SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A teacher charged this year with committing lewd acts against children was investigated by his Sacramento school district in 2020 and 2021 for racist remarks and other inappropriate behavior, including calling a Black student a “burnt cockroach,” teasing students for their weight and describing his history of dating Black women.

Until his arrest in January, Kim Kenneth Wilson taught fifth grade. Records show he had worked at Del Paso Heights Elementary School since the 2000-2001 school year. He was placed on unpaid leave shortly after he was jailed.

These non-sexual student complaints against Wilson from 2020 and 2021 join a girl’s complaint of sexual assault made to the Twin Rivers Unified School District Police Department in 2019 and, more recently, child sexual assault reports made directly to the Sacramento Police Department.

An amended criminal complaint filed Aug. 7 in Sacramento Superior Court lists five sexual abuse victims, all 12 or younger. The document says that three of the victims were as young as 6 when the abuse started. In the court filing, the prosecutor wrote that the former Del Paso Heights Elementary School teacher recorded some of these assaults.

In 2022, one young woman reported to police that during the 2014-2015 school year, when she was in sixth grade, Wilson repeatedly assaulted her in the locked, padded and windowless broadcast room at Del Paso Heights Elementary School.

That young woman, identified as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit against the Twin Rivers Unified School District and Wilson not long after he was charged, alleging in part that the district failed to supervise him properly. Her attorney, Lauren Cerri, confirmed that Jane Doe is one of the people participating in the criminal case.

The Sacramento Police Department has said that in 2019, the Twin Rivers Unified School District Police Department received a report — from someone other than Jane Doe — that Wilson engaged in lewd conduct with a minor in 2014. When the district police sent the case to the city police, that report was shelved.

In connection with Jane Doe’s civil suit, Cerri obtained public records from the school district that show multiple non-sexual complaints made against Wilson in the years leading up to his arrest. A representative for Twin Rivers Unified School District declined to comment on the records.

‘Disturbing allegations’

Public records released to Cerri show that on March 1, 2020, then-Del Paso Heights Principal Wendy Thompson wrote an email to the district’s director of human resources and labor relations, Jordan Alvarado. It was a chaotic time in the district: Twin Rivers Unified had just ended in-person learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid this upheaval, Thompson expressed serious concerns about Wilson’s ability to lead a classroom.

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