A San Francisco Bay Area school district has removed a middle school math teacher for the rest of the school year after a joint investigation by KQED and ProPublica revealed he had faced accusations of inappropriately touching students at two prior schools. The Redwood City School District has received at least two additional complaints about Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed them and district emails confirming that both are under investigation. The news organizations reported that the state’s teacher licensing board permitted Agan to retain his teaching credentials after he was fired in 2019 from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what officials described as the sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent from Angelo Rodriguez High School filed formal written complaints about Agan’s conduct with school officials, resulting in at least two warnings for him to stop, according to an investigation by KQED and ProPublica. Students from the district testified at Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uneasy by massaging their necks or shoulders and by commenting on female students’ clothing. Those accounts led an independent panel to conclude he was “unfit to teach,” records obtained by the news organizations show. In 2021, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing—the state agency that oversees educator licenses—suspended Agan’s teaching credential for seven days. By then, he had already taken a new position teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School, part of the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, roughly an hour from his previous school. The disciplinary action, along with a red-flag icon, appears in the state’s public database of credentialed teachers, but no explanation for the sanction is provided. A database search of his name would show that he still possessed credentials confirming he was legally qualified to teach. At his second school, Ephraim Williams, Agan faced yet another complaint of inappropriate touching, which led to a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He departed the school in June 2022 and began teaching mathematics at Clifford School, a prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade institution in Redwood City, that August. He was teaching there when the investigation came to light. David Weekly, president of the Redwood City school board, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board intends to examine the district’s hiring procedures after Clifford parents issued a public letter demanding both that review and an independent investigation into whether district officials had known about earlier complaints against Agan. “Parents deserve to know their children are safe and that the district is doing a thorough job of carefully screening the people who will be working closely with their kids,” Weekly said in a written statement. Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker informed the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has hired an outside investigator to examine its hiring practices and protocols, according to a letter shared by the district spokesperson. Deputy Superintendent Wendy Kelly had previously told KQED and ProPublica that the district’s standard hiring process includes contacting candidates’ immediate supervisors and checking the state database of licensed educators. She refused to respond to queries about Agan’s recruitment or confirm if the school district knew of misconduct allegations from his two prior schools. In the hours following the story’s publication, Clifford principal Kristy Jackson sent an email to parents detailing the district’s hiring procedures. While noting she could not address confidential personnel issues, she added, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.” Agan, who faces no criminal charges, did not reply to requests for comment on the fresh allegations following his removal from the school. He also failed to reply to emails and certified letters sent to his home inquiring about the students’ allegations and his employment record.
