The former Mills High School teacher charged with videotaping female students in the school bathroom, distributing hundreds of unrelated child pornography images and using cocaine while out on bail may settle the case later this month.

Prosecutors offered David Lista an undisclosed plea bargain but are holding off on formalizing any agreement.

“We want to check into a few items first,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, declining to elaborate.

Lista, who is free from custody on $135,000 bail from two cases, returns to court Aug. 28 for further pretrial conference. If the case does not settle, a preliminary hearing date will be set.

Lista is facing multiple misdemeanors and felonies stemming from his alleged placement of a camera in the school bathroom and in his school room desk, possessing methamphetamine and pornography at home and possessing cocaine during a traffic stop while out on bail.

Belmont police arrested Lista March 7 after finding methamphetamine while serving a search warrant at his apartment in investigating a sexual exploitation case that began the previous day.

The school was performing maintenance on its computer system and called in a computer expert to figure out why it ran slow. The consultant found a file containing 15 to 25 images of female students using the school’s bathroom, according to Millbrae police.

Lista allegedly installed a pinhole camera in the ceiling above the stalls in the girls bathroom adjacent to his classroom and a pinhole camera was installed in his school room desk, apparently to film students under their desks.

Forensics experts reportedly discovered hundreds of sexually explicit videos and still photographs showing sexual conduct with children on his home computer.   

On April 4 — four days before he was due back in court — San Mateo police stopped Lista’s vehicle due to reportedly erratic driving. Lista handed the officers a cocaine snorting tube with a quarter gram of the drug, according to police.

Lista was placed on leave from Mills High School and later resigned.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.