Andrew Cruz

The social and political dichotomy of the collective right/left, conservative/liberal, traditional Christian/secular divides – the macrocosm of current American politics – is playing out as a concentrated pageant in the ongoing microcosm of the Chino Valley Unified School District board race.
For the last several years, a majority of unabashed Christians on the board have held sway over the district. Their Christian ethos has been challenged, to be sure, but they have had the solid backing of a core of like-minded constituents and, on occasion, other high profiled members of the political and governmental establishment, such as former Chino Police Chief Miles Pruitt. Another set of community members – freethinkers and liberals among them, at least a few of whom are positioned at the far left side of the political spectrum – have attempted, sometimes successfully and other times much less so, to serve as a counterweight to the board’s controlling and predominant faction. Somewhere in the middle, the vast and generally silent majority has remained in a status of uneasy suspension, out of alignment with both extreme ends of the polemic. The November 8 election promises to be a referendum of sorts over the hot flashpoint questions at the heart of these differences.
All three of the incumbents whose terms are set to expire later this year – James Na, Andrew Cruz and Irene Hernandez-Blair – are seeking reelection in November.
The only rivalry between Na and Cruz, it seems, is the mutual effort by each to prove himself the most devout Christian. On virtually every other issue they appear to be in lockstep. That is because they are both – along with a third board member, Sylvia Orozco – parishioners of the Chino Hills Calvary Chapel, a church led by the Reverend Jack Hibbs. Hibbs evinces a denominationalist attitude, which holds that Christians have a duty to take over public office and promote their religious beliefs from the bully pulpit they occupy. In a very real sense, Hibbs’ ability to drive the members of his church to vote and support the candidates of his choosing has had a major impact on the policy of the district. By seeing to it that Na and Cruz, and subsequently Orozco, were elected, Hibbs was able to get the district to include Bible study classes as part of the district’s high school curriculum and push the board to allow the inclusion of prayer, i.e., specifically Christian prayer, as a feature of school events. Moreover, even without Hibbs’ prompting, both Na and Cruz work religious homilies and constant reference to God into the discussions of the school board at its public meetings.
Some elements of the community object to this overt religiosity in general and mightily object to it being foisted upon themselves and others in the context of public institutions such as schools and at school district functions. And indeed, the district’s unofficial and informal policies are, essentially, out of step with the evolving American standards with regard to the separation of church and state. In the 18th, 19th and much of the 20th centuries, there was a degree of generic Christian homogeneity to the predominant portion of the American population that provided for a widespread tolerance, indeed embracing, of Christian-based references in public and official governmental confabulations, even despite the long running existence of both a significant and less significant minority of the population – Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shinto practitioners, etc, who were not in sync with this Christian ethos. Over the last several decades, however, the influx of non-Christian immigrants and the rise of secularism, agnosticism and atheism has left larger and larger numbers of the population disinclined to engage in Christian ritualism in public settings. Over the last five decades the public imposition of Christian prayer and iconography has been challenged in the courts, resulting in decision after decision that has not absolutely eliminated the ability of public officials to engage in public prayer but has limited to a considerable degree the ability to do so and has simultaneously created a standard that calls for such prayer to be either non-denominational in nature or inclusive of all religions, which some consider a seeming impossibility.
The subtleties of what has grown into the current standard with regard to freedom of religion appears to have been lost on Na, Cruz and, to a lesser extent, Orozco. Na, for example, habitually celebrates his love of America, Republican values and his Christian faith in both private and public contexts. He genuinely seems to assume with most of his interlocutors that they share his views and attitudes and, ingenuously expresses disapproval akin to being hurtfully disappointed if one does not embrace his leanings, let alone resists his importuning that he or she embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has suggested that it is wrong for anyone to assert that he is the one out of step with what is right and that it is incumbent upon those who disagree with him to change themselves. “Everyone who does not know Jesus Christ, go find him,” he said during a board meeting.
Cruz, who was elected to the school board in 2012, is as assertive in making his own religious overtures, often layering in Biblical quotations during discussion of routine board items, including passages from Psalm 143:8; 2 Corinthians; 2 Galatians; Romans 15:6; and Galatians 5:22 & 23.
Cruz and Na’s attitudes reflects that of their pastor, Hibbs.
Hibbs calls upon his congregants to be “political activist soldiers in the service of the Lord” and “prayer warriors.”
Hibbs has asserted “No law is going to stop people from praying.” A handbill he authored states, “It has long been the tradition of our nation to open federal, state, and local legislative sessions, as well as town and school board meetings, with an invocation asking God for divine guidance and blessing. People of faith must unite to encourage the school district and its board members to continue their support of this time honored tradition.”
It was during both of Na’s two terms as board president that the religious references during board meetings intensified. After Na’s second stint as board president, Irene Hernandez-Blair succeeded him. Less overtly religious than Na, Cruz and Orozco, Hernandez-Blair sought to dial the proselytizing down a notch or two, attempting to steer the district toward middle ground on the religion-in-school issue. She was succeeded as board president by Cruz last year. Cruz swung the district back toward the Christian fold at once. It would be during Cruz’s tenure as president that the district was met with a secular reckoning.
Parents and students in the district, despairing that their efforts to convince the board members to tone the religious references down were doomed to failure, turned to the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin. The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed suit in Federal Court in Riverside in November 2014 against the district on behalf of two named plaintiffs, Larry Maldonado and Mike Anderson, and 21 unnamed plaintiffs, who asserted they were alienated or intimidated at school board meetings because of overt and constant references to Christianity, including “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing.” In the suit, the plaintiffs sought the cessation of religiosity as an element in the district’s conducting of business.
While some district officials suggested the district could have made an early and inexpensive exit from the lawsuit by dispensing with the sermonizing, the board majority elected to make a test case out of the circumstance, and engaged the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute for $1 to defend the district in the civil lawsuit.
The Pacific Justice Institute, founded and led by Brad Dacus, touts itself as a public interest law firm that “handles cases addressing religious freedom, including church and private school rights issues, curtailments to evangelism by the government, harassment because of religious faith, employers attacked for their religious-based policies, [and] students and teachers’ rights to share their faith at public schools.”
Following some initial legal sparring, the district, represented by the Pacific Justice Institute, sought to hang its hat on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Town of Greece v. Galloway decision. In the Town of Greece v. Galloway case, the United States Supreme Court held that the Town of Greece, New York could permit volunteer chaplains to open each legislative session with a prayer, but that such prayer must be “ceremonial in nature.”
The school district did not do too well after it was demonstrated that the religious activity the board engaged in went well beyond simple ceremony. Eventually, the Pacific Justice Institute handed the case off to Murrieta-based attorney Robert Tyler, an equally passionate Christian advocate. The district’s lawyers maintained the board members’ public prayers were protected by the “legislative prayer exception.”
Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal, in a ruling made as part of a summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, made a finding against the Chino Valley Unified School District, instructing its board to refrain forthwith from inserting religion into official proceedings and ordering the Chino Unified School District Board to discontinue its overt and constant references to Christianity during its public meetings.
Bernal rejected the defendants’ claims that the board majority’s celebration of its beliefs did not violate the plaintiffs’ rights to attend district board meetings and participate in other district and school functions without being subjected to an intensive round of religious advocacy.
“The court finds… permitting religious prayer in board meetings, and the policy and custom of reciting prayers, Bible readings, and proselytizing at board meetings, constitute unconstitutional government endorsements of religion in violation of plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights,” Bernal wrote. “Defendant board members are enjoined from conducting, permitting or otherwise endorsing school-sponsored prayer in board meetings.”
The court ordered the school board to pay court costs and plaintiff fees, which were subsequently determined to be $202,971.70.
“The legislative exception does not apply to prayer at school board meetings,” Bernal stated, reasoning that the nature of the school board made it even more imperative that it not break down the Constitutional wall between state and church.
“The risk that a student will feel coerced by the board’s policy and practice of religious prayer is even higher here than at football games or graduations,” Bernal stated. “The school board possesses an inherently authoritarian position with respect to the students. The board metes out discipline and awards at these meetings, and sets school policies that directly and immediately affect the students’ lives.”
Bernal added, “Regardless of the stated purpose of the [prayer] resolution, it is clear that the board uses it to bring sectarian prayer and proselytization into public schools through the backdoor.”
It is not just in reciting prayer that the board majority has sought to propound Christian principles into the district. In July 2015, Cruz held forth on his views pertaining to inculcating in the district’s charges conservative and Christian values in a rambling 10 minute soliloquy, touching on parentage, race, exemption from school vaccinations and immigration. In expressing his view that it is improper for homosexual parents to raise children, that school restrooms should be restricted to use according to the natural gender of the students and that certain ethnicities were more prone to misbehavior than others, he cited his religious faith as the bedrock for his beliefs. This created a firestorm of controversy that galvanized many of the plaintiffs in the suit brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and animated others who were not involved in the suit, a number of whom called upon Cruz to resign. Many of those disturbed by Cruz’s actions and statements, as well as those of Na, coalesced into a group calling itself Concerned Parents and Citizens of CVUSD.
Cruz spurned the request that he resign and stood down a threatened recall, which to have succeeded would have required that its sponsors collect the valid signatures of ten percent of the district’s voters as endorsement on a recall petition to mandate a recall vote, and then convince a majority of the voters to endorse his removal from office. Such an effort proved too daunting, but now, the normal electoral cycle has put Cruz – along with Na – in the cross hairs of a growing group of parents in the district as well as community members in general who consider the commandeering of the public institution of Chino Valley’s schools by a group of religious zealots to be improper and a collective embarrassment to the community.
A real question exists, however, as to whether the secularists on their own have the political muscle to effectively stand up to and prevail in an electoral forum against Hibbs and a handful of other Christian preachers who are in league with him. Those religious leaders have an impressive track record in driving voters to the polls in sufficient numbers to take actual effective control of the district.
Complicating the situation is that some of the issues Cruz and Na have gravitated toward, while including a religious component, have resonated with elements of the community beyond those identifying themselves as “Christians.” For example, a significant number of parents with no strong religious feelings one way or the other object to state regulations contained in AB1266, which in addition to mandating that academic and vocational programs be available to all students regardless of gender, also contains language to the effect that “Participation in a particular physical education activity or sport, if required of pupils of one sex, shall be available to pupils of each sex” and “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”
In the wake of the passage of AB1266, the school board adopted a resolution in opposition to the transgender provisions contained in it, passing it on a 4-1 vote, with Hernandez-Blair as the lone dissenter.
In this way, Na and Cruz are able to broaden their appeal beyond that portion of the electorate strictly defined as “Christian” or “conservative” or “Republican” or “right wing,” and this carries with it a real potential that they will achieve reelection in November.
In addition to the three incumbents in the race, Joe Schaffer, Don Bridge, Lily Valdivia-Rodriguez and Mia Ontiveros are competing as challengers.
Bridge is a former Chino Valley Unified teacher and was the president of the Associated Chino Teachers, the union representing teachers in its collective bargaining sessions with the district.
Schaffer, Bridge and Hernandez-Blair have been endorsed by the Associated Chino Teachers and by the Concerned Parents and Citizens of CVUSD.