Events in the Chino Valley Unified School District over the last two-and-a-half years have had, at the least, a subtle impact on the state’s educational landscape. Now, the district’s board president is looking to intensify the influence the trends she and her colleagues who make up that board majority have had to effectuate deeper impacts on the learning atmosphere in public school settings throughout California.
Republican Sonja Shaw, who was made president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees shortly after she was elected to the board in 2022 by defeating Democrat Christine Gagnier, has now set her sights on running for the position of California state superintendent of public instruction next year.
Elections within the Chino Valley Unified School District for more than a decade and a half have served as a forum in which the fundamentalist Christian/Republican right wing movement has successfully asserted itself in the Golden State, or at least a portion thereof.
At the epicenter of that movement is the Reverend Jack Hibbs, the founder and pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. Hibbs is a denominationalist who holds that Christians have a duty to take over public office and promote their religious beliefs. While he has not expended too much energy or effort on applying his philosophy or approach at the national, state, county or municipal level, he has concentrated his political firepower on the governance of the public school system in the geographical area at the extreme southwest end of San Bernardino County, i.e., the Chino Valley Unified School District, which blankets Chino, Chino Hills and the connecting and immediately surrounding unincorporated county areas.
Hibb’s first political success came with the 2006 election of Sylvia Orozco, a Calvary Chapel parishioner, to the school board. Hibbs followed this with the 2008 election of another Calvary Chapel parishioner, James Na. In 2012, a third member of Hibbs’ congregation, Andrew Cruz, was elected to the school board. Cruz, Na and Orozco, representing a religious trifecta that constituted a majority on the board, set about making significant inroads on the district’s policies.
A major milestone in this regard was making Bible study part of the district curriculum, as well as including benedictions at the beginning of the school board meetings and later, after Na became board president, outright evangelism from the district board dais, with Na telling those present at meetings that they should seek out Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
When the district began to move toward including daily prayer as part of basic instruction at the district’s schools, the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin in 2014 stepped in and filed suit in Federal Court in Riverside 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 the insistence of some district officials to engage in so-called Christian witnessing, including “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing.”
A ruling on the Freedom From Religion Foundation lawsuit by Federal Judge Jesus Bernal resulted in overt religiosity and proselytizing within the district’s schools being eliminated. In 2018, Orozco did not seek reelection and Christina Gagnier and Joe Schaffer were elected and thereafter joined with Board Member Irene Hernandez-Blair to form a board majority that countered Na and Cruz.
For some four years, the denominationalists in the Chino Unified School District were, or appeared to be, in eclipse. In the 2020 election Cruz and Na had been returned to office and Hernandez-Blair did not seek reelection. She was replaced by Don Bridge, who was as committed as was Hernandez-Blair to preventing a religious takeover of Chino Valley’s public schools.
Gagnier, an attorney, had aspirations of moving on to higher office, such as the state legislature and/or Congress. A politician in the mold of Congresswoman Katie Hill or Palm Springs Mayor Christy Holstege, Gagnier had the backing not only of local Democrats but those at the state and national levels, and she was a particular darling of the progressive establishment. She was being groomed to move up to Sacramento in conformance with the strictures of California’s term limits, from which perch she was to eventually launch her run for Congress. This plan was contingent upon her maintaining her status as an officeholder. In 2022, the Democrats, as the dominant party in Sacramento, joined forces to assist her in hanging onto her incumbency. California Superintendent of Public Schools Tony Thurmond, formerly a Bay Area assemblyman, was prominent among the Democrats campaigning on her behalf.
Despite the Democrats pulling out all, or most, of the stops in the effort to keep Gagnier in office, she ran head-on into Hibbs’ denominationalist political machine, which was militating to recapture the high ground it had occupied until the combination of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Judge Bernal, Hernandez-Blair, Gagnier and Schaffer had knocked all of he wind out of their sails. The 2022 election did not go the Democrats way in the 2022 Chino Valley Unified School District election. Two further members of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills congregation, Sonja Shaw and Republican Central Committee Member Jon Monroe, proved victorious, displacing Gagnier and Schaffer on the board.
Shaw was in short order established as the board president. She and Monroe examined the district landscape and were particularly troubled by the district’s provision of “safe space,” consisting of individual locker rooms in which students were allowed to change out of the clothes they had left home in which were appropriate for their biological gender and don clothes associated with the gender identity they maintained at school, if it were different, and then reverse the process before returning home. The district’s policy, in conformance with Gagnier’s, Schaffer’s, Hernandez-Blair’s and Bridge’s direction as board members, was that Chino’s schools, faculty, teachers and employees refrain from informing the parents of those students who were reidentifying their gender that they were doing so.
A little more than seven months after Shaw and Monroe were installed as board members, they voted along with Na and Cruz to change the district’s policy to require that parents of a student who reidentified his or her gender at school from the gender indicated on his or her birth certificate be informed of reidentification their child had made. Prior to the board’s July 20, 2023 decision on that matter, a vote in which Bridge dissented, California Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote a letter to the district opposing the policy change and vowing legal efforts to overturn it or prevent it if it were passed. California Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond sojourned to Chino the day of the vote to personally speak out against the policy change. Both Bonta and Thurmond emphasized their belief that the new policy would submit students to traumatic emotional, psychological and perhaps even physical abuse by parents who were unaccepting of their offsprings’ gender transformations.
During the July 20, 2023 school board meeting, while Thurmond was in the midst of his remarks, Shaw had the microphone to the podium cut off when he reached the one-minute speaking time limit, reduced from the normal three minutes, that had been imposed that evening because of the overflow crowd and the large number of speakers present. Shaw had district security escort Thurmond out of the meeting when he protested.
In the aftermath of Chino Valley Unified’s groundbreaking action, multiple other school districts passed identical or similar policies.
A month later, just as the 2023-24 academic year was about to begin, Bonta, in his capacity as attorney general, filed suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court to enjoin the district from enforcing its policy.
Bonta asserted that the policy “puts transgender and gender nonconforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm from the consequences of forced disclosures” and that as a consequence of the school district action, such students were “under threat’’ and “in fear,” facing “the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm from non-affirming or unaccepting parents or guardians.” The policy, according to the attorney general “unlawfully discriminates against transgender and gender nonconforming students, subjecting them to disparate treatment, harassment, and abuse, mental, emotional, and physical.”
In justifying his action, Bonta said, “This policy is destructive,” he said. “It’s discriminatory and it’s downright dangerous. It has no place in California, which is why we have moved in court to strike it down.”
Bonta asserted that the need to prevent “mental harm, emotional harm and physical harm” to those students who are products of families who are not accepting of their choice to deviate from their birth or biological gender trumps the right of all parents to be informed of their children’s sexual identity choice.
Bonta’s filing put the new policy on hold.
On September 6, 2023, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza granted the State of California a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing the policy.
Ultimately, the matter was transferred to the courtroom of San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs. Judge Sachs, reacting to Bonta’s claim that the district’s forced disclosure provisions discriminate against transgender students who are “singled out” and that it ran afoul of California Education Code Sections 200 and 220 and Government Code section 11135 meant to ensure equal rights and opportunities for every student and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression, perpetuated the restraining order preventing the policy’s enforcement. According to Judge Sachs, the provision of the policy requiring that faculty in essence “out” transgender students to their parents was discriminatory based on sex, violating both the California Constitution’ and U.S Constitution’s equal protection clauses.
The district and its board backed up and regrouped, and in March 2024 passed a redrafted parental notification requirement that was more general and did not make any specific mention of sexuality or gender, instead requiring that parents be told if the students made any alteration of their school registration records, such as altering their names. As most students engaging in “gender transition” adopt a name traditionally associated with the gender they are adopting, the revamped policy was inclusive of the intent contained in the policy adopted in July 2023 but maneuvered around the legal constraints Bonta, who was working in conjunction with Thurmond, California Governor Gavin Newsom and a cross section of the California legislature’s Democratic members, was attempting to construct.
Judge Sachs, in considering the district’s revamped policy, which was passed in March 2024, ruled that it was constitutionally valid and enforceable since it was not specific to sexuality or gender identification. Among the advocates of parental disclosure, this was considered a major victory.
State officials then moved to preempt parental disclosure altogether by having Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, author AB 1955, prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their children are assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth. The bill was passed by both of California’s legislative houses and was signed into law by Governor Newsom on Monday, July 15, 2024.
Almost as soon as Governor Newsom’s signature was dry, the Chino Valley Unified School District and parents Oscar Avila, Monica Botts, Jason Craig, Kristi Hays, Cole Mann, Victor Romero, Gheorghe Rosca, Jr. and Leslie Sawyer, represented by attorney Emily Ray of the Austin, Texas-based Liberty Justice Center, sued Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in an effort to prevent the enforcement of AB 1955.
As this legal back-and-forth has been raging in state court, a federal lawsuit, Mirabelli vs. Olson, relating to a teacher in the Escondido School District suing the district in which she worked over its order that she not inform the parents of one of her students about the name she used in a classroom setting to refer to their child, has been playing out. That case has implications that not only parallel the issues of contention between Bonta and the Chino Valley Unified School District but replicate them with some level of specificity. There have been rulings in that case by Federal Judge Roger Benitez which essentially vindicate the Chino Valley Unified School District in its intention to keep parents abreast of the activity and behavior their children engage in while in a public school setting. One [theme] in Judge Benitez’s rulings is that a school district or educators to whom parents have entrusted their children cannot be actively deceived by the district or those educators.
Within the larger context of California politics, despite the state’s voter registration overwhelmingly favoring Democrats such that all of its major constitutional officers including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, superintendent of schools and insurance commissioner are Democrats and both houses of the state legislature have two-thirds Democratic majorities, polling data suggests that substantial numbers – indeed a strong majority – of parents in the state, whether they are either Democrat or Republican or non-aligned or members of the more obscure political parties, are opposed to the policy of parental nondisclosure when it comes to their children’s gender identity which has been embraced by the state’s leading Democrats such as Governor Newsom, Attorney General Bonta and State Superintendent of Schools Thurmond.
Thurmond, who previously served in the Assembly before he was elected state schools superintendent in 2018 and reelected in 2022, will be termed out of office as superintendent of schools following his current term. He is running for governor in 2026. At this point, twelve individuals, the majority of them Democrats, have given indication they will run for state superintendent of schools in 2026. While the superintendent of state schools is considered a nonpartisan post, party affiliation in the race has historically been a factor in who eventually prevails in the race, as in recent years campaign money in California has gravitated to serious, established Democratic politicians and officeholders.
Two of those who have cast their hats into the ring for schools superintendent are former State Senator Connie Leyva and Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who is being termed out of California’s lower legislative house after the current term.
Both Leyva and Muratsuchi are Democrats who will need to run, during the California Primary, against a slew of other Democrats. Moreover, in the context of running for state superintendent of schools, both may be hampered by their association with liberal policies embraced by the Democrats, including opposition to parental notification. Muratsuchi, in particular, is the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, in which post he in 2023 successfully thwarted a legislative attempt to mandate parental notification statewide.
Shaw has now leapt into the breach. Her leadership in the fight for parental notification has garnered her not only statewide but national attention, which potentially will bring to her financial backing from like-minded conservatives from throughout the country. In addition, she has affiliated herself with other conservative causes such as banning any flags in classrooms other than the U.S. and the California Bear Flag Republic, removing books with sexually explicit content from the district’s school libraries.
Shaw maintains that there is a cultural war ongoing in which critical basic American values are being threatened by liberals who have seized control of California’s governmental institutions, including the education system. She is inviting those who disagree with the cabal of radical ideologues who have come to dominate Sacramento to leave the sidelines and back her in what otherwise might be seen as a quixotic attempt to reverse what she sees as the perversion of the state’s schools.
For Shaw and her backers, an ideal elective opportunity to reverse the Democrats’ stranglehold on the statewide constitutional offices might emerge if she can get into the November 2026 general election runoff against Muratsuchi. With sufficient financing, they believe they can make an issue of Muratsuchi’s advocacy of keeping hidden from parents the details pertaining to their children’s comportment and representation of themselves in classroom settings throughout the Golden State and his accompanying assertions that the sexual orientation of their children is not something that parents have a right to know about.
“With Donald Trump attacking public education, attacking our students — especially our immigrant students and our LGBTQ+ students — now more than ever, it’s up to states like California to stand up for all of our kids,” Muratsuchi said.
In announcing her run for state superintendent of schools, Shaw said she was running “to put parents back in charge of our children’s education, not the Sacramento politicians.”
Gagnier, despite her 2022 defeat by Shaw, has now launched a bid to wrest from Republican Young Kim her hold on the seat in California’s 40th Congressional District, which stretches from southwest San Bernardino County south and west into Orange and Riverside counties, encompassing the cities of Chino Hills, Corona, Brea, Yorba Linda, Anaheim, Orange, Villa Park, Aliso Viejo, Lake Forest, Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and Tustin, as well as the unincorporated Orange County canyon communities, Coto De Caza and North Tustin.
Gagnier, like Shaw, will be fighting an uphill battle, standing on a political foundation that features both political strengths and weaknesses.
It is noteworthy that Democrats at the state level previously saw in the Chino Valley Unified School District and the bully pulpit of its board a forum that offered what was to them a somewhat disquieting opportunity for those voices of dissent to the liberal orthodoxy that pervades Sacramento to be heard. Gagnier, an attorney by profession blessed with the photogenic quality of a Hollywood starlet and political ambition to match it, had evolved into a favorite of the Democratic establishment. Several sitting state Democratic officeholders, including Thurmond, came to Chino in the late summer and fall of 2022 to assist her in her campaign for reelection. Despite that, she was beaten by Shaw, who had the benefit of having Hibbs’ political machine behind her.
Gagnier was not out front in the liberal/Democratic efforts to promote transgender rights to the exclusion of parental rights, but she clearly falls on the Democratic side of the divide. In recent months and weeks, as she has been laying the groundwork for her 2026 congressional run against Kim, she has assiduously avoided, indeed run away from invitations to engage in, discussions of her position with regard to the transgender students rights vs. parental rights debate.
In 2014, Kim , who was then successfully running for the California Assembly, straightforwardly opposed a California law “requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice and participate in sports by their gender identity rather than their anatomical gender.” While stating that transgender people “deserve to be respected,” Kim said she did not believe that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transsexuals individuals were innately oriented into or born with the sexual identities identities they later assumed. She said she was opposed to the law in question out of concern over how it would necessitate the construction of new school facilities, the cost of that construction. She further found troubling that students under the contemplated law would be able to change their identity “on a whim,” and that male-to-female transgender students would have an unfair advantage in sports.