiple counts of molestation and lewd acts on a child by force. Santiago is currently serving a prison sentence for the abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Days after reporting Santiago, Gutierrez said she was placed on administrative leave and later terminated. She alleges the district reported her to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing in an effort to damage her career prospects and prevent future employment in education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Defendants made Plaintiff a scapegoat for their systemic failures in addressing Santiago’s misconduct,” the suit reads. “Rather than taking accountability, they shifted blame onto Plaintiff to protect their reputations and evade responsibility for their inaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053963\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053963\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/20230608_ksuzuki_adelanteschool-081_qed-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign outside Adelante Dual Language Academy is pictured in San José, California on June 8 2023. Records obtained by KQED show a music teacher arrested this year for sexually abusing 10 students at Adelante Academy had complaints at a different school for inappropriately touching students before he was transferred. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Records obtained by KQED show that students at two other district schools had reported Santiago’s behavior from 2012 through 2014. Despite repeated complaints of inappropriate touching, the district issued a letter of reprimand and transferred him to another school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After transferring Santiago to Adelante, the district did not inform site leadership or parents about his history of complaints, according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez alleges she was punished for exposing the district’s institutional failures, while those who failed to report or shielded Santiago were not disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imee Almazan, the former Sheppard Middle School principal who investigated Santiago in 2014, was appointed interim superintendent in 2024, though she is no longer with the district, according to her LinkedIn.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Alum Rock school board is also facing scrutiny over its decision to close or consolidate schools, and the abrupt firing of its most recent superintendent. In an interview with \u003ca href=\"https://sanjosespotlight.com/east-san-jose-alum-rock-union-school-district-leader-fired-for-looking-into-questionable-expenses/\">\u003cem>San José Spotlight\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, former superintendent German Cerda said he was let go after asking board members to reimburse questionable expenses billed to the district. Cerda said Board Vice President Andres Quintero received more than $27,000 in reimbursements from the district for an online doctorate program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Quintero called the claims “baseless,” saying every reimbursement request he submitted followed proper procedures and was approved by district administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is calling on Cerda to release his own personnel file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Alum Rock community deserves facts, not insinuations. While I remain committed to transparency and accountability, I will not be silent in the face of false and damaging accusations,” Quintero wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Clara County Office of Education has \u003ca href=\"https://www.sccoe.org/news/NR/Pages/audit-request-ARUSD.aspx\">requested an audit\u003c/a> of the Alum Rock Union School District in response to concerns regarding the “reimbursement of board members for education and training.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next Alum Rock board meeting is scheduled for Thursday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"order": 9
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
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"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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