California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints

A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an investigation by KQED and ProPublica that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.

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.

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

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 ProPublica’s investigation found.

Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their neck 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 public letter, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.

“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.

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.

Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

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 ProPublica published the story.

Hanni says Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.

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.

“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.

Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and ProPublica 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.

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.

“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.”

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.

State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared ProPublica and KQED’s investigation on social media and wrote: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”

A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.

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.

“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.”

Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.

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.

In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and ProPublica, 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 ProPublica.

Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.

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.

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