The state found that the California district had failed to address the sexual assault allegations

from Matt DrangeCalMatters

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A Southern California school district agreed to sweeping reforms Friday to settle a state attorney general’s investigation into how it handled allegations that students were sexually abused by staff.

The wide-ranging intended sentence with the El Monte Union High School District concluding an 18-month investigation that found “systemic deficiencies in the district’s response to allegations and complaints of sexual harassment, assault and abuse of students.” The investigation was prompted by a 2023 article in Business Insider, The predator’s playgroundwhich documented decades of sexual misconduct by teachers, coaches and other staff at one of the district’s schools, Rosemead High, ranging from sexual harassment and groping to statutory rape.

“Every child deserves to learn and grow in a safe and supportive school environment. Unfortunately, our investigation found that was not always the case for students enrolled in the El Monte Union High School District,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. District administrators, he added, “consistently mishandled student complaints of sexual harassment, assault and abuse by district employees and others. In doing so, it jeopardizes the safety and well-being of its students and undermines community trust. Today’s settlement marks a beginning, not an end. I hope the district will move quickly to implement the reforms required by this settlement, and my office will monitor closely to ensure its compliance.”

In an emailed statement, El Monte Superintendent Edward Zuniga said “student safety and well-being remain our highest priorities. This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to strengthening systems that support safe, inclusive and respectful learning environments.”

Reforms imposed after investigation

Among other changes, the proposed decision requires the district to designate a compliance coordinator to investigate complaints of sexual harassment or abuse and creates a centralized system to store documents related to investigations. It also requires the district to maintain a list of substitute teachers found to have violated the district’s employee policy on appropriate boundaries with students. The settlement requires the district to create an advisory committee to study its compliance with the reforms and make further recommendations, as well as provide students and parents with training on how to recognize the signs of grooming — a curriculum that Rosemead students have struggled to implement for the past four years.

The settlement is a rare instance of state law enforcement taking an active role in a K-12 school district’s compliance with California’s education code and mandatory reporting laws. The only other such agreement was reached in 2024 with the Redlands Unified School District, following allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct that costing the district more than $50 million in legal agreements. In El Monte’s case, announced Friday by Bonta at a news conference in Los Angeles, the sentence requires four years of court-supervised supervision and includes sweeping reforms to how the county handles serious allegations of misconduct.

Attorneys in the Justice Department’s Bureau of Juvenile Justice conducted the investigation, which focused on the district’s handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against school personnel since 2018. It included a review of more than 100 complaints, thousands of pages of documents and interviews with more than two dozen staff members, former students and others. The investigation found that district officials did not properly respond to complaints, did not provide adequate reporting procedures and did not adequately maintain records of allegations of misconduct.

The findings mirror those first identified by Business Insider, which sued the school district for failing to release records under California’s Public Records Act. This case was settled out of courtwith district administrators agreeing to conduct new records searches and pay $125,000 in legal fees. The county’s human resources manager, Robin Torres, said in testimony that her office threw out the disciplinary records it was required by law to keep. She acknowledged that her predecessors failed to properly investigate allegations that employees sexually harassed students or had sex with former students soon after they graduated.

Years of sexual abuse allegations

The sentencing is the latest result of generations of Rosemead High students coming forward to share their stories of being stalked and groomed for sex at school. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department criminal investigations have begun in at least three former employees while students walked out of class in protest and several teachers resigned following district investigations. At least five civil cases are submitted on behalf of former students. Many were represented by attorney Michael Carrillo, who previously filed a lawsuit against the district that resulted in a $5 million verdict in favor of a former student who said she was molested by a teacher the district allowed teaching to continue after being accused of fondling children.

A new state law, Safe Learning Environments Actwent into effect earlier this year and gives school officials more tools to identify suspected misconduct. State Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, an Alhambra Democrat whose district includes Rosemead High, author the law.

Among other reforms, the law establishes the creation of a non-public database of alleged personnel misconduct that administrators must consult before hiring new employees. Similar databases already exist in other states as part of a growing national effort to ban “dumping” cases, where educators accused of sexual misconduct leave a school district only to return to the classroom elsewhere. This happened many times in the El Monte neighborhood.

Matt Drange is a journalist from Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Projectand a graduate of Rosemead High School. He can be reached at matt.drange@occrp.org.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.