Former teacher of the year gets 30 years in California prison for sexually assaulting students

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A onetime county teacher of the year at a Southern California elementary school has been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for grooming and sexually assaulting two young boys on campus.

Jacqueline Ma, who taught at Lincoln Acres Elementary in National City near San Diego, pleaded guilty in February to two counts of forcible lewd acts on a child, one count of a lewd act on a child, and one count of possessing child sexual abuse material.

She was arrested in March 2023 after the mother of one of the victims reported inappropriate messages she found between her son and Ma on a family tablet. Investigators learned that Ma had groomed the boy for more than a year before she sexually abused him when he was 12 years old, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.

Investigators also discovered that she had groomed and sexually assaulted an 11-year-old boy in 2020.

“This defendant violated the trust she had with her students in the most extreme and traumatic way possible and her actions are despicable,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement last week. “Her victims will have to deal with a lifetime of negative effects and her 30-year sentence is appropriate.”

Ma had taught in the district since 2013 and had a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in education, both from UC San Diego, according to her teacher of the year profile in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The award was given for the 2022-23 academic year by the San Diego County Office of Education.