Three newly elected school board trustees who ran on a parental rights platform in Temecula, Calif., and voted to ban critical race theory from being taught in the classroom last week were met with student walkouts over the issue, along with accusations of “white supremacy.”
The proposed critical race theory (CRT) ban was discussed at a school board meeting on Dec. 13 at Temecula Valley High School, where more than 500 people gathered and several hundred others watched the meeting online.
Earlier in the day, dozens of fliers calling the proposed ban “white supremacy in action” were posted on windows throughout the high school.
At the meeting, cheers and jeers filled the high school theater as each of the five candidates were sworn in, marking a shift in balance on the board to a majority of trustees who ran on a platform of traditional Christian values.
Just hours after he was sworn in and elected school board president at Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), Joseph Komrosky introduced two resolutions. The first declared a new district policy against racism and the second banned CRT. The board passed both resolutions by a 3-2 vote with newly elected trustees Jen Wiersma and Danny Gonzalez voting in favor and Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz opposed.
Schwartz and Barclay had earlier urged the rest of the board not to elect Komrosky as board president, claiming he was unqualified and inexperienced.
Since the meeting, there have been at least two student walkouts—one at Temecula Valley High School with about 200 students and another at Great Oak High School with about 350. Schwartz, a retired teacher and longtime union activist, attended the Great Oak walkout with students last week.
CRT Ban
The teaching of the tenets of critical race theory has been a source of contention among parental rights groups in California and across the nation in recent years.
The resolution condemned CRT as “an ideology based on false assumptions about the United States of America” based on a distorted definition of what racism has traditionally meant. It further states that CRT is “a divisive ideology that assigns moral fault to individuals solely on the basis of an individual’s race and, therefore, is itself a racist ideology.”
“Critical Race Theory assigns generational guilt and racial guilt for conduct and policies that are long in the past” and “violates the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law,” it states.
Because CRT views social problems primarily as racial problems it detracts from analysis of underlying socio-economic causes of social problems, the resolution continues.
At the meeting, Suzie Stock, a teacher in the district, accused the three trustees in favor of the ban of sowing division and hate.
“This is a white nationalist movement that is not and will not be supported by our community. We do not teach critical race theory in our school district, nor is it taught in any K-12 curriculum,” she said. “But, the language is tricky. They are trying to trick us and they are trying to catch students and teachers who do not fall in line.”
Andrea Dunham, a parent with children attending school in the district, also opposed the ban on CRT.
“The idea that white children learning the truth about racism will lead them to hating themselves and other white people is absurd,” she said.
Genesis Kekoa, president of the Black Student Union at Temecula Valley High School, accused the board of acting like their “racist ancestors.”
“Some of you may think that since this history is so far behind us, that is irrelevant. But if my history is irrelevant, then so is yours. Why should we learn about the treatment of white settlers and what they had to endure from the British or the treatment of white girls in factories, all things that happened over centuries ago, when if you had it your way, we would not be able to discuss Ruby Bridges or Rosa Parks, things that just happened recently,” Kekoa said. “There’s not nearly enough black history taught in school today, and with your CRT resolution, you’re showing that your intentions are to reduce it even further. How many generations is it going to take for you school board people to stop acting like your racist ancestors? I hope your children will do better.”
Meanwhile, Stephanie Dawson, a parent who was heckled at the meeting for opposing CRT, told The Epoch Times she has also been harassed on social media for her stance on such issues.
“As a Hispanic and mother to children who are mixed ... [I believe] there should be no pinpointing of cultures or races as one being the victim and the other being the oppressor [in America],” she said. “I’m not a victim to anyone and my children are not oppressors.”
Dawson originally began attending school board meetings because she was opposed to mask and vaccine mandates, and she eventually decided to pull her daughter out of public school. She attended Temecula Valley High School, while her 5-year-old son, whom she homeschools, has never attended public school.
‘They Don’t Want CRT to Leave’
Komrosky, a tenured philosophy professor who says he studies logic, critical thinking, and ethics, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 16 that his opponents’ arguments against the CRT ban don’t make sense.“It’s a great irony that these students and some of the parents are protesting that CRT isn’t here, but then they don’t want CRT to leave,” Komrosky said. “You cannot have both. Either it’s here, or it’s not here.”
In addition, “emotionally triggered” debate tactics where opponents “accuse first” and ask questions later, if at all, make it difficult to foster rational and reasonable discussion, he said.
Komrosky said he supports the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Ultimately, CRT is a “self-refuting idea” and an “incoherent contradiction,” Komrosky said. “You would think that when you study critical race theory that you wouldn’t be a racist, but you end up becoming a racist because now you’re targeting people for the color of their skin.”
Recently, certain minority groups have also been labeled as oppressors, he said.
“Asians have been included in this. Now they are oppressors as well as white people, and anybody not Asian and not white are victims and are oppressed,” Komrosky said. “The second you start talking about that kind of class division and segregation, you’re pushing Marxism.”
Pastor Tim Thompson, who founded a political action committee called the Inland Empire Family PAC last March to support the three parental rights candidates’ campaigns, has opposed topics such as comprehensive sex education and the tenets of CRT being taught in schools for more than a decade.
“I believe that God has created all people to be equal ... so I don’t like any attempts to divide our children based on the color of their skin,” he told The Epoch Times.
Thompson had warned parents that CRT “was a problem” long before the pandemic, “but nobody was paying attention in the schools, and COVID just basically woke up the parents,” he said.
Banning CRT isn’t the cancelling of history as activists claim, he said.
“People need to know slavery took place. I think they need to know that there were atrocities that took place in this nation. Nobody is trying to tell any teacher that they can’t teach accurate history,” he said. “What we’re saying is don’t tell our students that because of the color of their skin, they’re in a class of either oppressed, or oppressor.”
Thompson suggested students had been coached to repeat talking points in favor of CRT.
“The students ... just repeated rhetoric that it’s not being taught. Well, if it’s not being taught, then why do you care if we say it shouldn’t be taught?” he said.
To illustrate what he believed to be CRT, Thompson told how he had posted on social media about a year ago a video of a Temecula teacher, who is white, telling his students about his own experience being pulled over by police while riding a motorcycle. The teacher said he argued with officers for 20 minutes but was still issued a traffic ticket.
“That’s total privilege,” the teacher tells his students in the video.
“If I was a black man, if I was a Hispanic man, you know what I would have probably done? I would have said, ‘Yeah give me the thing to sign. I’m moving on. I do not want to get in any sort of altercations with this,’” the teacher says.
After Thompson posted the video, the school district sent him a letter threatening legal action against him, he said.
Students Sign Petition
Melissa, a ninth-grade student at Chaparral High School, said at the meeting that her club has gathered 300 signatures on a petition against the resolution to ban CRT.“There is no need to ban a certain school of thought from the classroom, and students should be introduced to all different ways of thinking rather than having their opinions dictated,” she said.
Another high school junior said she was “disgusted” that Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote was cited in the “blatantly racist” resolution.
“The only people that the erasure of history will benefit is white children, and we know that by for the children you meant for the white children,” she said. “People like those of you who agree with that document—that is if you read it—are exactly what he was against. I urge you to listen to the students your policies are affecting.”
Jessica Jones, a ninth-grade student at Chaparral High School, told the board she was also opposed to the ban.
“When I heard this decision about prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory, I was upset and I think this is a bad decision. Prohibiting critical race theory damages our youth and promotes false history,” she said.
Wiersma, one of the new trustees, told The Epoch Times that throughout their campaign, the Family PAC candidates were targeted by activists and the teachers’ union and falsely portrayed as bigots and extremists, she said.
“There were fliers all over the campuses that said, these are basically Christian nationalists wanting to cancel history,” she said. “There was such a concerted effort to thwart the parental right candidates. They were so disrespectful.”
At the meeting, the board voted to extend the time allowed for public comments and it lasted more than six hours, until after midnight.
Although Wiersma believes students are truly concerned about the issue, she said activist teachers have been “fanning the flames” to push their own agenda rather than encouraging students to become civically engaged and evaluate the issue objectively to decide for themselves.
California students have fallen behind academically, and the main campaign message of the newly elected trustees is to return to basic academic studies such as reading, writing and mathematics.
“The activism, the ideology, the divisiveness—those are things we'd like to see removed. We don’t need to talk about Bible verses in the classroom, and neither do we need to swing to the point of having students believe they’re either an oppressed person or an oppressor, and then walk out of class bitter and divided,” she said.
While parents won’t find a textbook with “Critical Race Theory” on its cover, the tenets of CRT are woven into the curriculum through supplemental materials, classroom discussions and assignments, she said.
Wiersma said the new majority on the board hopes to organize a CRT forum where students can ask questions because most don’t grasp the tenets of Marxism, she said.
“They don’t understand the deeper roots,” she said. “They’re only on the surface level.”
Trustees Barclay and Schwartz did not respond to inquiries on Dec. 19 about who posted the fliers and was behind the student walkouts, nor did Jodi McClay, district superintendent.
“At this time, we have no comment,” James Evans, TVUSD public information officer, said via email on Dec. 19.
