Temecula Valley faculty board President Joseph Komrosky — a spiritual conservative who pushed via insurance policies to restrict dialogue on racism, disallow the show of Pleasure flags and require the disclosure of scholars’ gender identities to oldsters — was narrowly shedding a recall election, in keeping with preliminary outcomes Tuesday evening.
Komrosky was elected as a part of a three-member conservative majority in November 2022. Upon taking workplace close to the tip of that yr, the bloc instantly thrust the Riverside County faculty system of 28,000 college students to the forefront of the nation’s tradition wars.
Two insurance policies — proscribing the instructing of essential race principle and notifying dad and mom of pupil gender identification — resulted in ongoing litigation.
One other effort, to reject a portion of the state’s curriculum associated to the contributions of LGBTQ+ residents, resulted in a state menace to superb the varsity system, prompting native officers to again down considerably.
If Komrosky had been to be recalled, it might finish a 2-2 stalemate that has existed since Komrosky ally Danny Gonzalez resigned in December after asserting he was transferring out of state. The five-member faculty board is not going to be full till after elections in November.
“People are fed up with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric,” mentioned Preston Miller, 21, a recall supporter who graduated from a neighborhood highschool. “They’re fed up with the racism we’ve seen from the school board. We’ve stood up to them and we are winning. I am so proud of our community, the place where I grew up.”
Komrosky was not instantly obtainable for remark. However mum or dad Ryan Waroff mentioned recall supporters had been incorrectly framing the controversy. Komrosky was elected as a result of residents “wanted him to take a stand against some of the state’s interference in local decisions regarding school boards,” Waroff mentioned.
In the long run, Waroff mentioned, it was an uphill battle to beat institution forces that included state authorities and lecturers unions.
Komrosky’s supporters backed his efforts impose Christian-based ethical values and fight what they see because the dangerous sexualization of younger youngsters — causes they believed most dad and mom would help.
Recall supporters considered Komrosky as squandering precious schooling funds to pursue legally questionable, divisive, pointless and mean-spirited insurance policies.
Tuesday’s balloting affected solely Komrosky’s District 4 seat, representing the jap and central portion of the district.
Komrosky’s board majority had adopted a coverage playbook that has come to characterize that of non secular conservatives elected to native workplaces, together with once-sleepy faculty boards which have monumental affect on what and the way youngsters are taught in public faculties.
Komrosky put his non secular conviction entrance and middle — his bio on the social media platform X declares: “God fearing patriot who loves our country. Full time College Professor teaching logic and critical thinking, and servant of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.”
However his insurance policies additionally had been meant and presumed to have broad attraction.
“Parent’s rights have been revoked and ignored,” he wrote on his web site opposing the recall. “I will advocate strongly for family rights and our children’s rights regarding their safety and education. I will stand against unnecessary school mandates that harm families.”
For him, this included a parental notification coverage meant to alert dad and mom when their youngsters exhibited any signal of figuring out with a gender apart from the one on their start certificates.
Komrosky and his allies say they consider dad and mom have a basic proper to be concerned in all facets of their youngsters’s lives, particularly on issues as consequential as gender identification.
Opponents contend that blanket parent-notification insurance policies violate pupil privateness and civil rights in state regulation and the schooling code — and that the near-universal outing of transgender college students to oldsters would put some youngsters at severe danger.
The legality of mum or dad notification insurance policies stays in play. The Chino Valley and Temecula faculty boards authorized primarily an identical insurance policies — and every district was sued. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified College District, and a coalition of oldsters, college students, particular person lecturers and the lecturers union sued Temecula Valley.
The decide within the Chino Valley case discovered the coverage to be considerably unlawful in a preliminary ruling. And Chino Valley subsequently authorized a revised coverage, which it hopes will accomplish the identical objective whereas passing authorized muster.
A distinct decide upheld Temecula Valley’s coverage, a ruling that’s being appealed.
That lawsuit additionally alleges the board majority has been hostile towards LGBTQ+ matters and college students — citing the board’s refusal to undertake a state-approved curriculum for elementary faculties that features a transient, non-obligatory passage in fourth-grade materials about late San Francisco County Supervisor Harvey Milk, the state’s first out homosexual elected official, who was assassinated in 1978.
A threatened superb by Gov. Gavin Newsom prompted the board to approve the curriculum, which had been really useful by lecturers and directors and was in keeping with state studying requirements.
The difficulty isn’t over. The board voted to maneuver this fourth-grade lesson on California civil rights actions to the tip of the yr, to provide time to seek out an “age-appropriate curriculum” that could possibly be substituted instead of “sexualized topics of instruction.”
The lesson in query contains paragraphs noting that LGBTQ+ people and teams fought for civil rights, together with the best to marry, however has no dialogue of intercourse.
The Temecula litigation additionally seeks to overturn the district coverage to limit the instructing of essential race principle, an educational authorized framework taught at some schools and universities that examines how racial inequality and racism have been systemically embedded in American establishments.
Essential race principle has been one other culture-war tinderbox throughout the nation. The Temecula record of banned ideas embodies widespread conservative assertions, together with that lecturers use essential race principle to make white college students really feel responsible about being white. Many schooling consultants take into account this characterization of how lecturers have been coping with the subject of race to be inaccurate and incomplete.
Temecula is seemingly the one California district dealing with litigation over its coverage on essential race principle.
However tradition conflict points are enjoying out in different Southern California faculty districts together with Orange Unified and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified in Orange County and Murrieta Valley Unified in Riverside County. Comparable ideological struggles have unfolded in Rocklin Unified and the Dry Creek Joint Elementary College District, each north of Sacramento, and the Anderson Union Excessive College District in Shasta County.
Instances workers author Ian James contributed to this report.
