A San Francisco Bay Area school district replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the school year following a investigation conducted by KQED and ProPublica it 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 parents indicating it was investigating both.
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Media reports discovered that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials after he was fired in 2019 from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials said was sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School filed written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, asking them to stop at least twice, the investigation by KQED and ProPublica found.
Students in that district testified at Agan’s termination hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their necks or shoulders and commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by media outlets.
The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for licensing educators, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already secured another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour from his first school.
The discipline — accompanied by 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 who searched his name in the database would see that he still held credentials indicating he was legally qualified to teach.
At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he filed another complaint about unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and began teaching math at the Clifford School, a K-8 school in Redwood City, in August. This is where he was teaching at the time the investigation was published.
David Weekly, president of the Redwood City School Board, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford’s parents, in a public letterrequested such a review and third-party investigation to determine whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.
“Parents deserve to know that their children are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully selecting those who will work closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the media.
Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community Thursday that the district has brought in a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter the district spokesperson shared with media.
Assistant Superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and ProPublica that the district, when hiring, typically calls applicants’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or to say whether the school district was aware that he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.
Clifford Principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents within hours of the article’s publication 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 regarding this employee regarding student safety.” »
Agan, who has not been charged with any crime, did not respond to requests for comment on the new complaints after he was kicked out of the school. He also did not respond to questions sent by email and certified mail to his home about the students’ accusations and his employment history. He denied any sexual motivation in touching students, saying at his Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District termination hearing that he touched students’ shoulders to offer support and encouragement, but did not massage them.
More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the day after last week’s story to express concerns about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents in attendance. Just before noon that day, Jackson and Baker sent an email to the Clifford School community saying the district would “soon welcome a substitute teacher to support the students in Mr. Agan’s class.”
A spokesperson for the Redwood City School District said a substitute had been hired to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13, but declined to comment on his employment situation. The spokesperson did not respond to a question about the new complaints.
The parents expressed “deep concern and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to Clifford’s principal, the 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 issues and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over school reputation or accountability issues,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions charged with caring for their children.”
Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning of Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh-grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, from school the day KQED and ProPublica broke the story.
Hanni says Agan’s case illustrates a systemic lack of transparency and that the state should clarify why educators are disciplined.
Licensing agencies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make reasons for disciplinary action easily available on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.
“I think a statewide, even national, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’? » said Hanni.
Thurmond, a gubernatorial candidate, 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 the licenses of educators found by schools or independent committees to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.
Xavier Becerra, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, former state attorney general and leading candidate for California governor, “believes that California should have a system that acts quickly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is handled appropriately and transparently,” Becerra campaign spokesman Jonathan Underland said in a statement.
“Student safety must come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this report are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should feel unsafe at school. »
Spokespeople for Gov. Gavin Newsom did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. The six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him also failed to do so.
State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared the investigation from ProPublica and KQED on social media and wrote: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to look at what includes me.”
A spokesperson for Becker said he was unavailable for comment this week.
At a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he filed a Title IX complaint against Agan with 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 trend hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referring to Agan’s history of misconduct complaints. “When someone is deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something tossed aside because the database says they are technically employable.”
Levinson declined to discuss the details of his complaint.
Another Clifford parent, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their child’s identity, told media that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said her child reported seeing Agan touching students’ shoulders and yelling during class.
In his Redwood City job application that the district shared with KQED and ProPublica, Agan did not disclose that he was fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked the “Please do not contact” box under Rodriguez High.
Kelly, Redwood City’s deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts former employers even when applicants ask them not to. She also said school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those with valid credentials are considered employable.
In his previous application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan admitted that he was fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students’ shoulders during class.” He wrote that he did not agree with the dismissal and explained that he often placed his hands on the shoulders of students to ut by helping them.
A spokeswoman for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, stressed that state law limits the information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends that educators be disciplined can it communicate its findings, which include a summary of the case, to potential employers. But this information is only released if a school requests it within five years of the discipline’s recommendation. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.
Redwood City did not request such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that period that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and ProPublica.
Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the results, saying it only discovered last year that it could do so.
Agan is one of at least 67 educators whose professional licenses the state did not revoke 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 to 2025 obtained by media outlets.