VALLEJO – A substitute teacher who was arrested last week for allegedly dragging a student out of a classroom at Elite Public Schools had faced two prior allegations of abuse, including an incident earlier this year when he allegedly dragged a student at another Vallejo school by the arm. 

Vallejo police confirmed that Noah Dove, 40, turned himself in on May 21 and was cooperating with officers. Solano County jail booking logs show Dove was arrested on suspicion of a felony charge of corporal injury on a child.

Cellphone video of the incident  broadcast on KTVU last week shows a man in a classroom pulling a student to the ground by her sweatshirt and dragging her by her legs through a small room toward an exit door. The student yelled for help and other students said, “Why is he dragging her?”

Officials with Elite, a charter school which opened in 2019, issued a statement last week saying the teacher had been removed from work. “A conflict ensued between a student and a substitute teacher which escalated to the physical removal of a student, initiated by the substitute teacher,” Elite officials said. “We have engaged with the employment agency and have ensured that the individual in question will not be reinstated at Elite Public Schools in any capacity.”

But records and interviews show that Dove has faced prior allegations of abusive behavior around children, which has raised questions about how and why Dove was able to continue taking substitute teaching positions. A family friend obtained a restraining order against him in 2020 after alleging that Dove had behaved abusively toward her daughter while she was at his home. And an employee at another Vallejo charter school said that she had witnessed a similar incident involving Dove earlier this year.

Dove has been active in Vallejo community

Dove has held prominent positions on local educational boards, city commissions and volunteered with organizations in Vallejo.

According to his LinkedIn account, he was an Art Walk board member, a board member of the Vallejo Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and he volunteered for a food aid program and for the Vallejo Poet Laureate program. He was also appointed to the city’s McCune Collection Commission, which oversees a collection of historical books and documents at the Vallejo library.

According to Dove’s Linkedin account, in 2021 he worked as a teacher’s assistant at Mills College for Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was a state assemblymember and assistant professor of public policy and political science at the time.

He volunteered at Caliber Changemakers Academy, another Vallejo charter school, where he also served on its School Site Council. When Dove was facing abuse allegations, Changemakers Principal Rachael Weingarten wrote a letter attesting to his community contributions and good parenting skills, which Dove used as evidence in court.

“Noah Dove has been an integral part of the Caliber: ChangeMakers Academy community,” Weingarten wrote. “Noah is without a doubt an exceptional father, community member, and school volunteer.”

Weingarten’s letter came after a friend of Dove’s family, Robin Horca, alleged that Dove abused her daughter several times over the course of a year in 2018 and 2019 during play dates with Dove’s daughter at his home. 

Horca told the Vallejo Sun in an interview that her daughter described Dove grabbing her by the hair and shaking her while he screamed at her to be quiet. 

Horca said that her daughter and Dove’s daughter were best friends and as a single mother she was grateful that her daughter could play at Dove’s home for a few hours while she ran errands. 

Horca started to have concerns when she went on a camping trip with the Dove family. A group of nine-year-old girls were giggling in a hammock at a nearby campsite. “He went charging over there and screamed at those girls, it was really weird and made me super uncomfortable,” Horca said.

After the trip, Horca said that Dove’s wife at the time, Allison Dove, confided in her that  she was concerned about his behavior around children.

But shortly after that conversation, Noah Dove was volunteering with the kids’ Girl Scout troop and Horca claims that Allison Dove put him in charge of watching the girls while the troop moms had a meeting. After that, Horca felt that she could not trust the Doves and she told her daughter that she would not be able to go to their house for play dates anymore, but she got a shocking response from the six-year-old.

“My daughter looked at me and she said, ‘That’s ok. You know, Noah really scares me. He hurt me,’” Horca said. “And she goes on to describe what has been happening for the past year.” 

Mother says Vallejo police did not take action

Horca went to the police to make a report. Vallejo police interviewed her daughter and she described 10 incidents to the investigating officer, according to a copy of the police report reviewed by the Vallejo Sun. 

According to the police report, Horca did not press charges at the time. Horca said that she felt pressured by the investigating officer not to press charges.

But about a month later she was driving down Georgia Street and encountered Dove who, according to the police report, “bared his teeth in a snarl, stuck his arms out to the side and lunged at the vehicle.” 

Horca was terrified by the incident and felt that she and her daughter were not safe in Vallejo. She said that it took weeks of daily calls to the police before she could get an officer to take a report. This time she requested that the officers file charges against Dove for the alleged physical assaults on her daughter.

However, Dove was never charged. Horca said the officers made it clear that her amended report, which included the new incident on Georgia Street, was unwelcome. She felt that police were not taking action on the case, so she circulated a petition to urge the city officials to support her efforts to pursue charges, and to get her child's case heard by the district attorney’s office. 

After she shared the petition, which drew 300 signatures, to the mayor and City Council, police Detective Craig Long got in touch with Horca about the case and Deputy District Attorney Roopa Krishna contacted her to set up an interview with her daughter at the Courage Center. 

But later Krishna told her that they would not file charges because the evidence in the case boiled down to Horca’s daughter’s statements and Dove had denied the events ever took place.

Horca had asked for support from the community to corroborate her daughter’s testimony; she felt that others might have noticed his aggressive behavior towards children. She contacted the Girl Scout troop, which investigated the allegations and dismissed Dove from volunteer service. City officials also removed Dove from the McCune commission. 

Although the Vallejo police did not pursue criminal charges against Dove, Horca filed for a civil restraining order. In those proceedings Noah claimed that Horca’s efforts to publicize her allegations had damaged his career in public service, according to court documents.

“I contend that her statements are false, with no basis in fact,” Dove wrote in a statement filed in court. “Furthermore, her choices of behavior have impeached her own credibility. As is shown in her police report which required subsequent revision due to admitted factual inaccuracy. These continued revisions further show a pattern of increasing embellishment including a fictional encounter between Ms. Horca and myself near my home.”

Dove wrote letters to community members asking for them to provide statements about his character and volunteer service. In one letter he wrote, “a recent breakup between my wife and one of her girlfriends has gotten ugly, resulting in a high-drama attempt by her former friend to incarcerate me,” according to Anna Bergman, who worked with Dove on the McCune commission and as members of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Solano County.

Bergman said that she was surprised when she received the request because she did not know Dove well but she agreed to write a letter outlining her interactions with him based on his volunteer service. 

Several other community members provided statements that were supportive of Dove and he submitted those statements in his defense, but the judge granted Horca the restraining order in 2020. 

Another abuse allegation this year

Milan Brown, a campus supervisor at Vallejo Charter School, told the Vallejo Sun that she witnessed a disturbing incident involving Dove and a first grade girl in late February or early March just before spring break. She said she was standing in the quad when she heard a child screaming and saw Dove coming out of the gym gripping the child’s arm. 

“He was dragging her by her arm and her feet were coming off the ground,” Brown said. 

Brown said that when she saw the video on the news she recognized the teacher immediately as the same man that had dragged the little girl out of the gym. “His frame and his body stood out to me, I just remember how big and intimidating he was,” she said. According to court records Dove is 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds.

According to Brown, school officials told Dove to leave the campus and said that he could not return as a substitute. Brown and another co-worker who also witnessed the incident, wrote statements and turned them in to the office manager at Vallejo Charter School, Brown said.  

State law requires school administrators to report any change in employment status that results from allegations of educator misconduct to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing

All teachers and school district employees are included in the state’s list of mandated reporters who are required to report all known or suspected cases of child abuse or neglect. Mandated reporters are required to report to a law enforcement agency, according to the California Department of Education.

While there are extenuating circumstances when educators are permitted to use force on students, mandated reporters are required to report based on any suspicion of abuse and it is up to the investigating agencies to determine if the allegations are valid.

Noah Dove’s public teaching credential information does not indicate that the commission has taken any action against him for misconduct.  

But it can take several months or even longer for the commission to take action in response to an allegation or disciplinary action. For example, Matthew Shelton, a former fifth grade teacher in Benicia who was accused of sexual misconduct with students, did not have his teaching credential suspended until more than a year after he left the school and more than two weeks after criminal charges were filed. 

According to California Commission on Teacher Credentialing communications manager Anita Fitzhugh, the commission is required to flag or revoke an educator's credential when the commission receives information that the educator has been convicted of certain crimes. 

When an educator is reported for misconduct that does not involve mandatory action for a criminal offense the commission holds a hearing with the parties involved. “Timeframes can vary, dependent on whether appeal options are exercised,” said Fitzhugh in an email.

Dove was arrested last week but has not been charged

Despite the previous allegations, Dove was apparently serving as a substitute teacher at Elite on May 20, when the video was taken which allegedly shows him drag another student out of class. 

The aunt of the student, Darrina Bernstine, met with Elite executive officer Ramona Bishop the day of the incident. Bishop told her that the teacher had been escorted off campus. 

Bernstine said she asked Bishop about Elite’s process for screening and hiring teachers. She said that Bishop told her that she conducts the screening herself and she looks for a specific type of violation. Bernstine did not feel satisfied with her response.

According to Bishop, Elite conducts background checks for all staff hired internally. Elite hired the teacher involved in the incident through an external agency that conducts its own screening process on all applicants available for hire.

“This particular agency will no longer be able to provide substitutes to work with our students,” Bishop said in an email.

Bernstine asked if the police had been contacted and Bishop told her that they hadn’t, but said that the family could contact the police and press charges. Bernstine asked for the name of the teacher so they could report the incident but Bishop said that they could only release that information to police.

“She did not support the family enough,” said Bernstine. “I did not feel it. She was just like, ‘if you want to you can report it but I’m not going to help you.’”

Bernstine and the family filed a police report and met with police on Tuesday when the video began circulating on social media. 

Dove turned himself in to police that day and was arrested on suspicion of corporal injury on a child. He was later released from jail and the Solano County District Attorney’s Office has not yet charged him, according to court records.

“It was terrible,” said Bernstine. “All I was thinking about was that she could have been killed because of the way he threw her around and with her hitting her head, I was devastated, I couldn't believe that a teacher would do something like that.”

Bernstine said that although her niece is traumatized, she does not appear to be seriously harmed, but she has been going to see a doctor for headaches that she has been getting since the incident.

Horca and Bernstine said that they are going to try and get a successful prosecution of Dove this time. 

Horca said  that the district attorney’s office contacted her on Wednesday, a week after the video was published, to let her know that they are reviewing her case and that an investigator would call her to discuss the latest updates and new evidence.

“This guy should not be on the street where he can harm kids,” Bernstine said. 

Editor's note: this story has been updated to include information provided by Elite Public Schools regarding their hiring process.