Placer school board candidate was fired by the district. He’s likely to win the election
Despite announcing the end of his candidacy, former teacher Jeremy Jeffreys is on track to win the election for Placer Union High School District Trustee Area 1. He currently leads his opponent, Gayle Hamm, by 13 percentage points.
Jeffreys told Hamm that he was withdrawing from the race in September. A group of people who have not identified themselves continued to campaign on his behalf. He claimed no association with the group, but he appeared on election eve at a candidate meet and greet event for local conservative school board candidates. He said that his attendance was in support of the other candidates.
On election day he said that he had not thought about what would happen if he won and didn’t consider it a possibility, a shift in perspective from the days after he dropped out when he said he certainly would decline the oath of office. Since returns have shown him with a significant lead on Hamm, he has not responded to post-election inquiries about his plans should he be elected.
Jeffreys was a history and video production/broadcasting teacher at Del Oro High School from 2017 to 2022. Following several complaints by students and an investigation into his practices by the district, he received a notice of pending dismissal in October 2022. Jeffreys confirmed that he quit before he was officially dismissed.
Records from the Office of Administrative hearings show that Jeffreys was set to be dismissed from his teaching position after his actions were found to have constituted immoral and unprofessional conduct, dishonesty, evident unfitness for service and persistent violation of or refusal to obey school laws or regulations of the state or district.
He appealed the decision to the Office of Administrative Hearings, whose commissioners on professional competence voted 2-1 to uphold the district’s decision to fire him in October 2023.
Why Jeffreys was put on administrative leave
Jeffreys was the subject of a number of allegations, including inappropriate physical contact with a student, an unwillingness to adhere to special education laws and subjective grading practices.
The teacher received several complaints during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, which were the basis of two poor performance reviews and later a notice of unprofessional conduct. The notice concluded that his conduct resulted in decreased enrollment in his video production courses, despite enrollment for the course remaining high in other district schools, and also noted that his Intro to Video Production course averaged a 44-47% fail rate.
According to public documents associated with the OAH hearing, several students complained to the Del Oro High School administration about unfair grading practices in Jeffreys’ class. One student claims he was unfairly penalized for attending Jeffreys’ class via Zoom during a period of the pandemic in which students could choose to attend school virtually or in-person. His claims that Jeffreys marked him absent on days that he was present virtually and that the teacher gave him zeros for assignments he completed were substantiated by a school investigation.
Jeffreys was also cited as having inappropriate contact with a student. In another complaint, a student alleged that Jeffreys grabbed her shoulder and shook her “with enough force to cause her chair to move and her to grab the armrests to steady herself” to wake the student he thought was asleep while watching a documentary in class. Jeffreys denied shaking the student, but several of her classmates corroborated the student’s story.
The teacher also got into trouble for his unwillingness to adhere to a student’s Individualized Education Plans or 504s, which both ensure that students with disabilities receive accommodations and support in school. Evidence from the district investigation includes two complaints from students claiming that Jeffreys denied them certain support outlined in their plans. Included documents show emails from Jeffreys arguing with the assistant principal about providing an autistic student with five-minute breaks during class, saying that he should have been part of any decisions made about changes to their 504 plan.
Later that school year, Jeffreys denied the student’s request for a five-minute break. After the student decided to leave class to seek then Assistant Principal Nick Zerwas, Jeffreys issued the student a two-day suspension. He was also found to have violated another student’s accommodations established in their IEP.
The OAH decision said that Jeffreys “demonstrated disdain towards students’ IEP and 504 plan accommodations for reasons not articulated.
While investigating one of these student’s complaints, administrators also found that Jeffreys’ World Studies class was severely lacking in quality and violated district policies. A letter from Superintendent George Sziraki describes his class as consisting largely of video lectures with little instruction, which was corroborated by student interviews.
The district also found that Jeffreys gave the student no credit on a test for answers that were substantially similar to others who received credit.
In response to concerns about his World Studies class, Jeffreys referred to his students’ success on a district-wide midterm exam, but it was also found that the teacher provided a study guide to students with the answers to the vast majority of the 53 questions in the order they appeared on the test. He allowed students to use the study guide while taking the exam.
“Your students understood that you had provided them with the answers to the examination and many assumed that you did so because of your failure to provide adequate instruction,” the letter reads.
The evidence submitted for the investigation also includes a class observation report from current Principal Zerwas that describes a class period in which Jeffreys let his own eighth-grade daughter play a first-person shooter video game loud enough to be heard throughout the classroom while other students were taking a test.
Resistance to allegations
Jeffreys said that the numerous complaints about his work performance over the course of several years was a targeted effort by district and site administrators to get rid of him after he publicly voiced his negative opinion about the way the district was handling COVID-19.
The candidate cited this experience as one of the reasons he decided to run for school board, saying that he wanted to bolster staff protections to prevent what happened to him from happening to anyone else. He previously told the Sacramento Bee that his decision to stop campaigning came after the teachers union decided to endorse Hamm.
Documents pertaining to his dismissal state that throughout his disciplinary process, Jeffreys demonstrated little remorse or resolve to improve his performance. He echoed this sentiment recently.
“I still feel to this day that I did nothing wrong,” he told the Bee.
