Eric Burgess: Grooming Claims, Walkout, and AG Settlement

Eric Burgess was a journalism teacher and student newspaper adviser at Rosemead High School in California’s San Gabriel Valley who, over roughly two decades in the El Monte Union High School District, groomed and had sexual relationships with female students. He resigned in December 2019 under a confidential settlement, lost his teaching credential in 2021, and became the central figure in a Business Insider investigation that later drove a student walkout, civil lawsuits, a California Attorney General settlement with the district, and a new state law on school sexual misconduct.

Who Burgess Was and What Students Say Happened

Burgess taught journalism at Rosemead High for about twenty years and was known on campus as a dynamic, well-liked teacher.¹ Sources described it as an “open secret” that he had fathered a child with a former student.

Three former students confirmed sexual relationships with him. One relationship allegedly involved a 16-year-old while she was still enrolled; the other two allegedly began within weeks of the students’ graduations.² The district also held sexually explicit messages Burgess had exchanged with a former student, and records showed he had been suspended at least once earlier after a tip that he was dating a student.³ No criminal charges against Burgess have been publicly reported.

The 2018 Whistleblower Memo the District Sat On

In April 2018, Rosemead High principal Brian Bristol received a whistleblower memo detailing Burgess’s sexual relationships with female students. It included specific dates, student ID numbers, and the names of five former students.⁴ Bristol did not remove Burgess from the classroom for roughly a year, acting only after screenshots of sexually explicit messages between Burgess and a former student surfaced on social media.

Former assistant superintendent Felipe Ibarra later said Bristol initially claimed he had forwarded the memo by email, but a search of email records turned up nothing. Bristol apologized and offered an explanation but declined to respond to further questions.⁴ No disciplinary or legal consequences for Bristol have been publicly reported.

How Burgess Left Rosemead High

In summer 2019, the district suspended Burgess and reported the allegations to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the El Monte Police. The district said it removed him from permanent employment within 24 hours of notifying law enforcement.²

In December 2019, Burgess signed a settlement agreement to resign. Under its terms, school officials agreed to remain silent about the reasons for his departure, a confidentiality provision that attorneys later described as stunning. Any payout amount was not publicly disclosed. In 2021, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing revoked his teaching credential.³

How the Story Became Public

Burgess’s quiet departure might have been the end of it. Matt Drange, an award-winning Business Insider reporter who had been Burgess’s student at Rosemead High, began reporting on him in 2017 after the #MeToo movement prompted him to reexamine what his school community had allowed.¹

The first installment, “He Was My High School Journalism Teacher. Then I Investigated His Relationship With Teenage Girls,” ran in May 2022. Drange had interviewed more than 40 current and former teachers and students and reviewed hundreds of emails, disciplinary records, and internal documents, showing how school and district officials repeatedly missed chances to stop Burgess and how the district obstructed his public records requests.¹ A follow-up in 2023 documented corroborated misconduct by at least 20 educators across the district dating back to the 1980s.⁵

The Student Walkout

On May 20, 2022, days after the first Business Insider story, hundreds of Rosemead High students walked out of class in a protest led by junior Zachery Larson. Signs read “Enough is enough,” “Why did it take 20 years?” and “Sexual misconduct between students & teachers should NOT be normalized or ignored.”⁴

Two days earlier, student representative Xitlalic Palacios had confronted the school board and demanded real safety protocols rather than reliance on “hope and luck.” Students said administrators never apologized for failing to stop Burgess and instead offered what they called “pathetic excuses.” The district diverted psychological services from other schools to Rosemead during the week of the walkout.⁴

Lawsuits and the Records Fight

At least five civil lawsuits have been filed on behalf of former students against the El Monte Union High School District over sexual abuse and misconduct.⁶

Business Insider itself sued the district under the California Public Records Act after officials denied requests for Burgess’s disciplinary files and portions of the 2019 investigation. In a deposition, the district’s head of human resources, Robin Torres, admitted the district had discarded legally required disciplinary records. The case settled, with the district agreeing to pay $125,000 in legal fees and to conduct new searches.⁶

The Attorney General Settlement

In August 2024, the California Department of Justice opened a formal investigation into how the district handled sexual misconduct allegations. Over 18 months, investigators reviewed more than 88,000 documents, 199,000 emails, and 113 complaints, and conducted 26 interviews covering 2018 through fall 2025.⁷

On March 20, 2026, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a stipulated judgment with the district, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Investigators concluded that the district had systemically violated the California Education Code and the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act. The settlement puts the district under at least four years of court and DOJ oversight and requires it to:

Appoint a DOJ-approved compliance coordinator to handle all sexual harassment and abuse complaints.
Build a centralized electronic database of complaints and investigative records.
Maintain a registry of substitute teachers barred from re-appointment for sustained boundary violations.
Provide annual reporting and abuse-prevention training to students, parents, and staff, and submit all complaints and responses to the DOJ.
Offer mental health services and compensatory education to complainants.
Submit to unannounced site visits by the Attorney General’s office.⁷

The California Law That Followed

The Rosemead case fed directly into new state legislation. Senate Bill 848, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 7, 2025, and effective January 1, 2026, broadened the categories of people required to report suspected abuse and mandated annual abuse-prevention training for all school employees and volunteers.⁸ It also prohibits schools from entering agreements that suppress reporting or expunge personnel files tied to egregious misconduct, aimed squarely at the kind of confidential separation deal Burgess signed in 2019.

The law directs the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to build a statewide misconduct-tracking database, operational by July 2027, to keep accused educators from moving quietly between districts.⁹ State Senator Sasha Renee Perez, author of what became known as the Safe Learning Environments Act, cited the Rosemead case as a catalyst.¹⁰

1
KQED. An Investigative Reporter Digs Into Troubling Stories About His Own High School Journalism Teacher
2
FOX 11 Los Angeles. Report Accuses Rosemead Teacher of Having Sex With Students, Questions District’s Handling of Allegations
3
Business Insider. How a Southern California High School Shielded a Beloved Teacher Who Groomed Students for Sex
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Business Insider. Rosemead High in Turmoil After Eric Burgess Exposed for Sexual Abuse
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Business Insider. At Rosemead High, Generations of Students Were Harassed or Groomed for Sex
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CalMatters. Sex Abuse in California Schools
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California Attorney General. Attorney General Bonta Announces Settlement With El Monte Union High School District
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CalMatters Digital Democracy. SB 848
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CalMatters. School Sex Abuse in California
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ABC7. California Attorney General Announces Sweeping Settlement With El Monte Union High School District