San Diego Unified’s Sexual Misconduct Problems Extended to the Superintendent’s Office

For nearly a decade, Voice of San Diego has reported on school sexual misconduct. Though San Diego Unified isn’t the only district that has dealt with scandals, a troubling pattern of obfuscation and a lack of accountability has developed. 

This year, that pattern became even clearer. 

The firing of Superintendent Lamont Jackson earlier this year highlighted that misconduct is not limited to low-level staff. A federal report slamming the district’s handling of complaints also added fuel to a growing sense of distrust among community members about whether district officials have really done all they can to ensure bad actors are held accountable. 

Now, as the district moves forward with a new leader, will officials embrace the transparency and accountability so many have called for? 

The Cases 

Our investigations have shown a clear pattern at San Diego Unified. In some instances, officials ignore complaints and allow them to pile up for years. If the district does take action, officials often reach settlements with perpetrators. In exchange for their resignation, officials promise not to tell potential future employers about their behavior. 

Take the story of Charles De Freitas, which I reported earlier this year. De Freitas was the assistant principal at San Diego Unified’s Hoover High when he was arrested for allegedly distributing lewd material to a minor. 

But that wasn’t the whole story. At least one parent had complained about De Freitas’ behavior a year earlier, when he was a teacher at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, or SCPA. That complaint went directly to Jackson, who had taken over as superintendent months earlier.  

Other officials eventually got the complaint, including the district’s Title IX coordinator, who ensures federal sex-based discrimination laws are being followed. The case lingered in administrative limbo for months, with SCPA’s assistant principal not answering multiple emails from the district’s Title IX coordinator.  

Nearly a year later, officials closed the case and chose not to discipline De Freitas. But by that point he’d already been promoted to assistant principal at Hoover, where his actions would lead to his arrest. 

The case of Bruno Schonian, which we also reported earlier this year, makes these troubling patterns even clearer. For more than a decade, both coworkers and students complained about Schonian’s behavior.  

Students said he made sexual remarks about them, while coworkers complained his harassment created a hostile work environment. The vice principal of Roosevelt Middle, where Schonian worked, asked district leaders to address his “pattern of behavior.” 

It wasn’t until a student told a Roosevelt staff member that Schonian allegedly attempted to lure her off campus and told her “I can’t wait until you’re 18,” that district officials acted. But instead of firing Schonian, the district allowed him to resign and agreed not to share the reason for his resignation with future employers.  

That deal could have left Schonian free to seek employment at another school, but instead San Diego prosecutors charged Schonian with two misdemeanor counts. He would eventually plead guilty, admitting to willfully causing mental suffering to a child. Only then did the state revoke his teaching credential. 

The Federal Report 

Earlier this year, the Department of Education released a damning report that slammed how San Diego Unified officials handle sexual misconduct complaints. The report from the department’s Office of Civil Rights found that “more often than not,” officials failed to fulfill their obligations under federal sex-based discrimination laws. 

“These failures led to serial perpetration of harassment with insufficient district response, leaving district students vulnerable to the sex discrimination in school,” officials wrote. 

Those failures, which came from a review of complaints during the 2017-18 to 2019-20 school years, included officials not following the district’s protocols, failing to equitably respond to allegations and failing to implement proper training and adequate recordkeeping. 

District officials agreed to change the way it handles complaints, including implementing more training, creating a central repository of complaints and routing all complaints through the district’s Title IX coordinator. Moving forward, the Office of Civil Rights will monitor San Diego Unified’s compliance until officials believe the district is fully in compliance with federal regulations.  

The Superintendent 

It’s hard to imagine someone more homegrown than Jackson. The former superintendent not only attended San Diego Unified schools, during his more than two decades at the district, he worked as a basketball coach, a classroom teacher, a principal, the chief human resources officer and an area superintendent. It was the second time in a row the board had opted to promote a new superintendent from within. 

“He understands this community and he’s committed to this community. We know him and we’ve seen him in action,” board member Richard Barrera said at the time 

But in late August, that homegrown fairytale fell apart when the district’s board voted unanimously to fire Jackson after an investigation revealed he’d sexually harassed multiple former staff members. One of those staff members has since sued Jackson and the district, alleging Jackson demoted her for rebuking his advances.  

But what’s perhaps even more concerning is that this wasn’t the first time someone had expressed concerns about Jackson’s behavior. It was the fourth. In those other cases, the district didn’t investigate the complaints and district staff didn’t alert the board.  

“We’re as disappointed, frankly, as the public is that additional information is coming to light right this week that none of us were aware of,” board President Shana Hazan told the Union-Tribune about the revelations. 

The Future 

Taken altogether, it’s hard not to wonder if something about San Diego Unified’s culture is rotten. I’ve heard as much from many community members and employees, who have bemoaned what they call a “catastrophic failure of leadership,” that they say has given rise to “a systemic problem that has been allowed to grow unchecked due to a lack of accountability and a preference for maintaining the status quo.” 

Board members have been less willing to acknowledge some deeper problem. Barrera, for example, said, “I can’t accept that assertion. I think there are a lot of specific circumstances, both in the situation that was documented in the [federal] report, and the Lamont investigation … There’s too much detail involved in each situation to accept this sort of connection between the two.”  

He and others have also pointed to improvements the district has made in how they approach misconduct claims since the period documented by the federal report. But both the De Freitas situation, during which the district’s Title IX coordinator was repeatedly ignored by an administrator, and the Jackson situation, during which prior complaints were deemed unworthy of investigation, occurred not in the distant past but in the last couple of years.  

During a recent interview for the VOSD Podcast, Hazan underscored her commitment to accountability. 

“When you talk about the superintendent’s acts of sexual harassment, as soon as the board was made aware of that, we called for an investigation,” Hazan said. “As soon as the results of that investigation came to us, we called for his termination. So, I think we are taking action. It is not acceptable. We need to make sure everybody’s safe all the time.”  

Board member Cody Petterson also expressed confidence in a system the pair said has since been professionalized. 

“There may well be individual cases that that don’t, in retrospect get the adequate attention they need, but by and large, this is a dramatically improved program,” he said. 

But one elephant in this murky room is the fact that the district’s interim superintendent, Jackson’s previous number two, Fabiola Bagula, was also the subject of complaints. A district spokesperson has said they were “investigated and resolved,” and board members have expressed confidence in Bagula’s ability to lead the district moving forward. The board has all but said they will not be launching a search for a new superintendent and will instead be sticking with Bagula.  

For years, San Diego Unified has employed a defensive strategy and circled the wagons when confronted with controversy. Instead of being transparent and acknowledging failures, officials have too often insisted the sun is shining when people can clearly see dark clouds and rain.  

But with trust badly damaged by a year of tumult, and the district facing serious structural crises, the public is unlikely to continue to play make believe with San Diego Unified officials.