Renee Longshore’s reformist efforts with regard to the Apple Valley Unified School District have proven too aggressive for three of her four board colleagues, pushing them to censure here at last week’s board meeting.
Longshore was first elected to the board in November 2024. What began as a relatively cordial relationship with the four other board members – Board President Amanda Buchanan, Maria Okpara, Anita Tucker and Rick Roelle – grew slightly strained over the course of 2025 and then broke into open hostility with Buchanan, Okpara and Rolle earlier this year when the Victorville-based Victor Valley Daily Press, the most widely circulated newspaper in Apple Valley, published an op-ed piece Longshore authored in which she expressed her belief that the district was misprioritizing its spending and she referenced a discrepancy or discrepancies in the district’s financial documentation.
Longshore decried the district increasing salaries for and expenditures on the district’s supervisory personnel by 90 percent over the previous six years while teachers and student support staff salaries had grown by 39 percent. She said that both increases were out of keeping with the 57 percent increase in revenue the district had experienced over the same six years.
Longshore stated that budget juggling that relied on reports of unverified deficit spending and unaccounted for one-time or limited-time infusion of funds provided to the district during the COVID crisis, there $15,459,155.91, that had been entrusted to the district that had been “lost.”
In the Daily Press piece, Longshore cited inconsistencies in the district’s financial documentation provided to her, other members of the board and the public as to what was represented as deficit spending and decreases in the district’s reserves. Reserves are the accumulative amount of money an entity such as a school district accrues as a consequence of spending less money in a budget cycle than it receives in revenue during the same budget cycle. While those reserves can be built up over the years as an entity such as a school district receives revenue in excess of its costs, in those years where the revenue diminishes or remains the same while operational costs increase above the amount of money coming in, deficit spending occurs. Deficit spending eats into a district’s reserves.
Longshore, in the piece appearing in the Daily Press, said the documentation provided to her and the other board members showed “reserves have decreased at a higher rate than the reported deficit spending: $2,474,673.34 in the 18/19 calendar year, $1,308,535.72 in 19/20, $2,633,546.27 in 20/21, $3,524,903.99 in 21/22, $2,467,852.44 in 22/23, $3,049,644.15 in 23/24, and $98,500.18 in 24/25.”
Longshore’s characterizations of the district’s financial picture were not accurate, the other board members and the district’s top administrators insisted. The turned to what they hoped would be a credible authority in countering Longshore’s suggestions.
Seeking and obtaining a letter from San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre in which he, essentially, expressed his opinion that there were no problematic issues with the Apple Valley Unified School District’s finances. The letter, sent to Superintendent Nelson and dated February 3, 2026, stated “The county’s fiscal oversight process, supported by the district’s recent FCMAT report and the last three annual audit reports have not exposed any instances of misappropriation of district funds.”
FCMAT is an Acronym for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an independent state agency in California that helps local educational agencies identify, prevent, and resolve financial, operational, and data management challenges.
The ploy of having Alejandre vouch for the district, however, was of questionable utility, since Alejandre was himself mired in something of a misappropriation of funds scandal himself, one which involved his wife having worked, during much of Alejandre’s tenure as county superintendent of schools, as the head of classified management for the San Bernardino County Department of Education, in which position she was provided with $219,614 in total annual compensation. In 2021, Barbara Alejandre retired and began pulling a public pension which currently provides her with $133,441.41 annually. Last year, as scrutiny of that circumstance at last caught up with Ted Alejandre, he decided to forego running for reelection as San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools.
Rather than providing comprehensive line-by-line explications of what was actually in the budget and delineating what Longshore had gotten wrong, however, the Apple Valley Unified School Board, Nelson and other district administrators sought to instead make, for Longshore’s ears and eyes only, what were essentially off-the-record, confidential and private reconciliations of the budget during closed sessions that were outside the scrutiny of the public.
Exactly how comprehensive and what the integrity of those demonstrations were is difficult to gauge, given the lack of public access to them. Longshore found them to be less than fully compelling, and from time to time made a point of saying so publicly. This further antagonized her colleagues
There appeared to be a fundamental disconnect between the school board majority and Longshore and her support network. Those in control of the district felt their status as elected board members and district administrators merited for them unquestioned faith in their integrity and rectitude of what they were doing in their official capacities. Longshore and her supporters, on the other hand, were willing to engage their trust only to the degree that Buchanan, Okpara, Roelle and Nelson were willing to subject their activity to open public scrutiny.
After several months of increasing contretemps between Longshore on one side and on the other Buchanan, Roelle and Okpara as well as Superintendent Trenae Nelson and Nelson’s assistant, Kilee Caudell, a resolution of censure against Longshore was drawn up.
The resolution highlighted that on October 30, 2025, Longshore publicly implied that the district engaged in retaliation against her, claiming that she did not receive health benefits due her as an elected member of the school board without first verifying the reason for the denial. According to the resolution for censure the modification of benefits was, in fact, a correction of a previous oversight and was applied to all board members. Raising the issue, the resolution stated, was a departure from the demeanor expected of a school board member.
According to the resolution of censure, on January 11, 2026, Longshore, while speaking as a guest on the Voice of Apple Valley podcast, incorrectly stated data relating to district staff departures and that the district was “losing staff to neighboring districts an alarming rate.” According to the resolution, two days later, on January 13, 2026, the district made clear that recent staff losses. Took place because 43 teachers retired, seven moved out of state, five left for personal reason, two living outside the High Desert left for jobs closer to home, five left for career advancement opportunities in other districts or to community colleges, one left to work as a teacher in another local district and 12 were teachers released from probationary positions.
According to the resolution, Longshore had not adhered to the district’s principles and the board’s bylaws and failed to speak with a “common voice about district priorities, goals, and issues.”
According to the resolution of censure, on January 22, 2026, Longshore publicly accused a district employee
of failing to do her job without first personally verifying if her accusation was true. That accusation was false, according to the resolution of censure.
According to the resolution, on January 26, 2026, Longshore claimed that, “[o]ther than the spreadsheets I offered, this governing body has received no clarification on the budget or available funds and are now expected to make some very important decisions.” The resolution states, “This is not accurate. District employees have repeatedly provided clarification to the Board on several budget-related matters.
The resolution stated that on March 5, 2026, Longshore accused the board of trustees of turning a blind eye to their responsibilities, stating that “[w]illful ignorance has been embraced while this board has been set against each other.” This insulted Longshore’s fellow and sister board members, according to the resolution, and violated the board’s bylaw directive to treat everyone with civility and respect.
According to the resolution, on March 5, 2026, Longshore directly chastised her fellow board members, stating, “[a]s it stands, this Board, three strong, is closing its eyes, digging its heels, supporting and perpetuating a broken system.” This violated the board’s principle that required her to “[a]cknowledge that the majority rules” and “be supportive of this decision,” according to the resolutions, which further propounded, “Even if Trustee Longshore does not agree with the majority on a decision, she must respect the will of the majority of the board and not allow her frustration to manifest into personal attacks.”
The resolution charged Longshore of accusing her board colleagues on March 5, 2026 of “not understanding what they were approving, claiming, ‘[t]hree have sat as leadership on this dais, following this administration, giving direction to pay contractors taking steps to build a stadium, while hiring staff with temporary funds and spending down our limited reserves. Not because they understood the numbers, but because they were told to do so.’” According to the resolution Longshore “provided no evidence supporting her accusation that the Board did not know what it was approving,” which constituted, according to the resolution “a groundless, public attack on her fellow Board members’ credibility and adherence to governing policies.”
According to the resolution, on March 5, 2026, Longshore claimed that district management’s raise was, “unknown due to lack of transparency,” resulting from the district not filing a staff collective bargaining pay arrangement disclosure document. According to the document, Superintendent Nelson’s pay raise had been disclosed on another form she had submitted.
The censure resolutions charged Longshore with twice disregarding information provided by Superintendent Nelson and then blaming the superintendent for a lack of transparency.
According to the censure resolution, on April 2, 2026, Longshore referred to her board colleagues as a “mindless machine driven by misinformation, self-preservation, and a blind following with no paper trail to prove it.” This gratuitously insulted her board peers, according to the resolution.
According to the resolution, on April 17, 2026, Longshore violated the Apple Valley Unified School District Governance
Handbook’s site/programs visitations provision by entering a high school campus without first providing advance notice to either the superintendent or the school’s principal. This interfered with educational operations, according to the resolution.
According to the resolution of censure, on May 7, 2026, Longshore attempted to publicly embarrass Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Matthew Schulenberg by calling him out in an open session for not being able to answer a question, “on the spot.” This violated the understanding that district board members not blindside district personnel with questions asked in public and provided staff with such questions to be posed in advance of any public meetings.
According to the censure resolution, on April 10, 2025 Longshore questioned Superintendent Nelson about an action she took at the direction of the board stemming from a discussion in closed session. This put Nelson in the position of having to engage in a conversation in which the subject originated in a confidential exchange in a closed session, according to the resolution, and Longshore disclosed, or risked disclosing, information the public should not have been made aware of.
According to Buchanan, Roelle and Okpara as well as Superintendent Trenae Nelson Longshore is a blabbermouth who isn’t smart enough to understand that sometimes the public can’t handle the truth and that is why the citizenry must on selected occasions be kept in the dark. The board is, after all, according to Buchanan, Roelle and Okpara, a team and Longshore just isn’t a team player. She is continually trying to bring the public in on information it would be better that was simply left unmentioned, as people with good sense normally let sleeping dogs lie.
At the June 11 meeting, Okpara said of past school board members, “I’ve never ever seen them go after each other. Never. Never observed it.”
Longshore had broken with that tradition, Okpara said, and needs to learn to express her differences with the board in the back halls of the district and in private, and make a show of agreement when everyone is looking on. What Longshore is doing, Okpara said “is painful for me to watch. I have never watched the board disagree to a point of throwing darts at each other. I’m not looking for everybody to get along, but I’m looking for everybody to respect each other.
Okpara told Longshore and Board Member Anita Tucker they need to apply mathematical calculation to the situation to recognize they are the minority on the board and she, Roelle and Buchanan are the majority. She said that when the board was reconstituted into its present line-up after the 2024 election, she met with Tucker and Longshore, instructing them to get with the program.
“I was very clear that we had a protocol here in Apple Valley: If we disagree, we disagree, but it is best for us to disagree behind the walls, so that when we come up here to talk that we’re coming up here with a united voice, united face, united way of speaking,” Okpara said. “We don’t just throw darts without evidence, without facts.” Okpara said she had encouraged Longshore to use her voice but that Longshore was doing so in a way that was offensive to her colleagues.
Ann-Marie Van Gordon, transitional kindergarten teacher at Desert Knolls Elementary School read a statement in support of Longshore that had been written by President of the Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association Karen Sabers. “I am the president of the Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association,” Van Gorden quoted Sabers. “I stand in opposition with many to the proposed censure of Trustee Renee Longshore. Whether you agree with Trustee Longshore or not, she was elected by the voters of this community to ask questions, seek information and provide oversight. A board member should not be censured simply for asking difficult question, challenging assumptions or requesting accountability. In fact, those are among the most important responsibilities of an elected trustee. Many employees and community members have expressed concerns about the district’s finances, business practices and decision-making. Trustee Longshore has consistently been willing to ask the questions that many staff and community members are asking themselves. Silencing or censoring a trustee for doing so sends a troubling message about transparency and open governance. I also find it concerning that this resolution is being brought forward while there have been concerns regarding the conduct of other board members.
Sabers, through Van Gordon referenced pending complaints about Roelle’s interaction with district staff and testy exchanges with Tucker. She said the board’s willingness to censure Longshore while the complaints relating to Roelle have yet to be resolved reflected a dual standard and inconsistency by the board.
Sabers’ words, relayed through Van Gordon, did not soften any soap with the board majority and the censure of Longshore passed, with Buchanan, Roelle and Okpara prevailing and Tucker and Longshore dissenting.
-Mark Gutglueck