San Diego School Superintendent Is Fired After Misconduct Investigation

The superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District was fired on Friday after an investigation had found that he had acted inappropriately toward two female employees, district officials said.

Lamont Jackson, who had overseen California’s second-largest school district since 2021, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” with two former district management employees, an outside investigation commissioned by the district found. The termination took effect immediately, and the deputy superintendent, Fabiola Bagula, stepped in to lead the district, which has about 115,000 students.

Dr. Jackson, 54, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Dr. Jackson, who worked for San Diego Unified for more than three decades, became interim superintendent in 2021 after the district’s former head, Cindy Marten, was appointed as U.S. deputy secretary of education by President Biden.

The following year, the school board unanimously voted to award Dr. Jackson a four-year contract in the role. In a statement at the time, the board said that Dr. Jackson, a San Diego native, had brought “the experience and leadership skills to the district that our students, staff and community deserve.” The San Diego Union-Tribune also reported that year that principals praised him for how much he cares about his students and staff members.

The allegations against Dr. Jackson came to light this past April, and the school district hired the Los Angeles-based law firm Sanchez & Amador to look into them. The two employees, who were not named, were fired in 2023, in what they believed was retaliation for rebuffing Dr. Jackson’s advances.

The four-month investigation confirmed that Dr. Jackson had engaged in sexual behavior toward the women but did not find that they were terminated for turning him down, according to documents shared with The Times.

The law firm’s investigator also interviewed several people who said that Dr. Jackson had promoted women with whom he had a sexual relationship, but the investigation did not find sufficient evidence to support that allegation.

In a statement Friday, school board officials said they and the superintendent “have mutually agreed that separation is in the best interest of the district,” given the investigation’s findings. Maureen Magee, a spokeswoman for the district, said that Dr. Jackson was officially terminated without cause and would receive six months’ worth of severance pay.

Dr. Jackson made $475,339 in 2022, according to Transparent California, which tracks salaries of public employees in the state.

Administrators Association San Diego City Schools, a union that represents school principals and district employees, said in a statement that “the decision to part ways following sustained allegations of misconduct is a difficult but necessary step toward upholding the values we hold dear.”

The news comes just weeks after the U.S. Department of Education released a report finding that the San Diego school district did not properly respond to hundreds of sexual harassment allegations made by its students between 2017 and 2020, before Dr. Jackson led the district. These include instances of students groping other students, and school officials not taking adequate steps to prevent repeated assaults.

“These failures led to serial perpetration of harassment with insufficient district response, leaving district students vulnerable to the sex discrimination in school that Title IX forbids,” the department’s report said. In response to the report, the district agreed to overhaul its response to sexual harassment allegations.

The district is facing another lawsuit, filed in December by 11 school district police officers who said that their supervisors had bullied and harassed them for years because of their race and sex.

The lawsuit also named Dr. Jackson, saying he was part of a group that “compelled, coerced, aided, and/or abetted the discrimination, retaliation and harassment.” It said that after an officer complained about a supervisor’s discriminatory behavior, Dr. Jackson, in retaliation, visited the middle school where the officer’s girlfriend taught in order to intimidate her, and gave her “an unwelcomed hug.”

Attorneys representing the school district and Dr. Jackson have said that they deny the allegations in the lawsuit. Neither the district nor Dr. Jackson “were negligent, careless, reckless, acted unlawfully, or was guilty of any other wrongful act or omission whatsoever,” they said in a court filing.