An August 2021 letter that prompted an investigation that concluded almost a year later. A June 2023 hotline report for which it was deemed “no investigation necessary.” A July 2023 letter that was deemed to be speculation and thus not worthy of investigation.
These allegations of sexual misconduct and cronyism about former San Diego Unified superintendent Lamont Jackson accumulated in the school district office over a few years, long before the district hired an outside attorney in April to investigate Jackson’s conduct.
Trustees were never notified by district leaders about some of those prior reports of allegations, and they are just this week learning of them because journalists are requesting public records about them from the district.
“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,” school Board President Shana Hazan said.
Earlier this week, San Diego Unified told reporters it took action “immediately” upon learning of sexual misconduct allegations about Jackson.
The investigation that began in April substantiated allegations by two former district administrators — Monika Hazel and Tavga Bustani — who have accused him of sexual harassment and have now filed legal claims against the district. Last month the board fired Jackson, who in an interview Wednesday denied having committed misconduct.
“The San Diego Unified School District took all claims and allegations seriously,” the district said in its statement Tuesday. “This investigation began immediately upon the district becoming aware of the claims and allegations.”
Newly-released district documents, obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune via a public record request, show that San Diego Unified leaders received at least three different anonymous reports of allegations about Jackson over the past three years, long predating the district’s hiring of the third-party investigator in April.
In the case of two reports from last year, the district decided that the allegations, which named specific people, were rumors that did not merit an investigation.
In a third from more than two years ago, the district conducted an investigation that took 11 months and found none of the allegations in question to be sustained.
District management did not alert the school board to two of these reports of allegations at the time, according to interviews with three trustees — even though in one of those cases, the report of allegations was addressed specifically to the school board.
The external investigation this year came about after a board member, Richard Barrera, learned about allegations against Jackson in April from Bustani at a breakfast. Barrera informed the district’s general counsel, and the board hired an outside law firm to investigate.
Both district management and board members say this probe investigated allegations of cronyism that were contained in those past complaints and said they were not found substantiated.
Some complaints were not investigated in the past because they found they were not based on first-hand knowledge, said Enrique Ruacho, the district’s senior executive director of staff, in an email.
But board members say regardless of how they were reported or how credible they would prove, district management should have told the board about all the allegations when it received them.
Hazan and Trustee Cody Petterson, who both joined the board in December 2022, said nobody told them there had been any misconduct allegations about Jackson until April, when the board hired the investigator. It was only then that, Petterson said, the district’s general counsel told him that there had been prior “unsubstantiated” allegations about Jackson over the years.
“Given the board actually only has two employees, and they happen to be very important employees” — they are the superintendent and general counsel, Petterson noted — “if there’s a claim, substantiated or unsubstantiated, it should’ve come to us,” he said.
An anonymous letter
On August 19, 2021 — three months after the board chose Jackson as interim superintendent to take over for Cindy Marten — an anonymous group identifying themselves as staff members of Bethune K-8, a school in Bay Terraces, wrote a letter addressed to the school board.
They alleged that Jackson had hired their principal, Valerie Jurado, out of favoritism. They said they had “reason to believe” that Jackson and Jurado might be having an inappropriate relationship. They also accused her of having lied about her work experience and said she lacked the administrative qualifications for her job.
Jurado declined to comment for this story, referring to the district’s spokesperson.
The letter argued that in light of their allegations, the board should not consider Jackson for the superintendent job. The letter asked the district to investigate their claims.
It wasn’t until 11 months later, after Jackson had been named the permanent new superintendent, that Jackson and Jurado were told in an email that the investigation about them was complete.
The district’s general counsel, Andra Greene, told them in an email on July 25, 2022 that an independent investigation had been completed. Her email didn’t identify the investigator, who Ruacho said was outside counsel; he didn’t name the attorney.
Greene wrote that the investigator had not sustained allegations that Jurado had a sexual relationship with Jackson, misrepresented her work experience or was unqualified.
The day after Greene closed the investigation, on July 26, Jurado’s school assignment was changed from Bethune K-8 to Ibarra Elementary.
It’s unclear whether Jurado was reassigned to a new school or chose to switch schools weeks after the start of the new fiscal year. Ruacho did not specify why she changed schools but said that it wasn’t because of the August 2021 complaint.
Jackson said in an interview Wednesday that he has only ever had a professional working relationship with Jurado and played no part in her reassignment. He said he believes Jurado moved to Ibarra by her own choice.
According to Ibarra’s website, Jurado is still principal of the school.
‘No investigation necessary’
On June 30, 2023, San Diego Unified received an anonymous hotline report alleging that Jackson was involved with “inappropriate conduct/sexual relations” with two employees he supervised and had promoted to district-office positions.
The hotline report’s file notes state that Greene, the district’s general counsel, had received the same complaint independently, and that she had spoken with Jackson about the complaint.
The outcome of the hotline report: “no investigation necessary,” the case file said.
A week later, the district received a letter written anonymously by a group identifying themselves as principals in the district.
The letter contained the same allegations as those in the hotline report, plus additional ones, including claims that two employees had been removed from their positions and that another had left suddenly because of misconduct by Jackson.
The group had sent their letter, dated July 6, 2023, to the district’s administrators union. Union president Donis Coronel told the Union-Tribune that she forwarded it to a district official the same day, but she didn’t say to whom. District management received the letter, but nobody passed it on to the board.
“An assumption was made that the letter had been shared with the board,” district spokesperson Mike Murad said in a statement Tuesday.
District management chose not to investigate the claims in the hotline report or July 2023 letter at the time because they were “based on rumors and speculation, not first-hand knowledge,” Ruacho said. All the people named in the complaints had gone through “proper, transparent hiring processes,” he said.
“The district’s legal team reviewed the letter as we would any such allegation bringing such serious concerns to light,” Ruacho wrote. “However, the review determined that the anonymous allegations did not meet the threshold to warrant a formal investigation.”
The allegations in the principals’ letter surfaced again in the recent investigation by the attorney, “this time with specific facts,” Murad said. That time, they were fully investigated and found not sustained, according to the district.
What gets investigated?
Petterson and Hazan said they were not told about the Jurado investigation, the July 2023 letter or the hotline report until this week.
Barrera said he had known about the Jurado investigation from the time the Bethune letter was received in 2021, but he didn’t know about the July 2023 letter or hotline report until this week.
While trustees said they should have been told about the complaints when the district received them, some said they’re not sure they would have decided to investigate the hotline report and the July 2023 letter, either.
“I actually have faith in our counsel to both do the investigations and to recognize when the gravity of a claim has enough … substantiation to warrant an external investigator,” Petterson said.
Barrera said some matters can’t be investigated if they are reported anonymously, without firsthand evidence or without enough credible information to go off of. He said anybody can write an anonymous letter, and the district couldn’t know whether the letters definitely came from Bethune staff or district principals.
“Maybe the fact that there was more than one complaint that kind of touched on similar issues, we might’ve said, ‘Well, okay then, we should at least look into this,’” Barrera said. “But again, I want to be fair … it’s not inconceivable that somebody could be targeted and you could get multiple complaints over some period of time, even, in an orchestrated attempt to target a person.”
Barrera suggested that people who make anonymous reports should voluntarily say that they are willing to come forward to provide more information, and that the district will assure them it will protect their identity.
“That’s a higher level of credibility than somebody who just never even initiated … that conversation,” Barrera said.
Ruacho said the district wants to assure employees that they will not face retaliation if they come forward with concerns.
“We are committed to investigating any claims that are credible and based on facts. For those who may fear retaliation, we want to assure you that we have confidential channels in place to report concerns, and retaliation of any kind is strictly prohibited and will not be tolerated,” he said.