Barely six months after the Redlands community’s self-styled social conservatives flexed their electoral muscle by electing two darlings of the political and religious right to the Redlands Unified School District Board of Trustees, a 3-to-2 majority of that panel voted to censure one of the board’s left-leaning members.
Against the odds, the demographics and an entrenched and overwhelming Democratic establishment in Golden State that has embraced liberal causes and overwhelmed Republicans, in a handful of conservative pockets in in California have shave utilized the superior numbers they have in their local jurisdictions, primarily school districts, to take up a cultural struggle that they have surprisingly, at least to some, been able to win.
In California, the Democrats dominate Sacramento and have an equally lopsided advantage in terms of representing the state in Washington, D.C. The governor, lieutenant governor, California Attorney General, California Secretary of State, the state treasurer, state controller, state comptroller, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public instruction are all Democrats. The Democrats hold a supermajority in both the upper and lower houses of the state legislature, with 31 out of 40 seats in the California Senate and 60 of 80 in the California Assembly. Both of California’s U.S. senators are Democrats and 43 of its 52 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are Democrats.
In various school districts in California, however, including Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County, Rocklin Unified School District and Dry Creek Elementary School District in Placer County Orange Unified School District in Orange County, Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County, Sunol Glen Unified School District in Alameda County and Temecula Valley Unified School District and Murrieta Valley Unified School District in Riverside County, school board members over the last several years have defied the liberal orthodoxy that pervades or typifies most established educational systems as well as the positions adopted by the Democrats which, essentially, mandates that schools and educators exhibit tolerance toward those of what was previously referred to as “alternative sexual orientation” utilize extreme forbearance in accepting the elements and manifestations of their lifestyle and indulge transsexuals who want to inhabit or personify a gender identity different from that which was imputed to them at birth and which is reflected on their birth certificates in maintaining that identity on campus without disclosing to their parents that they are assuming that affectation in the educational setting. Whereas 3,162 public high schools and 1,410 middle schools in California had beginning in 2013, without disclosing as much to the parents of the students attending those school, a policy of providing a “changing room” for students to change out of the apparel associated with the gender they maintained at home into clothes more appropriate for the gender they wished to assume at school and to reverse their attire before returning home, the vast majority of the state’s schools had a policy of prohibiting teachers or school employees from informing parents that their children were assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth.
The Anderson, Rocklin, Dry Creek, Orange, Chino Valley, Unified School District, Sunol Glen, Temecula Valley and Murrieta Valley districts in recent years moved to adopt parental notification polices with regard to transgender students and also explored or actuated restricting the use of sexually explicit material in class reading assignments or availability in school libraries, policies in line with what was generally considered a more conservative approach, which, incidentally, was favored by the majority of those who identify as Republicans. This clashed with the positions maintained by Democratic politicians as well as the teachers’ unions throughout the state, which are unionist and predominantly Democrat.
In Redlands, Democrats, registration-wise, hold a numeric advantage, as they account for 18,172, or 37.8 percent of the city’s 48,118 total voters, while Republicans number 16,119 or 33.5 percent. The remaining 28.7 percent are spread among those who have no party affiliation or are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom or more obscure parties. As a consequence of the Democratic voter plurality among Redlands voters and the strong union – i.e., Redlands Teachers Association – influence on school board elections going back for at least a quarter of a century, the Redlands School Board has been controlled, essentially, by those aligned with the teachers’ union and the city’s left leaning element.
Patty Holohan and Melissa Ayala-Quintero fit the classic bill of dyed-in-the-wool liberals. Holohan has been on the school board since her election in 2006. She was reelected in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. Ayahoa-Quintero was elected in 2020 and reelected in 2024.
Among its 76,699 population, Redlands has a good smattering of liberals and hardcore Democrats who take an actively progressive approach toward a number of social and political issues. In conjunction with middle-of-the road Democrats and a fair share of the 20 percent of the city’s voters who have no party affiliation, those with a progressive mindset such as Holohan and Ayala-Quintero held important elected positions in Redlands and enjoyed marginal control of its institutions. Still, there has long been an active contingent of conservatives and Republicans in the city. Over the last ten to fifteen years, they have grown more vocal, active and coordinated. Of growing influence since 2011 has been the Redlands Tea Party, numbering in the hundreds and led by Greg Brittain. Accompanying and in come cases over lapping with the Tea Party since 2016 has been a contingent of Redlands residents involved in the Make America Great Again movement.
Beginning in 2018, those forces, having taken stock of where they might make inroads on the loosely held Democratic control in Redlands, concentrated their firepower on the school district. In 2018 and again in 2022 they were unable to prevent Holohan from being reelected. Nor did they prevent Ayala-Quintero’s election in 2020 or her her re-election in 2024. They did, however, gain strength each time, particularly in 2022, when one of Holohan’s campaign workers was caught removing the campaign signs of her conservative rival, Erin Stepien.
In November 2024, while Ayala-Quintero managed to hang onto her board position representing Governing Board Area 3, the candidate supported by the Tea Party and Republican stalwarts in Governing Board Area 4, Jeannette Wilson, eked out a narrow victory over incumbent Alex Vara. At the same time, another Tea Party standard bearer, Candy Olson, cruised her two opponents in Governing Board Area 5, when the incumbent Jim O’Neill opted out of running.
This created a situation in which the board had, based on the classic liberal-conservative dichotomy, two members to the left and moving out toward the extreme left – Holohan and Ayala-Quintero – and two members to the right who were heading toward the extreme right – Wilson and Olson. Left in the middle was Michelle Rendler, who had run unsuccessfully in 2018 to represent Governing Board Area 2, finishing second to Richard Ruiz in in a three-person race. But she had gained the appointment to that post when Ruiz resigned in 2019. When a special election for the two-year tin governing Board District 2 between 2020 and 2020 was held, Rendler prevailed. In 2022, she was returned to office without having to run again, as no one emerged to challenge her at that time.
Rendler was relatively easy to read in terms of her orientation as a school board member. She had five children who had progressed through the Redlands Unified School District. She had 30 years of involvement with the district, having joined the Parent Teacher Association at McKinley Elementary in 1992. She remained active in the district thereafter, as a member of the Local Control Accountability Plan committee, the Redlands Community Scholarship Foundation, served on the oversight committees on two bond measures and had participated on school site councils at the elementary, middle and high school levels. To the extent that her focus on the district’s educational mission gravitated toward any specific area, she appeared to be concerned in large measure with fiscal efficiency and responsibility, with little emphasis on ideology. Still, she did not come across as being hostile one way or the other toward either political extreme, and she numbered among her supporters Denise Davis, the outspoken lesbian and women’s rights activist who had gained election to the Redlands City Council.
Once Holohan, Olson and Wilson were sworn in, the challenge for both sides, or so it appeared, was which could forge a connection with Rendler on a consistent basis to push its its philosophy and agenda forward with regard to the shaping of district policy. Advantages and disadvantages fell, or so it seemed, in equal measure to both sides. The liberals had been having their way in the district, for the most part, for years. They needed, it seemed, to appeal to Rendler’s sense of order and continuity to stay that course. The conservatives, with their newly acquired equal footing to the liberals, needed to appeal to Rendler’s readiness to innovate and deviate from the hackneyed pattern of the past. What neither side needed was dissent into personal attacks or animosity that would negatively impact Rendler’s sense of decorum.
To be fair, it was neither Holohan nor Ayala-Quintero who created the dynamic that nudged Rendler into the conservative camp. Rather, it turned out, the radical liberals in Holohan and Ayala-Quintero’s camp ill-advisedly insisted on personalizing their attacks on those they perceived as opposed to their ideology, pushing relentless ad hominem attacks during policy discussions with regard to proposals by Olson or Wilson or both that in previous years would, in most cases, not have been brought up and in, all cases, would not have stood even the slightest chance of being accepted or put into place. With two of the board’s members now pushing a conservative cultural agenda, that such discussions were to be held was inevitable. To those with what in this day and age passes as a progressive bent, this was intolerable. They perceived Rendler, as the board president with the gavel controlling the ebb and flow of discussion, as somehow responsible for the discussion taking place.
Insults and mocking directed at Olson and Wilson, in some cases crude, others vulgar and in at least a few cases profane, while shocking to some, had little impact. Occasionally, but only occasionally, the community’s conservatives responded in kind. The decorum of the meetings was deteriorating. That this was occurring while she was board president was bothersome to Rendler. She was powerless, it seemed, to bring this spreading phenomenon under control. She appealed to both sides to desist.
The conservatives, apparently sensed early on that gratuitous insults were not going to win Rendler over as a friend or ally nor influence her positively. Neither Holohan nor Ayala-Quintero appeared ready or willing to appeal to their allies to end the personal attacks. Soon, the attacks on Olson and Wilson broadened to include Rendler. It was at that point that the balance on the board shifted rightward.
Whether or not Rendler was or is truly philosophically aligned with Wilson and Olson was and is no longer the relevant question. In some cases, at least, Rendler’s basic position with regard to certain topics runs closer to Holohan’s and Ayala-Quintero’s than it does to Wilson’s and Olson’s. But the constituency that Holohan and Ayala-Quintero stood for – the Democrats, ultra-liberals, homosexuals, the advocates for gay students, transsexuals, the advocates for transgender students, parents and teachers sympathetic and supportive of gay and transgender students – had evolved to seeing Rendler as their enemy and disrespected her and her leadership of the board. Gradually, Rendler found herself, despite her actual belief system, forced into league with Wilson and Olson. Holohan, who for nearly two decades was continuously on the winning side, was now, together with Ayala-Quintero, a dissenter with regard to issues that broke along ideological grounds. Like her ally Holohan, Ayala-Quintero found herself on the outside looking in. And it had happened so quickly. In October, she had been on the winning side, virtually always. Three months later, she was a perpetual loser.
There had been, among the liberals, a recognition that heaping ridicule upon Wilson and Olson would have no salutary effect. They understood that by offending Olson and Wilson, they would merely become more determined to fight back. Still, they ardently believed, Wilson and Olson deserved every insult that was hurled their way, and even more.
It is less clear what logic was being applied in the maligning of Rendler. Delusionally, they appeared to have convinced themselves that Rendler would be capable of taking only so much and that at some point the board president would simply break, see the light and link up with Holohan and Ayala-Quintero to transform Olson and Wilson into political irrelevancies. That did not occur, however, and Rendler was pushed even further into the conservative camp.
Redlands school board meetings have evolved, or perhaps devolved, into forums during which advocates of liberal and conservative ideologies come to express their points of view. In terms of sheer numbers, the liberals are generally more strongly represented, though conservatives have consistently been present as well to, literally, show the American flag.
The April 8 board meeting was no exception. For their part, some of the more vociferous liberals let everyone know that Olson and Wilson and their followers are nothing but a bunch of close-minded, small-minded bigots, blinded by hate, intolerance, pompous religiosity and outright stupidity who are imposing their views on everyone. Several of the conservative contingent weighed in, letting those in the room know that school is a forum for education and teaching basic academic skills, math, reading, writing, science, history and civics. Classrooms have been commandeered by ideologues on the left, who are indoctrinating impressionable youths with philosophies and attitudes which their parents do not consent to, they said. Those who are homosexuals should not be allowed to influence or shame those who are heterosexuals, they maintain and those who have gender dysphoria or do not accept their biological gender are mentally ill, for whom the most compassionate treatment should be psychological treatment rather than indulgence and acceptance.
Ayala-Quintero was unable to mask her frustration or anger. She had had enough with Wilson and Owen and those she considers to be the Troglodytes they represent.
It was during public comment on April 8, while Tricia Keeling and Michael Grossman were addressing the board that an incident or an exchange between Ayala-Quintero and Olson took place. The exact nature of what happened is not clear from the board meeting video because the video’s field of view is focused on Keeling and Grossman and the audio of their speaking drowns out what might have been said between the two board members and Superintendent Juan Cabral, who intervened. Keeling, is addressing the board, referenced what she called “transphobic shirts” that Wilson and Olson were wearing, while she was telling the board that she opposed “book banning, forced outings and flag bans. Let’s face it: Board members Olson and Wilson are supporting the flag bans sole because they want to discriminate against the LGBQT community ” She said the policy that Olson and Wilson were pursing would land Redlands Unified in court the same way similar policies in the Temcula School District resulted in a lawsuit against that entity. “We need to focus on funding our classrooms not the courtrooms. We need to continue to focus on education and not the culture wars,” Keeling said.
Michael Grossman then went to the speaker’s podium and began to address the board. “I wanted to express my deep concern regarding the board’s decision during the Mrch 21st special board meeting to continue considering Pollicy 6115, which bans symbols in our classrooms including the pride flag and clearly, now as we’ve heard, basically focused on banning the pride flag.” At that point, Cabral interrupted him, saying the board needed to take a three to five minute break.
According to the resolution of censure drawn up for a vote by the board at the May 15 meeting, “[O]n or about April 8, 2025, Board Member Melissa Ayala-Quintero engaged in the following conduct: During the public comment portion of a board meeting, a speaker became emotional. Board Member Ayala-Quintero asked Board Member Olson if she had laughed, which Olson denied. A brief exchange followed, with Ayala-Quintero maintaining she heard laughter and Olson continuing to deny it. The discussion became tense, and when Ayala-Quintero turned her chair in the direction of Olson, the superintendent stepped in to redirect the conversation. The board members then refocused on the public speaker”
The resolution states, “Whereas, the aforementioned conduct violated the principles and expectations set forth in Board Bylaw 9005; and whereas, the aforementioned conduct violated the basic principles of decorum, professionalism, and good stewardship that are minimum expectations required of the members of the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education; and now, therefore, be it resolved that the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education does hereby publicly censure Board Member Ayala-Quintero for the deficiencies in conduct cited above, in violation of the bylaws, principles, and/or expectations of the board; and be it further resolved that the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education call for Board Member Ayala-Quintero to henceforth endorse, adopt, and abide by the Board’s adopted policies establishing its governance standards, and all other bylaws of the board.”
During that portion of the April 8 meeting reserved for board member comments Ayala-Quintero shed some light on what it was that had set her off earlier that night. She said she took issue with the way in which, she claimed, Rendler and Cabral had tolerated speakers who said unkind things about homosexuals and transsexuals but had tried to censor the use of profanity. On several occasions, Cabral has appealed to those speaking – in virtually every case those being ones expressing the liberal ideology – not to use profanity.
“I’m actually pretty embarrassed the way this meeting turned out,” Ayala-Quintero said. “I understand that there is two sides and that tensions are high and we’re censoring profanity but we’re not censoring hate speech. I don’t care what direction this board is going, there is a limit to how much people should be allowed to say to students that may be listening, to students that are in our presence. You do not know what anyone is going through unless you are in their heads and you’re not. So, to be able to stand up here and say that people, that their identity is invalid, that they are mentally ill, that they should not exist is absolutely disgusting that this board is not stopping it. We will stop someone from saying ‘crap’ and ‘hell” but we won’t stop them from slandering our students. I don’t care what you believe, this role is to protect students even if you don’t like them, even if you don’t agree with them. This is the job and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t be here.”
Rendler allowed Olson to respond.
“Along those lines of behavior: It’s really too bad for me that I’m sitting here and the superintendent hast to break up you facing off with me,” Olson said. “You know, you square up with me, that we’re going to have a physical fight.”
At that point, Ayala-Quintero sought to cut her off.
“Are you going to censor her, because we’re not supposed to be attacking individual board members and I did not.”
“I think we need to be treating each other respectfully at this board,” Olson said.
“We’ll respect you when you respect our students,” Ayala-Quintero said, getting the last word in during the April 8 meeting.
As it turned out, however, that was not the last word on the subject, as the censure motion came before the board on May 15. It passed by a vote of 3-to-2, with Olson, Wilson and Rendler in favor and Ayala-Quintero and Holohan dissenting.
A vote of censure has no impact other than being an official expression of disapproval.
Over time, however, an elected official being officially rebuked by his or her elected colleagues can have a negative political effect. In recent years, Upland Councilwoman Janice Elliott, San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia and Chino Valley Fire District Board Member Winn Willams were all censured. All three were subsequently voted out of office by their constituents.