In the first two installments of this series, we exposed the presence of guns and gang activity inside San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) campuses, followed by bomb threat and intruders. For Part 3, we turn to the district’s handling of sexual assault and harassment.
In November 2025, paraeducator Calvin Tran was arrested after a former student, now a teenager, came forward with allegations of sexual abuse that occurred almost 10 years earlier when the victim was a minor, and Tran was a credentialed SFUSD teacher. The district’s public statement was sparse: “Calvin Tran, a paraeducator in SFUSD, was recently arrested on charges of serious sexual assault of a former student about eight years ago.” No schools were named. No timeline beyond “about eight years ago.” No hint of whether investigators believe there are additional victims. Yet Tran’s own LinkedIn profile listed assignments at a minimum of eight SFUSD campuses: Argonne Elementary, Alamo Elementary, Sunset Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, Francisco Middle, A.P. Giannini Middle, Rosa Parks Elementary, and Redding Elementary. Parents of special-education students have been left to wonder if other students have been impacted.
The confidential resignation pipeline, a.k.a. ‘pass the trash’
Since 2017, at least 20 SFUSD employees credibly accused of sexual misconduct have been permitted to quietly resign under confidentiality agreements that prohibit the district from giving negative references or disclosing the reason for separation. Basically, accused predators are handed clean records and sent on their way, free to apply at neighboring districts with nothing on paper to warn the next school. That practice, widely known and documented as “pass the trash,” is part of a broader issue of controversial handling of sexual abuse claims.
In 2021, hundreds of students at eight SFUSD high schools staged walkouts to protest administrative indifference to sexual violence. At San Francisco High School of the Arts, some students resorted to scrawling perpetrators’ names on bathroom walls because formal complaints disappeared into a void. One Lowell High senior told reporters her assailant received a one-month suspension from an extracurricular club but was allowed to return to the same classroom she was forced to share with him. Just this past November, a longtime Lowell teacher was placed on administrative leave for allegedly inappropriate interactions with a student, though SFUSD released no formal statements to parents or students. And earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education determined that the San Francisco Conservatory of Music exhibited “deliberate indifference” and mishandled a Title IX investigation where a student was sexually assaulted twice and then relentlessly stalked by the same perpetrator.
Lawsuits and million-dollar silences
In 2024, the San Francisco Youth Commission reported:
Sexual assault and harrassment [sic] have continued to severely impact schools across San Francisco. Within a six month span in 2022, more than 50 lawsuits were filed against school districts across San Francisco and the larger Bay Area. And over the past 7 years, more than 19 employees of the San Francisco Unified School District accused of sexual misconduct were allowed to resign to avoid termination. All to say, the city must make the necessary changes to address this systemic issue that continues to affect and harm the lives of youth.
Two recent SFUSD sexual abuse settlements underscore the human and financial cost:
– March 2024: $4.5 million to two former Washington High students who reported abuse by former athletic director Lawrence Young-Yet Chan (2012–16 and 2012–13). Chan was allowed to resign under a confidentiality clause after one victim’s police report was allegedly dropped for “lack of evidence” under former San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott.
– May 2025: $1.5 million to a former Lowell student who reported abuse by theater teacher Harlen Edelman, whose 2023 arrest in a Mountain View sting operation (posing online as a 17-year-old boy) prompted the victim to come forward about the abuse from a decade prior. Edelman also taught at Lincoln High and San Francisco High School of the Arts.
Sexual-abuse attorney Lauren Cerri, who represented the Washington High victims, described textbook grooming: gifts, private car rides, off-campus meals, and an office inexplicably tucked deep inside the boys’ locker room. “Abusers don’t go from zero to one hundred,” Cerri said. Essentially, they test boundaries for months or years, and schools that fail to train staff to recognize those red flags become liable.
A statewide reckoning
Settling sexual abuse lawsuits is not unique to SFUSD. In 2019, California passed AB 218, which raised the age limit for filing a childhood sexual assault lawsuit against a public agency from 26 to 40. This opened the floodgates to sexual abuse lawsuits against California public schools, totaling between $2 billion and $3 billion. Consequently, liability insurance for school districts has also exploded. According to a report by the state’s fiscal oversight team, insurance has risen 700 percent to roughly $255,000 per each 10,000 student district, while each claim averages $2.5 million per victim. At Los Angeles Unified School District, since AB218 passed, 81 sexual abuse cases have been settled or dismissed so far out of 370 filings. The county discreetly approved a half-billion-dollar bond issuance to pay out victims.
Thus, California State Senate Education Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez (D-San Jose) took matters into her own hands, by authoring and passing SB 848, the Safe Learnings Environment Act, which addresses the systemic issue of passing sexual abuse perpetrators from district to district. Perez summarizes SB 848 below and references investigative reporter Matt Drange, who exposed one southern California district that allowed dozens of perpetrators to prey on students over a staggering 40-year period.
SB 848 will take effect in January 2026. Its key provisions will:
– Ban confidential separation agreements that hide sexual abuse or serious misconduct
– End the “neutral reference” loophole, which will force disclosure. Districts can no longer give a clean or neutral reference for employees investigated for child-abuse allegations. Districts must disclose to other districts, public or private.
– Create a statewide searchable misconduct database for all school employees, starting July 1, 2027, of all substantiated cases of egregious behavior.
– Mandates a preemployment database that will prohibit hiring anyone listed.
– Expand mandatory reporting to volunteers, contractors, and school board members. Failure to report will be a misdemeanor.
– Close the “resign before you’re fired” loophole. Districts must complete investigations and report them to the new statewide system. Resignation no longer kills the process.
– Require parent notification when a staff member with substantial student contact is under investigation for sexual abuse or certain violent/sexual offenses.
– Apply identical rules to private and charter schools
Parents, students, and concerned educators can look forward to this new legislation in next year, as serial perpetrators employed at schools will face major accountability in future education employment across public and private schools across the state.