An overflow crowd attends a Temecula Valley Unified School District board meeting July 18 at which a proposed social studies curriculum was again debated and rejected. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
July tends to be slow for local government news, but as if trying to help us out, the Temecula Valley Unified school board leapt into action, packing six months of drama into a single week.
Naturally it was the week I was out of town. Apparently schools are making news during summers now. (See also: Chino Valley Unified, where on July 20 school board president Sonja Shaw shouted at the state superintendent of public instruction. Inside voices, please!)
As a refresher, the Temecula board refused to buy social studies textbooks whose backup materials include, gasp, a primer on Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Two board members baselessly called him “a pedophile.”
On July 13, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’d send the textbooks to Temecula anyway if the board didn’t get its act together.
The governor tweeted a video in which he spoke directly to Temecula parents, as if they were hostages who needed a message of hope from the outside world.
On July 18 the board doubled down, again rejecting the textbook on a 3-2 vote: Joseph Komrosky, Danny Gonzales and Jen Wiersma on the winning side, Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz on the losing end. Komrosky, the board president, vowed that if Newson shipped the textbooks, they’d be shipped back.
The next day, Newsom said the books would be sent accompanied by a bill and, possibly, a $1.5 million fine.
Two days after that, the board reversed course, agreeing to buy the textbooks on a 4-0 vote, Gonzalez absent. After being forced to pay their superintendent $362,000 after firing her without cause, they must have decided they couldn’t afford to pay for Newsom’s postage too.
That brings us up to date. You may recall that I’d written about the earlier stages of this imbroglio in my July 9 column, which focused on Milk.
That column got a lot more comments than usual. Almost all were positive, even the ones from Temecula. Let me excerpt some of them here.
Rabbi Sandy Rosenstein, Temple Beth Sholom of Temecula: “I can’t thank you enough for your excellent representation of the Harvey Milk debacle. You explained the situation very clearly and did not shy away from noting that Mr. Komrosky — a professor no less — clearly does not know the actual definition of the word ‘pedophile.’”
Maybe they’ve banned dictionaries because dictionaries contain the word “pedophile.”
Ray Fisher, Great Oak High School, Temecula: “These bigots on our school board want to equate all homosexuals with being a pedophile. This hatred must be exposed for what it is.”
It does seem like a, shall we say, textbook example.
Carol Kennedy, Temecula: “I’m glad Newsom said he was watching them, somebody should.”
It’s hard to look away from a train wreck, even if you’re the governor.
Michele Elling, Temecula: “I always enjoy reading your columns. I just wanted to let you know that many of us are horrified by our current school board, their actions and their comments.”
Halloween in Temecula is now year-round.
Janet Cerswell, Alta Loma: “From banning CRT, suspending a drama teacher for assigning ‘Angels in America’ in class to firing the superintendent, they are trying to take the school district and the community back 100 years.”
If they succeed, our “Back in the Day” history columnists will start covering the school board.
Theresa Berg, Hemet: “The actions of the current Temecula school board are downright embarrassing. History will not look kindly on them.”
The board will reject those textbooks too.
Perry Jensen, Temecula: “I want to thank you for your recent column (and the extra effort undertaken to do research for the column) which has interjected facts into a discussion of assertions by a school board that I believe to be out of touch with reality.”
Is that a fact?
Melanie Beaussart of Temecula points out that the young man with whom Milk had a relationship in the 1960s, Jack McGinley, “was born in 1946, which means he was 18 in 1964, the year he and Milk started their relationship.”
Melanie is also good at interjecting facts.
Matthew Martel, San Bernardino: “Once again, you write attacks against conservative views and snide comments about the Temecula board. And once again, as a conservative, I say: mainstream America accepts the gay lifestyle but really does not want it pushed into every public venue, movies, commercials and parades with men ‘sodomizing’ each other on parade floats.”
Matthew is raining on this parade.
Mark Lawson: “Folks in Temecula don’t take kindly to pedophiles and that’s not an insult, David.”
Nor should they. Next!
Richard Bonnes, Temecula: “Yes, having sexual relations with minors will compromise ANY possible good you do. Jeffrey Epstein was super popular, ask him. Look up how Larry Nassar is doing. He was a prominent sports medical doctor, and ZERO people care how good of a doctor he was now.”
Get back to me after Epstein and Nassar, like Milk, are credited with launching civil rights movements, given the Presidential Medal of Freedom and appear on a postage stamp.
Lynn Petroff, Temecula: “How fortunate for your readers that you had a recent visit to San Francisco, saw firsthand the influence of Harvey Milk and shared it with those who had been ignorant of the facts.”
Even on vacation, I’m taking notes.
Brad Umansky: “I am a longtime reader of your columns and I appreciated the Harvey Milk column. I think you handled the matter very well. Hopefully this article does not cost SCNG more readers. We need more ignorant people to be readers, not less.”
I don’t foresee us running out of ignorant readers.
Tami Simms, Temecula: “I can tell you how outraged so many of us are concerning the board members’ slander of Harvey Milk. Sadly, Mr. Milk was used in this process. They have no shame and they don’t care about facts, only cruelty and fear, to do their destruction. I thank you for your wonderful write-up.”
You’re welcome! It’s reassuring to learn that Temecula has a lot of kind people too.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, kindly. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
