California Parents Fear Far-Right Hijacking of School Board Meeting

A week after Proud Boys and other far-right figures descended on a California school board, parents in another district that has become a battleground in the culture wars fear violence could again unfold at a meeting set for Tuesday evening.

“I think that a bunch of outside instigators can show up. I think a bunch of inside instigators can show up,” said Christine Massa, a mother of three in Riverside County. “They tend to be violent. They tend to be nonsensical, to get in your face and scream. They tend to not want to have a seat on the table, they want to stand on the table.”

Massa opposes the conservative bent of the Temecula Valley school board, recently evidenced by president Joseph Komrosky describing Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay politician, as a “pedophile” during a debate about social studies curriculum.

The board voted 3-2 to reject an elementary school social studies book that includes Milk, who was murdered in 1978 and is revered as a gay rights icon—and it was slammed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and is being investigated by state Attorney General Rob Bonta. If the board does not approve a textbook, teachers will have no curriculum next year, which may break California law.

In a tweet following the vote, Newsom called Komrosky an “ignorant person” and told him to “stay tuned.”

“California is closely watching the actions of malicious actors seeking to ban books, whitewash history, and demonize the LGBTQ+ community in Temecula and across the state,” Newsom said in a statement last week, “If the law is violated, there will be repercussions.”

The agenda of Tuesday’s meeting includes a non-public session at which the board will conduct a performance review of Dr. Jodi McClay, the current superintendent. The next agenda item is “interim superintendent.”

Some parents are worried the board plans to fire McClay and possibly also Francisco Arce, assistant superintendent of human resources development for the district.

“That’s a disaster for the district because she is the only thing holding that cabinet together,” says Jeff Pack, an ex-journalist and father of five who founded One Temecula Valley PAC last year to combat “political and religious extremist views.” He fears the board will not stop there.

“Then they are going to start attacking teachers. I’m told there is a list of teachers they want to fire,” he continued.

PAC members spent Monday collecting signatures to recall three right-wing board members at a local library, ending the day with 243, far more than the 90 required to initiate recall proceedings.

Pack told The Daily Beast that he is “very worried about this week because of the outside influence” that he saw at the Glendale Unified School District, where dueling protests turned into a brawl and three people were arrested outside a meeting to vote on recognizing Pride Month.

At least one far-right activist who took part in protests last week in Glendale has announced his intention to travel to Temecula: Bryce Henson, who runs an Instagram called Southern California Parent Advocates, with the stated mission of whose mission is “exposing, challenging, and resisting CRT, radical gender ideology, and vaccine/mask tyranny in So Cal schools.”

Tensions have skyrocketed in Temecula, which is midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, since a new slate of conservative school board candidates won a majority in November 2022, local parents say.

The three right-wing candidates, Komrosky, Jennifer Wiersma, and Danny Gonzalez, were supported by the Inland Empire Family PAC, a conservative political action committee that “works to stop the indoctrination of our children by placing candidates on school boards who will fight for Christian and Conservative values,” according to its website.

The candidates were also supported by some prominent evangelical Christian pastors, including Tim Thompson of 412 Church Temecula Valley, who held a rally for candidates at his church. (Thompson, a politically active conservative, hosted Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene at a service in 2021.)

Since it took control of the board in December 2022, the conservative majority has passed a series of controversial changes to school curriculum.

At their first meeting that month Komrosky, Gonzalez, and Wiersma passed a resolution banning the teaching of “critical race theory,” (CRT) a term for a college-level theory taught at some law schools. It is not taught in Temecula schools, but some conservatives use “CRT” as a catch-all term for K-12 curriculum addressing slavery and race.

While the move got Komrosky and Wiersma air-time on Fox and Friends, it did not go down well with high-school students in the district, who organized two walk-outs over the resolution, according to the Press Enterprise.

The school board then spent $15,000 to have a critical race theory “consultant” give seminars to teachers in the district.

In March, the school board held a five-hour CRT panel discussion that descended into chaos after a Black man was removed by security after speaking against the ban, and a white woman in the crowd allegedly told him to “get out of the country.”

“It was pretty widely heated, and pretty widely dangerous. There were plenty of people who came out of the woodwork, including some who don’t live in Temecula,” Massa, who attended the meeting, said. “[The board] tried to create an echo chamber, and it backfired on them.”

Massa and Pack are both worried the upcoming school board meeting will be just as heated, if not worse, especially given rumors circulating online that far-right activists are traveling to Temecula. Pack believes that if the board votes to fire the superintendent, things could get ugly.

“Our best guess is that’s when all hell will break loose,” Pack continued, “We are going to try and organize people as safely as possible. I don’t know what else we can do.”