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Newly released documents from investigations into now-former Amador Valley High School principal Jonathan Fey reveal more allegations against the disgraced Pleasanton administrator.
In addition to allegedly grooming and seeking sexual relationships with recent-former students, claims made by former colleagues contended that Fey also created a toxic workplace environment, that he bought a student a lottery ticket for their 18th birthday and that he violated his paid administrative leave directives by participating as a judge in a color guard competition.
The complaints and reports into Fey’s two-plus years at the high school were included in the latest batch of documents given to the Pleasanton Weekly by the Pleasanton Unified School District on Nov. 24 as part of the newspaper’s year-long public records request into matters related to Fey after he was placed on leave without public explanation in August 2024.
According to the newly unearthed records, Amador culinary teacher Julia Ford filed a complaint against Fey on Dec. 12, 2022 because she was concerned about Fey giving a lottery scratcher to a student as a gift for their 18th birthday two months earlier. According to the documents, she thought it was odd that Fey had done such a thing when it was his first time ever interacting with the student.
The lottery ticket incident was unrelated to the two Amador alumni who Fey allegedly made contact with on Grindr, a dating and hookup app primarily for men looking for same-sex relations.
A married father who lives in Pleasanton with his wife, Fey continues to deny he interacted with the two young men on Grindr and says he never even downloaded the app onto his phone. That investigation, in which PUSD sustained the key allegations, was central to the legal dispute that ultimately culminated to Fey agreeing to resign in a settlement this October that also included a $254,000 payout to the ex-administrator.
In documents obtained by the Weekly, the culinary instructor spoke with an investigator and told them Fey had never spoken to that student before giving them the lottery ticket and that, to the student’s knowledge, no other student had received any similar birthday gifts from Fey. The student also told investigators that he did not know how Fey knew it was his birthday.
In that same batch of documents, PUSD school board Trustee Laurie Walker, who worked as an administrative assistant at the high school, said she found the act of a principal buying any gifts for students — especially a lottery ticket — to be “very bizarre behavior”.
According to the interview between Ford and the investigator, Fey told the student the gift was part of a tradition from his previous school that he wanted to bring to Amador. However, Fey’s former colleague told the investigator that between the time of the student’s birthday in October and when she filed her complaint in December, she didn’t see or hear of any other student receiving gifts from Fey for their 18th birthday.
Still, as part of the investigation, Fey maintained that he simply provided the student with the lottery ticket as a birthday gesture for front office teacher assistants, which was a new practice he began implementing in October of that year, his first at Amador, but immediately halted following the investigation.
In regard to how he found out it was the student’s birthday, Fey said in an October 2024 interview with investigators that he ran a search and created a list of all the teachers assistants birthdays and that his intent was to reward each one with a lottery ticket when they turned 18 — the student in question just so happened to be the first student who received the gift.
“I never gave students birthday gifts after that,” Fey told an investigator.
Despite redactions in the PUSD-provided copy, the Weekly has learned there was another part of that December 2022 investigation of note: claims of engaging in an act of grooming by providing gifts to a student, which were ultimately not substantiated by the investigator.
This second part of the lottery ticket investigation was brought to light in an unredacted version of the same report obtained separately by the Weekly.
According to the unredacted report, Fey was accused of grooming the student he had given the lottery ticket to because it came across like Fey was trying to build a connection or trust.
However, according to the report, evidence showed that Fey did not groom the former student and that Fey’s interactions — apart from the lottery ticket gift — with the student were very limited, according to the investigator.
“During the interview with (the former student), it was confirmed that there was no concern raised by (the student) regarding specialized treatment or receiving of a birthday card with lottery tickets,” the report stated. “(The student) communicated the only person that shared concerns about the gift was Ms. Julia Ford.”
Fey’s legal team previously told the Weekly the district intentionally redacted parts of the investigation report showing that Fey did not groom that student in connection to the lottery ticket incident.
In a YouTube video addressing the Pleasanton community on Nov. 6, after his scandal became public and generated national headlines, Fey denied all of the allegations made against him. He pointed out that not only did he call the Pleasanton Police Department to investigate the allegations, but the district never followed through with their plans to subpoena his medical records or phone records.
According to Fey, the district wanted to look at his Apple ID records to see if he had ever downloaded Grindr.
“I told them, go right ahead — I knew I had never installed any dating app on any phone,” Fey said in the YouTube video. “They never followed through because they feared the truth.”
As for the medical records, Fey said the district wanted to see if he had ever taken a sexually transmitted disease test but the district also did not request those records.
PUSD safety and communications coordinator Susanne Frey told the Weekly the district was not able to provide comments specifically on why the district did not follow through with the subpoenas.
Apart from the allegations involving students, documents also suggest that Fey had a negative professional history with several staff members at Amador Valley.
A complaint form submitted by Sheryl Pacheco, the head school counselor at Amador, on Aug. 20, 2024 details several instances between February 2023 and May 2024 of Fey allegedly yelling at her.
In one instance where Fey was speaking to a group of administrators and counselors, the counselor claimed that when she wanted Fey to clarify a point while they were all discussing class-size caps, he yelled at her claiming he could make certain decisions, “Because I am the principal, that’s why.”
In other documents, Stacey Sklar, an English and social studies teacher, said that while she never saw that side of Fey, there were “a lot of people (who) have trouble with Mr. Fey because he is a screamer”.
The school counselor’s complaint outlines other times where Fey seemed confrontational to her and how, for more than a month, Fey seemed to refuse to meet with her to discuss the course selection process for the 2024-25 school year. Another claim stated that Fey got in her face during a meeting, but the details of that incident were redacted.
According to an investigative report letter of finding into Pacheco’s claims, several of the allegations she made against Fey were substantiated, including that Fey yelled at her twice, got in her face and avoided meeting with her. The shouting claims were supported by witnesses who saw the alleged outbursts in person.
In the investigative report, there were two other allegations that were unsubstantiated but the nature and details of those claims were redacted.
“The allegations of verbal outburst and aggressive language were substantiated by multiple witnesses in the case of three out of the four specific incidents … and interviews revealed a pattern of this behavior that was corroborated by several witnesses,” the report stated.
In one of the interviews with former vice principal Athena Duran, the administrator described Fey’s tone as intense and that Fey yelling at other administrators “became the norm”.
Akhil Raman, another vice principal, also said during his interview that aside from Fey’s hands-off leadership approach, Fey was also perceived by some employees as “kind of a dictator”.
“Toward the end of last year, staff didn’t feel united with admin, many didn’t know who (Fey) was or what he was about, he’d only talk with department chairs,” Raman told the investigator.
The documents further provided other testimonies of Fey making employees feel like they were walking on eggshells and created a “tough working environment”.
“If (Fey) disagreed with you, he’d raise his voice and get agitated (and he) could get inappropriate and unprofessional,” former Amador vice principal Melanie Harris said in her interview with the investigator. “I was yelled at by him … this is my third interview in the fall of the school year talking about Jon Fey.”
“The substantiated complaints about discourteous interactions and interpersonal conflict with fellow AVHS employees, including uncontrolled yelling, inappropriately aggressive body language and demeanor, and avoidance of time-sensitive meetings, reveal a pattern of behavior ill-suited to an effective and efficient workplace, which the district finds unacceptable,” Fey’s notice of intent to dismiss stated.
In his interview with the investigator, Fey did not recall yelling or raising his voice in those past instances or any other negative behavior toward his staff listed in the other incidents. In regard to concerns about things like his temper or tone, Fey described himself as insistent when it comes to certain topics and that he did not intend to come off as disrespectful.
In another newly released record, the district alleged Fey violated his administrative leave directive in February 2025. During his administrative leave of absence, Fey was ordered to — among many other things — stay away from any school-sponsored events, according to a notice of intent to dismiss and placement on immediate unpaid suspension document issued by PUSD that Fey challenged before their settlement.
However, on Feb. 15, 2025, the document states that Fey violated that directive by serving as a judge at the California Color Guard Circuit competition at James Logan High School in Union City. According to the notice, the district “sponsored the participation of the Amador varsity and junior varsity winter guards at this event” and because Fey was a judge, he was in close proximity to Amador students and staff.
That violation, among the other allegations and complaints made against him, were ultimately used as reasoning for Fey’s dismissal from Amador, unpaid suspension and legal disputes before the two sides agreed to part ways.
