Jewell School District reaches $2.35 million settlement in teacher abuse case 

Published 8:49 am Wednesday, February 18, 2026

A Clatsop County school district accused of doing little to stop a shop teacher’s sexual abuse of a student agreed to pay $2.35 million to settle a federal lawsuit.

The Jewell School District’s administrators failed to intervene after receiving multiple complaints about teacher David Michael Brandon’s suspected sexual assault of the student, the lawsuit alleged.

The girl took Brandon’s shop class when she was a seventh grader at Jewell School. The K-12 school — with about 175 students in the unincorporated town between Vernonia and Seaside — is the only school in the district.

Brandon spent substantial time alone with the girl, gave her rides to and from school in his car, exchanged personal notes, text messages and gifts with her at school and had daily one-on-one lunches with her in his classroom, according to her lawyers.

The suit alleged that Brandon engaged in sexual contact and sex with the student in his classroom during school hours, as well as in his truck and at his home, from April 2017 through December 2018.

Now 23, she struggles with “shame, guilt, anxiety, stress, fear for her personal safety” and other issues because of her abuse, the suit said.

Despite complaints about Brandon “being too comfortable with kids” and a consultant’s warning that Brandon wasn’t safe around students, district administrators allowed Brandon to quietly resign and get a different teaching job with younger students at an elementary school in Clatsop County, the suit alleged.

Brandon, now 48, was arrested in 2021 in the case and convicted in 2023 in Clatsop County on two counts each of third-degree rape and third-degree sodomy and one count of unlawful delivery of marijuana. He was sentenced to three months in jail. In 2024, his probation was revoked for use of methamphetamine and he was ordered to spend another three years in prison, according to court records.

The suit, filed in federal court in Portland in 2024, named the district, as well as former Jewell School District Superintendents Alice Hunsaker and Stephen Phillips and former Jewell School Principal Terrence Smyth as defendants. It was settled in late May, but the settlement wasn’t disclosed publicly until now.

Attorneys for the school district and the current school district superintendent Cory Pederson did not respond to messages seeking comment.

“We are extremely proud of our young client’s courage in pursuing accountability for the Jewell School District,” said her lawyer Peter Janci. “Oregon’s public-school students and their parents deserve to be able to trust that administrators will take action when faced with warning signs of sexual abuse by school staff. While nothing can erase the preventable suffering our client experienced, we are hopeful that our efforts in this case will encourage change and increase the safety of other children currently enrolled to the Jewell School District.”

A facilities coordinator had repeatedly reported Brandon’s suspected sexual abuse of the student to three administrators, according to his sworn deposition in the case. He described one incident that particularly troubled him when he walked into the shop and saw Brandon looking up the girl’s skirt, according to the deposition.

A school counselor testified in a deposition that she reported to administrators that students and other teachers told her Brandon allowed students to use drugs in his classroom and even supplied marijuana to students.

The lawsuit said the district hired Brandon as a shop teacher early in the 2014-2015 school year on an emergency teaching license. He had no experience as a shop teacher and wasn’t certified to teach a technical education class, according to the suit.

A science teacher testified that he made a report to the state about suspected child abuse by Brandon in 2018, according to deposition testimony and court records.

In November 2018, Jewell School issued a written reprimand to Brandon regarding his “inappropriate interactions” with students but took no decisive action to restrict his access to students, according to the suit.

On April 1, 2019, a school volunteer saw the girl who later filed the lawsuit smoking marijuana in Brandon’s classroom, according to the suit. The girl disclosed that Brandon had given her the marijuana vape pen she was using, the suit said. She was then effectively expelled, the suit said.

Brandon was allowed to submit a resignation letter, agreeing to leave his job by the end of the 2018-2019 school year.

In fall 2019, after both Brandon and the student left Jewell School, the new shop teacher discovered what appeared to be letters Brandon had written to the girl filled with sexually explicit comments about her body, according to the suit.

The discovery of the letters prompted the police investigation and Brandon’s arrest. His teacher’s certification was revoked in October 2023 for “gross neglect of duty.”