New social studies lessons rejected in Southern California

SAN DIEGO (CN) — After hearing hours of public comment in which people alternately offered fire-and-brimstone-type biblical sermons, lobbed accusations of pedophilia and communism, and pleaded for student diversity to be respected and included, the Temecula Valley Unified School District cast a 3-2 vote late Tuesday night to reject a new social sciences curriculum for first through fifth graders.         

Board member Jennifer Wiersma applauded the outcome as a win for parental rights and a chance for the board to deal with the problems of “sexualizations” mentioned in the curriculum. Fellow board member Allison Barclay meanwhile described the vote to reject the curriculum as overtly divisive to the community. 

“I don’t think we have teachers who support radical ideologies. They’re not in our books,” Barclay said. “I don’t think our teachers support pornography or child trafficking or anything of the sort that we’ve heard here tonight from people who don’t belong to this district.” 

The district in southern Riverside County began discussions in May to adopt a new social studies curriculum for its 18 elementary schools that would replace textbooks bought in 2006 and no longer meet California’s curriculum standards. Indeed the state’s FAIR Education Act has, since 2012, compelled school districts to include the contributions of LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities, into textbooks and the social studies curriculum. 

School board President Joseph Komrosky latched on, however, to a supplemental portion of the new book that mentions Harvey Milk, a pioneering gay activist and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he was elected to serve on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s.

Komrosky’s labeling of Milk as a “pedophile” during the board's meeting put Temecula in the middle of the national debate over the rise in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, book banning, and what can or should be taught in public schools. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom even interceded, calling Komrosky ignorant on Twitter. 

“This isn’t Texas or Florida. In the Golden State, our kids have the freedom to learn,” Newsom wrote on Twitter. “Congrats Mr. Komrosky you have our attention. Stay tuned.”

Days later, Newsom and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced that the state would not only buy copies of the book for Temecula Valley students, but they would send the bill to the board and fine them for violating state law. 

The letter was also used to promote Assembly Bill 1078, a bill supported by Newsom and Thurmond that would require the state Board of Education to consider how underrepresented groups figure in school textbooks. It would require a two-thirds vote of a local school board to remove a textbook, and fine school districts that don’t provide standards aligned material.  

Komrosky in response asked the two board members who supported the new curriculum, Barclay and Steven Schwartz, if they were “for a tyrannical governor?”

Barclay demurred, saying she’s just “for our children having adequate textbooks.”    

Multiple public comment sections ensued. Some parents and teachers pleaded for the district to support rigorous and inclusive curriculum for students, and freedom for students to read what they want to read and to be taught using curriculum approved by professional educators. Opponents of the curriculum meanwhile railed against a full spectrum of the country's so-caled culture wars: parental rights, teachers unions, worries about pornographic books being available in schools and hysteria over “grooming” children for sex in schools. There were religious sermons and shoutouts to the board for “redpilling” the community — a term from the movie "The Matrix" that refers to awakening to some previously hidden reality or mindstate. Nowadays the term is used to refer to someone becoming more conservative or interested in conspiracy theories. 

When the rhetoric went too far, Komrosky had a stack of red cards on hand, like a referee in a soccer match, to indicate that the speaker was out of line and would be asked to leave.

“This is our meeting as a board, not yours,” Komrosky told the audience early in the meeting.  

Komrosky raised his red cars to a cascade of boos and cheers when Tim Thompson, a pastor with the 412 Church Temecula Valley, said of Schwartz, “you are probably a communist.”

Riverside County sheriffs then escorted Thompson out of the board’s meeting room.       

A recent Politico article on the district reported that Thompson was an important funder of the conservative school board members who were elected to the board last fall through a political action committee called Inland Empire Family PAC.

In December, the board banned teaching critical race theory in the school district. Last month, the board also fired the district’s superintendent. 

“I wish we would do something for the children in this district,” Schwartz said, adding that, since the new majority on the board has been in power, they haven’t done anything for students. Instead, they’ve “spent a heck of a lot of time on nonsense.”

Other parents who spoke lamented that the board seemed to be wasting time as well as taxpayer money as their stance against the new curriculum generates litigation against the district. They touted the academic rigor that the new curriculum includes, complained about the sowing of division in the community, and the failure to look out for the benefit and protection of all students in the district.   

Many of the speakers vowed to recall the board members that voted against the curriculum. 

“Is my history a threat to your mystery? The mystery of the truth. Somehow you’re taking it out on today’s youth. Because your comfort is key. How about mine? Where’s the diversity,” a resident of the district said, reciting a poem to the board. “Why are you so scared of the past? You radicalists are turning this country to ash. Why so scared? Why so wrong. Free the young.”   

On Wednesday, Governor Newsom announced that the state was in the process of entering into an agreement to provide textbooks to Temecula Valley students. Newsom again took the opportunity to chide the board.

“The three political activists on the school board have yet again proven they are more interested in breaking the law than doing their jobs of educating students — so the state will do their job for them,” Newsom wrote in a press release. “California will ensure students in Temecula begin the school year with access to materials reviewed by parents and recommended by teachers across the district. After we deliver the textbooks into the hands of students and their parents, the state will deliver the bill — along with a $1.5 million fine — to the school board for its decision to willfully violate the law, subvert the will of parents, and force children to use an out-of-print textbook from 17 years ago.”