PG Unified employee on leave, under investigation

PACIFIC GROVE >> A Pacific Grove Unified School District employee will be placed on leave as the district investigates allegations that he behaved inappropriately toward students, Pacific Grove Unified superintendent Ralph Porras announced in a statement on Tuesday.

“There is nothing more important to us than the safety of all of our students,” the statement said. “We take our responsibility to provide a safe school environment very seriously.”

The investigation comes in the wake of parents voicing concerns and calls to action at the district’s regular board of trustees meeting last week.

“I want to urge the board and our administration to consider strongly how we can go about making this situation better for our students,” said one parent who characterized her daughter as a victim of sexual misconduct in a Pacific Grove Unified classroom. “The message cannot be left at the people who are brave enough to speak up face consequences, and it’s OK to get away with just a little bit of wrongdoing.”

Allegations of sexual misconduct against the Pacific Grove Unified district employee now on leave were expressed to the board in last week’s meeting through a student letter describing a firsthand account of the employee’s behavior. The letter, read aloud to the board by the student’s mother, detailed inappropriate remarks and behaviors made toward the student and a classmate during class at the beginning of this school year.

District administrators and local authorities were made aware of the situation at the time. The Pacific Grove Police Department received the report of a potential sexual assault and completed an investigation that was then turned over to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office, said Police Commander Dave Santos.

The DA’s office concluded that no criminal charges would be filed.

“We reviewed the case and did not find any evidence of sexual intent or sexual motivation,” said Chris Knight, assistant district attorney and supervisor of the office’s sexual assault team. “The police department did a thorough job investigating the

case, and we’re not filing charges based on that.”

With investigations

by local authorities completed, Santos described the current situation as now a “personnel problem” within the district. Pacific Grove Unified is undertaking its own internal investigation “to

make sure that no student is subjected to inappropriate conduct by a district employee.”

Pacific Grove Unified does not yet know when this investigation will be complete.