He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KQED. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. 

Jason Agan was impossible to miss at Angelo Rodriguez High School. The San Francisco 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.

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.

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 ProPublica investigation found. By January 2019, the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District had taken steps to fire him, suspending him without pay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A broad look at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing by KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.

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.

The agency appoints a committee to assess noncriminal cases of misconduct, she said. Agan has not been accused of a crime.

“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.

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.

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.

“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.

Amid this gap in oversight, Agan found two new jobs and remains in the classroom.

Student complaints start piling up

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.

Then, in 2018, several sophomores in his accelerated math class reported him to school administrators.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

“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.’”

Steed, now 23, told KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

One of those students told KQED and ProPublica 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.

“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.”

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.

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.

In November 2019, the panel unanimously decided Agan should lose his job. Even the teacher chosen by Agan agreed.

“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.”

One of the panelists told KQED and ProPublica that she voted to terminate Agan’s employment in part because his alleged behavior continued even after administrators issued warnings.

“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.”

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.

The disciplinary process typically takes one year, according to the agency.

It would take the state licensing board nearly 500 days to decide what to do in Agan’s case.

How Agan returned to the classroom 

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.

Agan provided stellar letters of recommendation from former teaching colleagues in his application, which school representatives provided to KQED and ProPublica in response to a public records request.

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 in the online public records did it say that Agan remained under investigation by the agency — let alone any details of his employment record.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.​”

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.

Corey, the former superintendent of Fairfield-Suisun Unified, told KQED and ProPublica that she was “flabbergasted” that he had only been suspended for seven days.

“It was a real mismatch of what happened,” Corey said. “What a disservice it was to those girls.”

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.

“What’s even the point of going through this whole process?” she said.

A middle school student details unwanted touching 

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.

The student told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back, according to a summary of the complaint.

The girl’s mother told KQED and ProPublica 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.

The girl, who is now 17, spoke to KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Agan denied the allegations in a written response to Rubino obtained by KQED and ProPublica. “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.”

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.

“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 ProPublica. “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.”

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.

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 ProPublica. A Fortune spokesperson did not say why the charter school did not ask for the information.

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.

With just weeks left in the school year, Leslie pulled her daughter out of Ephraim Williams to finish eighth grade at another school.

She only learned about Agan’s disciplinary history when KQED and ProPublica contacted her in January. “The whole education system would rather protect him,” Leslie said. “You let him loose on all these kids.”

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.

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.

“Thank you for the last two years,” Agan wrote, resigning from the school. “It has meant more to me than you could ever know.”

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.

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.

She told KQED and ProPublica that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators.

She said school districts rely on decisions by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to “put the best people in the classroom.”

“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.” 

How we reported this story

KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.

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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.

The California Newsroom 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.