District Delayed Investigating, Reporting Teacher Accused of Misconduct

This post has been updated.

Late last year, parents of kids in special education teacher Matthew Hunter’s classroom at Rogers Elementary School in Chula Vista received a brief, mysterious letter. 

“Dear parents,” the Oct. 14, 2024, letter said. “I am writing to inform you that Mr. Hunter will no longer work for the Chula Vista Elementary School District. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors…If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please feel free to reach out to me. I will keep you updated with any new developments as they become available. Thank you for your understanding and support. Sincerely, Lizcett Porras, Principal.” 

Hunter had been gone from his fourth-through-sixth-grade classroom for more than a month. One day, he simply did not show up for work and families in his class had no idea why. 

Porras’ letter did little to answer parents’ questions. Rumors flew around the school. 

A Chula Vista Elementary School District parent Noelle Cravens said she heard there was a “report of inappropriate touching” in Hunter’s classroom. 

Parents asked Porras about the letter. But Porras said only there had been an unspecified investigation and declined to give further information, Cravens said. 

“They never said why [Hunter left] or announced anything,” Cravens said. If Hunter actually had been suspected of sexual misconduct, “this is something you should have reported right away…Parents were never notified.” 

The lack of disclosure about Matthew Hunter’s disappearance from Rogers Elementary School extended far beyond school parents. 

Documents obtained by Voice of San Diego show school administrators kept quiet about Hunter’s behavior with young girls despite repeated complaints from teachers and other school staff about his habit of hugging students closely, allowing students to be straddled between his legs, buying students skimpy outfits and lingering alone with them in his classroom after school. 

When a district investigator finally looked into the complaints and determined that Hunter had “inappropriately touch[ed]” female students and engaged in what the investigator called “an indicator of grooming type behavior,” according to a copy of the investigator’s report, school officials did not notify parents or other school staff about the results of the investigation or explain why Hunter suddenly vanished from his classroom. 

Nor did officials tell parents that, instead of firing Hunter after determining he had engaged in misconduct, they allowed him to resign quietly and agreed to continue paying his salary for up to two and a half months, according to a signed copy of Hunter’s Oct. 15, 2024, resignation agreement. 

Though required by state law to notify regulators within 30 days that Hunter had resigned following an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, the district did not report Hunter’s resignation to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing until June 10, 2025, nearly eight months after Hunter’s departure. 

That date, June 10, was five days after Voice asked for a copy of the district’s report to the commission. 

The district also did not inform Hunter’s subsequent employer about the reasons for his departure from the district, even though that employer was the San Diego Regional Center, a countywide resource provider for people with developmental disabilities, including children. 

Mark Klaus, executive director of the Regional Center, said Chula Vista school officials never told the Center about the investigation into Hunter when Hunter applied to become a service coordinator there in late 2024. 

Klaus said service coordinators meet in person and help to facilitate care plans for clients with developmental disabilities, including families with children. 

“Your call is the first we’ve heard of any allegations,” said Klaus when contacted by Voice. Though the district is not legally required to inform non-school employers about the reasons for Hunter’s departure, Klaus said he wished the district had shared information about Hunter proactively. 

Hunter did not respond to requests for comment made to his work email and phone number. According to a search for Hunter’s name in an online index of San Diego County criminal court files, he has not been prosecuted for or convicted of any crime. Klaus said a criminal background check of Hunter initiated by the Regional Center “came back with nothing.” 

Porras, who was principal of Rogers Elementary for much of the time Hunter taught there, also did not respond to a request for comment. A copy of Porras’ resume provided by the Chula Vista Elementary School District shows that, prior to leading Rogers beginning in 2023, Porras had never worked as a principal, vice principal or even worked as a full-time teacher. She had been employed as a psychologist in the Sweetwater Union High School District. 

After this story published, a spokesperson with the Chula Vista Elementary School District said psychologists are administrators.

Porras departed Rogers shortly after Hunter’s resignation and resigned from the Chula Vista Elementary School District in April of this year. 

District Superintendent Eduardo Reyes declined to comment about the investigation into Hunter or explain why the district did not immediately inform parents, report the investigation to state regulators or inform Hunter’s subsequent employer. 

Reyes referred questions to a district spokesperson, who declined to speak by phone about Hunter but did respond to a series of emailed questions. 

Giovanna Castro, the district spokesperson, said the district did not respond to complaints about Hunter sooner because, “in most cases, concerns that arise at a school are addressed at the lowest level possible.” 

Castro said Porras “addressed [complaints about Hunter] at the school site and [did not report them] to the district’s human resources department.” 

Asked why the district waited so long to report Hunter to state regulators, Castro said only that “Unfortunately, the human resources investigator omitted to send the report.” 

Castro said the district did not inform San Diego Regional Center about the circumstances surrounding Hunter’s departure because the Center never asked. “The district was never contacted by Hunter’s current employer,” Castro said.  

“It is common knowledge that employers…provide current employee background information to a prospective employer only when contacted by the prospective employer,” Castro said. 

Klaus of the Regional Center said the Center did conduct a reference check conversation with a former Chula Vista Elementary School District principal, though Klaus was “not sure [at which school] she was employed.” 

Klaus did not disclose the name of the former principal but confirmed that she was not Lizcett Porras. The former principal’s report about Hunter, Klaus said, was “clean, spotless.” 

Troubling Allegations

Hunter had a long and varied history with the Chula Vista Elementary School District. 

Castro said Hunter began his career at the district in 2004 as an instructional aide at Daly Academy before transitioning to becoming a special education teacher in 2016. Hunter taught first at Palomar Elementary School and later at Los Altos Elementary School. 

In 2018, Hunter resigned from the district “with no specific reason as to why he was leaving,” Castro said. Three years later, Castro said, Hunter returned to Chula Vista elementary schools, working first as a temporary teacher at Valle Lindo Elementary School and then as a special education teacher at Rogers Elementary. 

In between, he served a stint as a summer school teacher in 2019. 

Castro did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Hunter’s 2018 resignation. Nor did she specify where Hunter worked before returning to Chula Vista Elementary in 2021. 

However, one of the teachers interviewed during the district’s investigation into Hunter’s conduct at Rogers said employees at another school had raised concerns about Hunter’s behavior years before he worked at Rogers. 

Thomas Perezchica, a special education teacher in the district, told district investigator Jorge Mora that, in 2019, a classroom aide complained that Hunter was lingering alone in a classroom with a student during recess while working at a summer school session at Hilltop Elementary School. 

“I approached Hunter and he was very defensive,” Perezchica said of the 2019 incident. “[I] told him he would no longer keep the child in for recess, and if I had to, I would go to administration.” 

Perezchica said Hunter also engaged in other troubling behavior, “like buying things for people…In fifth and sixth grade, I believe he purchased mini-skirt outfits for” a student whose name is redacted in Mora’s report. 

Asked about Perezchica’s statements, Castro said, “the summer school principal looked into it and addressed it without involving the district or the human resources department.” Castro did not say who the principal was or provide details about the principal’s inquiry. 

Repeated Complaints 

Similar complaints arose almost from the moment Hunter began working at Rogers in the fall of 2022. 

Of 14 school staff members interviewed during Mora’s investigation, eight reported that “the interactions between Mr. Hunter and the two girls they witnessed were inappropriate,” Mora wrote in his report. 

Staff members told Mora they had repeatedly complained to school administrators about Hunter’s habit of giving female students lingering hugs and allowing them to sit between his legs on his lap. They recalled gifts Hunter had bought for students and described arriving at his classroom only to discover him alone with a female student. 

“He had no shame,” said a student assistant who worked in Hunter’s classroom. “He closes his eyes and rubs [one particular girl’s] back…He’d hold hands with her.” 

A teacher named Fabiana Press recalled Hunter buying a revealing Wonder Woman costume for a female student then crawling around on the floor with the student while she wore it. 

“He was wearing a very creepy mask,” Press told Mora of the incident, which she said took place during a rehearsal for a school variety show. “She was crawling on the floor…He was also on the ground with the girl.” 

Five staff members recounted repeated efforts to alert school administrators about Hunter’s behavior. Two said they reported their concerns to Child Protective Services. 

Castro said the district could not comment on or provide copies of the reports to CPS because such reports are confidential. A spokesperson for the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency said the county does not disclose information about reports of misconduct to the county’s child welfare agency. 

Perezchica and Press did not respond to requests for comment.  

Reporting Error 

In a June 12 email to Chula Vista Elementary’s assistant superintendent for human resources, Mora admitted “my error in forgetting to submit my report of misconduct for Matthew Hunter to the [California Commission on Teacher Credentialing].” 

Mora suggested adding a note to the district’s internal calendar to ensure that future misconduct reports were not forgotten. Castro said district officials now place the deadline for misconduct reports on human resources’ staff calendars, “creating multiple layers of accountability to ensure timely compliance.” 

Hunter spoke at length with Mora during Mora’s investigation at Rogers. According to a heavily redacted transcript of the conversation provided by the district, Hunter said Porras herself had asked to place one of the girls at the center of the investigation in his classroom. 

“I have a super good relationship with the family,” Hunter said of the girl’s parents. “During graduation, the parents said they love me.” 

Hunter denied hugging students, saying, “I don’t really hug unless they come to me.” 

He sidestepped a question about rubbing girls’ backs but did acknowledge that sometimes he engaged in what he called a “knee tickle thing” with one girl. 

When shown pictures of himself holding two girls, Hunter said one of the girls “was uncomfortable because of her diet…so I was consoling her.” 

The girl, Hunter said, “is a very lovable child.” 

Hunter ended the interview with a question: “Can I email the principal?” 

Unanswered Questions 

The district did not name parents of students in Hunter’s classroom and Voice was unable to contact parents whose children Hunter had taught while at Rogers Elementary. 

Voice did speak with one parent whose daughter had been a fourth-grade member of Rogers’ cheerleading club while Hunter served as a faculty sponsor of the club. 

Tania Salas said her daughter attended Rogers until, in April 2024, Salas and her husband transferred their daughter to a different school after witnessing what Salas described as a series of disciplinary problems at the school. 

Salas said she later learned from other parents that Hunter had left Rogers amid rumors of an investigation into misconduct. 

“When word got out, then parents start talking to each other,” Salas said. “But it wasn’t something the administration or school informed me about.” 

Salas said hearing about Hunter’s departure from Rogers “ma[de] me as a parent feel extremely uneasy.” 

“When it comes to your own child, what else was kept from us?” she said. “What other things were out there, noticed or observed or documented? We wouldn’t know…Parents need to be informed what’s going on.” 

Nov. 14 correction: This post has been updated to correct that Noelle Cravens in a parent at Chula Vista Elementary School District, but not Rogers Elementary. A previous version also stated that Lizcett Porras had not served in school administration before joining Rogers, but after the article published, a Chula Vista Elementary School District spokesperson said psychologists are administrators. We made that correction and added the statement.

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