Sources: Ricardo Aldana, Accused Jserra High Pervert, Accused of Same at Previous Employer Hawthorne High, by Gustavo Arellano, Orange County Weekly, December 16, 2011

Sources: Ricardo Aldana, Accused Jserra High Pervert, Accused of Same at Previous Employer Hawthorne High

By Gustavo Arellano
Orange County Weekly
December 16, 2011

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/12/sources_ricardo_aldana_accused.php

Aldana

As the Weekly first reported yesterday, former JSerra High teacher and coach Ricardo Aldana was fired yesterday after getting arrested for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old girl. His apologists are already in full force (a subject for another post), but so is another curious contingent: former students at Hawthorne High, where Aldana once teached, who insist that Aldana was fired from the school early last decade for engaging in sex with a student.

Multiple people also contacted the Weekly via email with the same charge. "Students did know," one former Aldana student told the Weekly. "I remember him being a flirt, and hearing from other girls, that they have slept with him."

A call placed to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the organization charged with making or breaking teachers, revealed that there were no "adverse actions" placed on Aldana's record, but also stressed that didn't mean that no charges had ever been thrown at Aldana. A call placed to the Centinela Valley Union High School District, in whose jurisdiction Hawthorne High falls, was returned by a human resources official, who'd only say that Aldana's contract was "non-reelected" (bureacrat-ese for contract not renewed) at the end of the 2003 school year, and that there was "no indication of what you asked about" in regards to the Weekly's question of whether Aldana was terminated for molesting a student.

That Orwellian talk, however, is fully rejected by a source familiar with Aldana, who requested anonymity but was in a position at Hawthorne High during Aldana's tenure to know what he was doing. The source said that Aldana was escorted out of his classroom in the spring of 2003 after a student had accused Aldana of having a sexual relationship with her. Aldana was placed on paid leave while the school investigated the charges.

However, no charges were ever filed against Aldana by LA County prosecutors. He ended the school year under paid leave, left Hawthorne High, and then got a job at JSerra High two years later--until Aldana was canned this week, where it seems school officials were never alerted by Hawthorne High officials about the allegations.

More--much more--to come...in the meanwhile, heckuva job, Brownie!