Temecula Valley faculty board President Joseph Komrosky, an outspoken spiritual conservative whose contentious tenure has been marked by heated debates, was narrowly shedding a recall election, in response to preliminary outcomes Tuesday night time.
Komrosky was elected as a part of a three-member conservative majority in November 2022. Upon taking workplace close to the top 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.
Over the following yr, underneath Komrosky’s management, the Temecula Valley Unified Faculty District restricted the educating of vital race idea, restricted which flags may very well be flown and permitted a coverage that concerned notifying mother and father of pupil gender identification.
The activism resulted in ongoing litigation, in addition to state intervention that prompted the varsity system to again down considerably from efforts to limit the subject material on state-mandated instructional subjects.
If Komrosky have been to be recalled, it will 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 won’t be full till after elections in November.
This week’s balloting affected solely Komrosky’s District 4 seat, representing the jap and central portion of the district.
The Temecula majority adopted a coverage playbook that has come to characterize that of non secular conservatives elected to native places of work which have monumental affect on what and the way kids are taught in public faculties.
Komrosky put his spiritual conviction entrance and heart — his bio on the social media platform X declares: “God fearing patriot who loves our nation. Full time Faculty Professor educating logic and important pondering, and servant of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.”
However his insurance policies additionally have been supposed to and presumed to have broad attraction.
“Mother or father’s rights have been revoked and ignored,” he wrote on his web site opposing the recall. “I’ll advocate strongly for household rights and our youngsters’s rights relating to their security and schooling. I’ll stand in opposition to pointless faculty mandates that hurt households.”
For him, this included a parental notification coverage supposed to alert mother and father when their kids exhibited any signal of figuring out with a gender apart from the one on their start certificates.
Komrosky and his allies say they imagine mother and father have a elementary proper to be concerned in all elements of their kids’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 kids at critical danger.
The legality of mum or dad notification insurance policies stays in play. The Chino Valley and Temecula faculty boards permitted primarily equivalent insurance policies — and every district was sued. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified Faculty 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 permitted a revised coverage, which it hopes will accomplish the identical objective whereas passing authorized muster.
A unique decide upheld Temecula’s coverage, a ruling that’s being appealed.
That lawsuit additionally alleges the board majority is hostile towards LGBTQ+ subjects and college students — citing the board’s refusal to undertake a state-approved curriculum for elementary faculties that features a temporary, optionally available 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 high-quality by Gov. Gavin Newsom prompted the board to approve the curriculum, which had been really helpful by lecturers and directors and was in keeping with state studying requirements.
The difficulty will not be over. The board voted to maneuver this fourth-grade lesson on California civil rights actions to the top of the yr, to offer time to search out an “age-appropriate curriculum” that may very well be substituted rather than “sexualized subjects of instruction.”
The lesson in query consists of paragraphs noting that LGBTQ+ people and teams fought for civil rights, together with the proper to marry, however has no dialogue of intercourse.
That Temecula teacher-led go well with additionally seeks to overturn the district coverage to limit the educating of vital race idea, a tutorial authorized framework taught at some schools and universities that examines how racial inequality and racism have been systemically embedded in American establishments.
Crucial race idea has been one other culture-war tinderbox throughout the nation. The Temecula checklist of banned ideas embodies widespread conservative assertions, together with that lecturers use vital race idea to make white college students really feel responsible about being white. Many schooling specialists think about this characterization of how lecturers have been coping with the subject of race to be inaccurate and incomplete.
Temecula is outwardly the one California district going through litigation over its coverage on vital race idea.
However tradition conflict points are taking part in 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. Related ideological struggles have unfolded in Rocklin Unified and the Dry Creek Joint Elementary Faculty District, each north of Sacramento, and the Anderson Union Excessive Faculty District in Shasta County.
Occasions employees author Ian James contributed to this report.
