A former Menlo-Atherton High School student has sued the Sequoia Union High School District and ex-teacher Salvadora Calonje, alleging Calonje sexually abused her during her teenage years, with alleged incidents from 2006 through 2010, both on campus and off campus. The lawsuit was filed in San Mateo County Superior Court and names Calonje, now an instructional coach for the district, as a direct defendant alongside the district itself.
According to the June 2026 court filing, the woman — identified in court papers as Jane Doe — says the abuse unfolded while Calonje was in her early thirties and working as a Spanish teacher at Menlo-Atherton High. The suit, as reported by The Almanac, accuses Calonje of grooming, sexually harassing and abusing the student, with allegations that include groping, molestation, forced digital penetration, intercourse and oral copulation. The alleged incidents are said to have occurred both on and off campus, during and after school hours.
Court documents allege Calonje brought the student to school and drove her home in view of district administrators and staff, and the woman says she believes other students may have been abused as well. The lawsuit accuses Sequoia Union of failing to prevent teacher sexual abuse, failing to adequately investigate and supervise its employees, and failing to warn or educate students about dangers posed by staff. It further alleges the district never reported Calonje to law enforcement and failed to properly implement policies and protocols to detect and report suspected abuse. The complaint states that proper action, adequate supervision and timely reporting could have prevented some or all of the abuse the student says she suffered.
District and Teacher Stay Silent
Sequoia Union High School District did not respond to The Almanac's repeated requests for comment. Calonje also did not respond to inquiries from the Palo Alto Daily Post. The district was served with the lawsuit in mid-June, and The Almanac reports it was unable to confirm whether Calonje remains employed by the district.
Calonje was promoted to instructional coach for the district in 2022 after previously teaching Spanish at Menlo-Atherton High, where she served as head of the World Languages Department. During that time, she co-developed a gender-inclusive Spanish curriculum unit for Heritage Spanish and AP Spanish courses, according to the M-A Chronicle.
Attorney Alex Cunny, who is representing the plaintiff, said sexual abuse survivors often take a long time to come forward, and that the law now reflects and respects the time survivors need. The case is being brought with the involvement of Lanier Meyer McBride Blair LLP, a Texas-based sexual abuse law firm that has offered free consultations to people with similar experiences. Evidence in the case is still being collected, per The Almanac.
A Statute That Reopened the Past
The lawsuit is possible because of California law allowing victims of sexual abuse that occurred before December 31, 2023, to file a civil claim before turning 40 or within five years of discovering the psychological impacts of that abuse. That framework traces to Assembly Bill 218, signed into law in October 2019, which extended the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims and took effect the following January, according to the California School Boards Association. The law also created a temporary three-year lookback window, and statewide litigation it unleashed has cost California school districts an estimated $3 billion, per state legislative budget data cited by Scot Scoop.
Part of a Wider Pattern at Sequoia Union
This is not the district's only active abuse-related lawsuit. In March, a former Woodside High School student filed a separate suit against Sequoia Union alleging administrators failed to protect her from volleyball coach Thomas Feng, who was criminally charged with felony sexual assault following a June 2025 police report, as Hoodline reported at the time. That lawsuit alleges administrators brushed off two anonymous reports and a parent tip and did not report reasonable suspicion, Hoodline reported.
The district has also absorbed significant financial settlements in recent months. In March, Sequoia Union agreed to pay $400,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit with a former Menlo-Atherton student tied to a 2023 campus incident, without admitting liability, per the InMenlo news site. In May, the district reached a separate $325,000 settlement in a civil suit brought by Jewish families over classroom materials and harassment complaints, Hoodline previously reported.
Taken together, the mounting litigation points to a district facing repeated questions about how it investigates and supervises employees accused of misconduct. For the Menlo-Atherton graduate now suing over abuse she says began when she was 14, the case adds her name to a list of plaintiffs seeking accountability years, and in some cases decades, after the alleged harm occurred.
