A high school principal in Alameda County has resigned as part of a settlement after a school district investigation found sufficient evidence that he used an online app to communicate with a former and current student about sex, once proposing a “secret school tryst,” public records show.
Jonathan M. Fey, 54, who had worked at Amador Valley High School in the Pleasanton Unified School District since 2022, was notified Feb. 28 that he was being fired, following months on administrative leave. He appealed to an administrative law judge before accepting a $254,000 settlement last week that includes legal fees and back pay.
“The allegations made against me are false,” Fey said in a written statement issued by a San Jose public relations firm.
Fey’s settlement and disclosure of the district’s investigative findings come at a time when California school districts are facing a reckoning from lawsuits brought under a state law allowing victims to sue for alleged assaults that in some cases date back to the 1960s and 1970s.
Rough estimations have found that the cost to school districts in monetary awards could reach $4 billion in these cases that benefit from the lifting or expansion of the statute of limitations. It was not immediately clear if any lawsuits have been filed involving Fey. He taught in the Fremont Union High School and Mt. Diablo Unified School District before being hired in Pleasanton.
EdSource and the Pleasanton Weekly both filed a public records request seeking information about Fey’s employment status and the investigation.
In an unsigned statement included in the release of the Fey report, district officials wrote it is their “sincere hope that the district’s prompt actions in response to these allegations, and Mr. Fey’s separation from the district, will bring closure to all those involved.”
The statement urged parents who have any concerns about their children or are aware that they have “been subjected to inappropriate conduct” to make reports to the district and Pleasanton police.
Justin Brown, the Pleasanton Unified School District Board President, told EdSource Wednesday that “a neutral third-party investigator substantiated allegations of misconduct by Mr. Fey, which the district and the board of trustees took seriously.” The district, Brown said, “chose to settle the upcoming (appeal) to avoid subjecting students and staffers the stressors of testifying in an adversarial hearing” and to “preserve resources that otherwise would be spent in litigation.”
Grindr: ‘eyes emoji’
The district’s investigation shows that Fey contacted students from an account on the app Grindr, dubbed “eyes emoji.”
A message from a Grindr account that a former student told school district investigators he believed belonged to Jonathan M. Fey. Fey has said his identity was stolen and denies owning the account. Messages the student attributed to Fey appear in blue.
A former student who graduated in 2023 notified the district in August 2024 that he had been contacted by a person on Grindr he believed to be Fey.
The student said he was at first doubtful the account was Fey’s. But the day after this first contact with “eyes emoji,” the student said Fey followed him on Instagram, which, the former student said, he could not believe was a coincidence.
The former student eventually gave the district screenshots of messages he exchanged with the person he believed to be Fey. They traded hints about themselves. “Eyes emoji” expressed a desire to “hook up” with the former student as long as his identity was kept secret, the investigation report shows.
A second person who claimed Fey approached him on Grindr was one of the principal’s students at Amador Valley. The district’s investigator found that Fey expressed a desire to establish “a secret romantic and sexual relationship” with the student, records show, telling the student via the app that he was “hella hot.”
Fey maintained that he was not “eyes emoji,” claiming that his identity had been stolen. In court documents, his lawyer noted that there were instances of Amador Valley students posing as other people online.
A different former student told the investigator that she once saw Fey’s phone open to the Grindr app when he was acting as a chaperone at a school event.
Fey made at least one report to Pleasanton Police alleging identity theft this year. Pleasanton Police Lt. Nicholas Albert told EdSource via email that police investigated Fey’s claim and that “no criminal report was filed and no arrests were made.” The matter was referred to the school district for further review, he wrote.
The district also notified Pleasanton Police of the matter, records show.
As a result of past sexual abuse scandals, state law requires that a school district report to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing within 30 days when a teacher, or an employee holding a teaching credential, resigns or is suspended for more than 10 days as a result of an allegation of misconduct. The district must include a report that explains the allegation and all related documents, which, in Fey’s case, would be an investigator’s conclusion of probable cause of sexual solicitation.
Once notified, the credentialing commission must conduct its own investigation into potential disciplinary action, which could result in the rescission of a teaching credential required for seeking an education job in another district. The confidential findings will be accessible to potential future employers for five years.
Brown, Pleasanton’s school board president, told EdSource that a report about Fey will be made to the credentialing commission.
“The district will comply with its legal obligations,” he said, and then defer to the commission’s handling of the matter.
Editor-at-Large John Fensterwald contributed to this story.