by Holly McDede, KQED, and Mollie Simon, ProPublica
(This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KQED.)
Reporting Highlights
Massages in Class: A California teacher was deemed “unfit to teach” after students reported him for touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable, including massaging their shoulders.
License to Teach: Jason Agan is one of 67 teachers whose credentials were not revoked by California after their schools determined they had committed sexual harassment or misconduct.
A Red Flag: The only visible sign that a teacher has been disciplined is a red flag icon next to their name on the state website of credentialed educators. It does not specify why.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
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.
“If our job as teachers is to keep children safe, we have to be held accountable for things we do that could harm them.”
Alicia DeRollo, former commissioner on California’s teacher licensing agency
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 have 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.
Julia Steed, a Rodriguez High graduate, had complained to school administrators about Agan touching students. Beth LaBerge/KQED
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 those classmates said he also made inappropriate comments and touched students in his leadership class.
The student was so distraught 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.
READ FULL STORY HERE: https://www.propublica.org/article/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment
