After being left in the dark for over a year, Pleasanton’s Amador Valley High School community now have confirmation on why their principal suddenly went on a mysterious leave of absence last year: He was under investigation for allegedly grooming and seeking sexual relationships with recent-former students.
A third-party investigation sustained allegations that Jonathan Fey had inappropriate conversations with two Amador alumni on Grindr – including during one’s senior year – between late 2023 and August 2024, which led to Fey’s removal from the school and ultimately his departure from the Pleasanton Unified School District.
Fey, a married father who lives in Pleasanton, adamantly denied the allegations during the investigation and throughout its aftermath, stating among his key arguments that he does not even have an account on Grindr, a dating and hookup app for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
A redacted copy of the investigation report and other documents were released publicly Oct. 27 – more than 13 months after the Pleasanton Weekly first filed its public records request with PUSD seeking answers about the unexplained ouster at the city’s largest high school days into the 2024-25 academic year.
“The District took these allegations very seriously and, as a result, Mr. Fey is no longer an employee of the District,” PUSD told the Weekly in a statement accompanying its records release. “It is the District’s 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 chat conversations between the two young men and the Grindr account the district believes belonged to Fey, which used only an “eyes emoji” as its username, included comments about the 18-year-olds’ physical appearance, desires for a “secret school tryst” and asking one of the young men if he would want to “meet up before you go back to (college)”.
“I really have always liked you,” the eyes emoji account told one young man, according to a screenshot of the conversation included in the investigative report. “Didn’t you notice last year I would go out of my way to say hi or smile every time I saw you?”
That young man, a recent Amador graduate at the time, eventually brought the Grindr exchanges to the attention of his former band teacher, who elevated the conversation to superiors at the district office.
The second young man, who spoke as a witness during the investigation into the first Amador alumnus’ complaint against Fey, said he had just turned 18 following the 2023-24 winter break when he began receiving messages from the Grindr account that both teens believed belonged to the principal.
“(By the way), I know who you are. I hope that’s OK,” the eyes emoji account wrote to the second young man. “For sure I need this to stay a secret. I mean; don’t get me wrong (you’re) hella hot … But I would want to get to know you and build up some trust before anything could happen.”
“In a perfect world; we would wait until after you graduate and (you’re) no longer a student of mine,” eyes emoji told the then-18-year-old Amador senior. “But I can’t help there’s a part of me that would love a secret school tryst.”
Fey, who contends the district condemned him without any direct evidence, told the investigator that the messages might have been from a person or people impersonating him online — something he said has been an issue for the school in the past.
“The allegations made against me are false,” Fey told the Weekly through his legal team last week after reaching a settlement with the district.
“From the very beginning, the district knew that I had done nothing to dishonor my family or my professional role,” Fey added. “I have dedicated more than 30 years to education, including recently serving eight years at the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, where my reputation was built on integrity and commitment.”
But as the investigators stated in their report to the district, the person who interacted with one of the young men had “intimate knowledge” of his personal life, which included specific references to previous interactions on campus and school trips.
‘He told me a lot of concerning things’
Public records show the situation arose after the first young man – who graduated from Amador in 2023, Fey’s first year as principal — began receiving flirty messages on Grindr from an anonymous sender.
According to screenshots and testimony, the then-college student said he did not know who the Grindr account belonged to at first because the only identifiers were the eyes emoji and the account holder’s age of 54 years old.
But soon the sender began dropping hints as to who he really was, and by the end of their first interaction, the account replied to the young man with a simple “yes” when the student asked if the user was in fact his former principal, Fey.
Some of the hints included saying he was 54 years old at the time — records show Fey was also 54 at the time of the messages — and the account talking about having a wife and kids, which Fey does, according to the investigative report. The eyes emoji account also told the young man specific details about a school trip the two were part of and mentioned that they had recently friended each other on another social media platform.
“So you’re someone I at least know of,” the former student asked eyes emoji.
“Yes. I am married too. Is that something (you’re) OK with? I mean if we were to hook up,” eyes emoji wrote. “Remember I am 54 (years old) … you accepted a friend request from me recently in another social media platform.”
The documents obtained by the Weekly included a screenshot that shows Fey and the young man in question began following each other on Instagram in December 2023.
Fey confirmed he had an Instagram account during the investigation, but he denied following any current students, according to the investigation report.
However, he did tell the investigator that he does follow Amador graduates. Fey said he has been asked in the past to provide recommendations or references, so he tries to stay connected with former students so that they can communicate with him.
“It is a combination of them seeking me out, or me finding them,” Fey told the investigator.
Fey also argued that given his longtime connection to the Pleasanton Little League, there was a chance that he “could have been connected to students (who) were umpires of his before becoming principal”, according to the report.
The Weekly contacted the Little League last week, and a representative – who did not want to be named – declined to confirm whether Fey was currently involved with the organization, but they did note Little League Baseball performs multiple background checks on its volunteers.
Fey was seen umpiring games throughout District 57 during the 2024-25 year when he was on administrative leave from Amador.
During the Grindr conversations in December 2023, eyes emoji revealed intimate details with the college freshman in an attempt to build a relationship.
“I am bi and married. I don’t think I have a choice,” eyes emoji said of his concealed sexuality. “My wife knows I am bi … My wife and I have an agreement. She is ok with me being being with a guy, as long as she doesn’t know about it.”
According to the investigation, the young man and his friend found Fey’s address online and used Grindr’s location feature to drive past his house in Pleasanton. They reportedly saw that not only were they right next to the Grindr account when passing near Fey’s house, but eyes emoji confirmed seeing the young man’s location being in close proximity.
When asked directly if he had messaged one of the young men on Grindr, Fey told the investigator, “I do not have a Grindr account. This is absolutely not my Grindr account.”
The principal went as far as presenting his phone to the investigator to show that Grindr was not downloaded and that there was no indication he had previously downloaded the app. The investigator pointed out in the report that people can hide an app’s download history on an iPhone, so its absence does not necessarily confirm whether the app was previously downloaded.
At some point during their initial chats, the young man messaged eyes emoji back — calling them by Fey’s name — and told the user he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything further.
“The fact that you used to be my principal when I was in high school and the age difference is just so creepy,” the Amador alumnus told eyes emoji.
The young man told the investigator that another anonymous account contacted him on Grindr in June 2024, but, after concluding it was possibly Fey again, he quickly shut the conversation down.
According to witness testimony, the young man was originally not planning to raise the issue with the district because he did not want Fey to lose his family, job and reputation. But after some contemplating, he said he did not want anyone else to experience what he went through.
That’s when the young man reached out to Jonathan Grantham, his former teacher and Amador’s director of bands.
According to a summary of the interview with Grantham, the band teacher first met the young man in August 2019 during the teenager’s freshman year at Amador. The two had a “good teacher-student relationship”, so much so that the student came out as gay to Grantham.
The former student emailed Grantham on Aug. 7, 2024, and let the band teacher — whom he considered to be an adult he could trust — know about the communications between himself and Fey on Grindr, according to the investigation.
“Last winter break, Mr. Fey found me on Grindr and started messaging me with cryptic clues about who he was and how he was a teacher who knew me at Amador,” the initial email from the student to Grantham stated. “He told me a lot of concerning things about how he felt about me, and when I politely told him to stop reaching out, he got a little upset and deleted his account.”
“A couple weeks ago, he reached out to me again, this time from a new account, and I am worried about this behavior,” the email further stated.
A separate allegation was also made by a former student who, according to the documents, began communicating with the eyes emoji account in February 2024 — at times during school hours. The young man was in his senior year at Amador at the time of the conversations.
Upon learning of the allegations, PUSD launched an investigation into the matter. Fey was placed on administrative leave on Aug. 12, 2024, just days after students reported to Amador for the start of what was to be his third year as principal.
The district ultimately engaged Leal Law Group, a Los Gatos-based firm that specializes in investigations for school districts. The firm’s final, 100-page investigation report dated Feb. 11, 2025 determined there was enough evidence to conclude Fey was behind the Grindr account in both cases.
“Based on the foregoing and using a preponderance of the evidence standard, the investigator found that it was more likely than not that (Fey) engaged in sexual communications with Complainant 1 after Complainant 1 graduated from AVHS. Therefore, this allegation is sustained,” a third-party investigator wrote in their report on the matter.
The investigator said the same thing of the second allegation regarding the student who had just turned 18 when Fey allegedly began messaging him.
The district notified the Pleasanton Police Department about the alleged inappropriate communication last year.
PPD Lt. Nicholas Albert told the Weekly last week that while the department investigated the matter, no criminal report was filed and no arrests were made. Albert said the matter was “referred to the Pleasanton Unified School District for further internal review”.
“As part of our commitment to the safety and well-being of our students, we encourage students to report any inappropriate conduct,” PUSD said in its Oct. 27 statement to the Weekly.
“We respectfully ask parents to partner with us in this commitment and remind their children that they should feel safe on campus, and if they are aware of or have been subjected to inappropriate conduct, they should report that to a school administrator and/or the Pleasanton Police Department,” the district added.
Questionable searches
The Leal Law Group investigation included review of dozens of screenshots between the two young men and the eyes emoji account, along with an interview with Fey and 15 other witnesses including Amador teachers, district office staff and former students including the two named as complainants.
One interview of note was with Jr Yee, the district’s coordinator of innovation and instructional technology who also ultimately took on the role as acting principal during Fey’s leave of absence.
The investigator asked the district’s information technology department to run a search for anytime Fey looked up a student’s age, gender or birthdate on the high school’s Synergy software, which stores student information.
Yee told the investigator that while the system is “unable to drill down to ascertain what a specific user was seeing”, the system showed that Fey ran “a couple of searches that were specific to students and students’ ages”.
According to a report of the Synergy website data history, Fey looked up students’ ages on Dec. 15, 2023, Feb. 19, 2024 and May 1, 2024.
Yee also told the investigator that the system showed that Fey was looking at a student’s gender and whether a student identified as nonbinary.
“Mr. Fey ran searches relating to students’ gender seven times on Dec. 16, 2023, April 16, 2024, May 1, 2024 and May 6, 2024,” according to the investigator’s interview with Yee. “Additionally, Mr. Fey ran searches relating to students’ gender/nonbinary status twice on April 16, 2024.”
The investigator pointed out Instagram screenshots that showed in December 2023 Fey started following on Instagram one of the students involved in the eyes emoji Grindr exchanges. When asked by the investigator if he had looked into the student’s age before friending them on Instagram, Fey denied having searched for that student’s age on the school’s system.
Yee told the investigator that the Synergy data could not show the name of the student Fey searched for. Yee also said he could not confirm if Fey had looked at one student’s age 14 times or if Fey looked at the age of 14 different students.
When asked why, as a principal, he needed to search for a student’s age and birthday, the investigator wrote that “Fey began pausing” and that he did not answer. Pressed for a reason he would search for a student’s gender, Fey told the investigator he “cannot think of a reason”.
Fey also told the investigator he could not recall why he ran several searches specific to the age of a student — or multiple students — on Dec. 15, 2023 and Dec. 16, 2023 or why he ran a search on a specific student’s gender on Dec. 16, 2023.
After talking with his lawyer, Fey did say there had been times he had to reconcile whether students were 18 years old to determine if they were allowed to drive themselves for sports-related events, which might explain the searches related to ages, the investigation report stated.
However, Joshua Butterfield, PUSD’s director of secondary education who preceded Fey as Amador’s principal from 2019 to 2022, told the investigator that the only times he had ever looked up a student’s age as a principal was when dealing with a situation when a student claimed they were eligible to sign themselves out as an adult or if the school was considering filing a Child Protective Services report.
Otherwise, Butterfield said there were no other reasons for looking up a student’s date of birth — similarly, he told the investigator he could not think of a time when he needed to verify a student’s gender.
“Mr. Butterfield clarified that Amador had more than 600 senior students, and with that volume ‘… it makes no sense to look up ages individually’,” according to the investigative report.
The investigator also spoke to a number of former Amador students who were friends with the young men communicating with eyes emoji, and all of those who were interviewed corroborated many of the details surrounding the investigation.
One former student who was good friends with one of the complainants told the investigator that Fey’s interest seemingly piqued when the student in question turned 18 – and that one day, she and that student went to an event with Fey as a chaperone, and when Fey opened his phone in front of them, it opened to his Grindr profile.
The complainant, in a follow-up interview, confirmed with the investigator that he had also seen Fey’s Grindr profile on his phone while the student was walking to an event with Fey from the school. That same young man said that he did not have any conversations with Fey on Grindr until after he turned 18 years old.
“It was definitely (Mr. Fey) — it was not someone pretending to be him,” the former student told the investigator. “He would know things others wouldn’t have known.”
For example, the young man said eyes emoji would know the student was close with certain teachers and the user asked the student about who would be handing him his diploma upon graduation.
Based on this and more evidence gathered through interviews and supporting screenshots, the investigator determined that the allegations against Fey were sustained, meaning that a “preponderance of the evidence supports a finding that alleged conduct occurred”.
A loud denial, but a quiet conclusion
Fey fought for months to challenge the investigation, its findings and the district’s plan to remove him as an administrator at the end of the 2024-25 school year.
Maintaining his innocence and denying the allegations to this day, Fey pursued proceedings with the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings to overturn PUSD’s conclusions.
As the matter marched toward key public hearings on the facts of the case this fall, the district’s outside attorneys informed Fey and his lawyer on Sept. 2 that they planned to release the underlying complaints and final investigation reports to the Weekly and EdSource, which submitted separate public records requests regarding Fey’s unexplained leave of absence. The Weekly’s request, which remains ongoing, was first filed Sept. 9, 2024.
Fey then sued the district in Alameda County Superior Court to stop the disclosure of public records, but after the Weekly secured legal representation and entered the fray in mid-October, the lawsuit resolved within days, allowing the documents to be released to the media Oct. 27.
The OAH case quietly settled during that same week too.
Under the settlement signed by Fey on Oct. 18 and unanimously approved by the PUSD Board of Trustees in closed session Oct. 23, Fey agreed to drop the OAH case – and to never sue in the future – in exchange for the ability to permanently resign from the district effective Oct. 17, a $254,000 payout and no admission of wrongdoing.
Nearly half of the payment to Fey is earmarked explicitly for his attorneys’ fees, with the remaining $142,000 is described as “as back pay and/or front pay”. His health benefits from PUSD ended on Halloween.
The list of OAH proceedings that had been scheduled for this week were all canceled.
“The district chose to settle the upcoming hearing to avoid subjecting students and staff to the stressors of testifying in an adversarial hearing, to avoid the uncertainty and risk associated with litigation and to preserve district resources that would otherwise be spent in litigation,” PUSD Superintendent Maurice Ghysels told the Weekly in a statement Oct. 28.
“The matter was settled to the satisfaction of both parties and, as a result, neither party is a prevailing party,” Ghysels added.
However, Fey continues to argue that no direct evidence connected him to the Grindr account and the communications with the two former Amador students. He claims the district has failed to protect its employees in the past and implied that his case is just another example in a list of instances where Amador employees were targeted.
One prior incident Fey has cited involved someone allegedly impersonating former vice principal Athena Duran and sending threats in an attempt to get her in trouble and possibly fired. Fey also noted a similar situation with vice principal Melanie Harris in which the school supposedly received an anonymous tip from the same students implicated in the Duran incident and that the tip was that there were threats made against the school and Harris.
The case with Harris did involve a fake account of her that included posts which were intended to get Harris in trouble and possibly fired, according to a summary of the incident. Records seem to indicate no action was taken against anyone in both incidents.
When asked about the relevance to those prior incidents, Fey said those incidents were similar to his investigation because they involved false allegations and impersonating administrators.
“I could be targeted by that student,” Fey told the investigator. Any context regarding said student was redacted in the released records.
“Unfortunately, when I joined Pleasanton, I encountered a culture that fostered division instead of collaboration, creating an environment where employees were left to fend for themselves,” Fey told the Weekly.
Fey’s wife also reached out to the Weekly last week to provide some words of support for her husband amid the entire ordeal, which had become fodder for national headlines after initial reporting by the Weekly and EdSource.
Monica Fey said that in the 35 years she has known her husband, she has always known him to have integrity, compassion and respect and that he has always devoted himself to helping others.
“The allegations made against him are deeply painful for our family, but we stand firm in our belief that the truth will prevail,” she told the Weekly by email Oct. 30. “We ask the community to withhold judgment until all facts are known and to remember that every person deserves fairness and due process. Our family remains united and strong through this difficult time.”
Still standing up for his reputation, Fey closed by telling the Weekly that the district’s decision to pay him a quarter million dollars to settle the case “serves as clear proof that it has long known it was in the wrong” and that he hopes this outcome compels PUSD to “take meaningful action to protect its employees and to create a culture of fairness, accountability, and respect”.
“This settlement marks the conclusion of a painful chapter that my family and I have endured as a result of the Pleasanton school district’s failure to establish proper safeguards to protect employees who speak out against toxic behavior,” Fey told the Weekly.
Fey’s administrator credential is currently still valid until June 2029, according to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing database. However, according to state law, the school district will have to report Fey’s alleged misconduct and the subsequent investigation to the commission.
Once notified, the credentialing commission will conduct its own investigation, which could result in Fey losing his credential.
Editor’s note: Pleasanton Weekly editorial director Jeremy Walsh contributed to this story.
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