Jon Monroe, on whom some in the Republican Party were pinning their future hopes, is departing San Bernardino County and the State of California altogether in the face of some recent fast-moving developments.
Monroe, who retired from the Chino Police Department in 2022, at that point immediately initiated his political career, running for the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees.
On the strength of his conservative, professional law enforcement, Republican Party and Christian fundamentalist associations and values, he picked up the endorsement of the Reverend Jack Hibbs. Hibbs, the pastor at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills has tremendous sway over the school district, over the past 19 years, he has actively sought to place members of his congregation on the district’s school board. Beginning in 2006, Calvary Hills congregants Sylvia Orozco, James Na, Andrew Cruz and Sonia Shaw have served on the board. In nine of the years, they constituted board majorities. With Hibbs’ endorsement, Monroe was elected in 2022, such that four of the district’s five board members – Na, Cruz, Shaw and Monroe – thereafter were in synchronicity with Hibbs’ call for the district to embody conservative Christian family values.
In the interim, the district has adopted a parental notification policy relating to informing parents if there children are assuming a gender identity different from the one assigned them at birth, adjust the district’s flag and banner policy such that the display of homosexual/gay pride flags and any others other than U.S., state, county, and military flags were banned from classrooms and school campuses and revised its library policy to exclude books with “sexually obscene,” pornographic or otherwise inappropriate content from schools’ bookshelves. Most recently, it has revived a previous effort which was successfully challenged in the courts to allow prayer in, first, the forum of school board meetings, and, second and ultimately, in classroom settings.
Both Shaw, who was elevated to the school board president’s role and garnered state and national attention as the district explored actions diametric to the philosophies of the dual liberal entities wielding influence over California public schools, the Democrats in Sacramento and the California Teachers Association, and Monroe, who was active in the San Bernardino County Republican Party and its central committee, were increasingly seen as potential future standard bearers for the GOP and conservatives in general. The possibilities for them included graduating from the school board to the city council to the state legislature and perhaps U.S. Congress.
In the aftermath of his retirement from the police department, Monroe had found employment with the West Covina Unified School District, teaching forensics and criminology as a career and technical education instructor at Edgewood High School.
It has been reported that elements within the California Democratic Party and the teaching profession, unhappy with his politics and concerned that his advancement as an elected official could prove undesirable from their collective point of view, prevailed upon the West Covina Unified School District to terminate him. He was notified in March that he was not being invited back to teach at Edgewood High School.
Whether or not the game plan was to convince Monroe that he should not hang around, the West Covina Unified School District’s move appears to have had that effect. He and his wife have four children, all of whom live in Utah. He recently found employment in the Beehive State and is now in the process of transiting between California and Utah, moving his family’s possessions, finalizing the sale of his California property and settling into new digs over 490 miles away. He has tendered his resignation from the school board as of August 15.
The school board, in the meantime, faced with having to fill his vacancy, has opted against holding special election in the district’s Area 4 voting area, which would cost the district in excess of $235,000 to stage.
Instead, the district in an urgency vote on August 5 voted 4-to-0, without Monroe participating to fill his position by an appointment. Shaw and the board’s newest member, John Cervantes will interview candidates interested in assuming the board post and then make a recommendation to Na and Cruz as to who should serve the remainder of Monroe’s current term, which ends in December 2026.
–Mark Gutglueck