Despite a series of stunning victories in its cultural war with the State of California’s entrenched liberal political establishment, a committed core of conservative activists in Chino Valley yet face implacable opposition in the long twilight struggle to reestablish what they celebrate as traditional values in their educational system.
One of the more fascinating social and political phenomena at play in California at present first tangibly manifested in 2006, though it had been gestating prior to that, with the election of Sylvia Orozco to the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees.
Orozco was a harbinger of what was to come, as she was a parishioner of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Congregation. The pastor at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills is Jack Hibbs, a denominationalist, who holds that Christians have a duty to stand up for their beliefs by either running for election to public office themselves or supporting other Christians who do run, and then, upon taking office, Christianize public policy. Hibbs was deceptively sophisticated in his approach, as he realized that political change of the type he envisioned would need to be effectuated gradually and without shock to the existing social order, and he exhibited the disciplined patience to execute his strategy. Rather than zooming to the top of political hierarchy and targeting offices such as governor, U.S. Senator, state legislators or city council members, he started at the low end of the political pecking order as well as within the area of his immediate reach, that being the school board.
In 2008, another Calvary Chapel congregant, James Na, was elected to the school board. Na relatively early on established himself as a notable Korean American elected official in Southern California with a virulent anti-communist streak. As a local official with little direct impact on international, national or even state policies, Na avoided focusing on anti-communist rhetoric instead establishing a record that centered on conservative Christian activism and local education policies.
In 2012, Andrew Cruz, another member of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Congregation, was elected to the school board. With the religious trifecta of Orozco, Na and Cruz in place and in control of the district, there followed increasingly bold efforts to make significant inroads on the district’s policies.
Milestones in this regard were achieved with making Bible study part of the district curriculum, as well as including benedictions at the beginning of the school board meetings.
This religiosity in a public forum was challenged by two individuals, Larry Maldonado and Mike Anderson, and 21 unnamed plaintiffs who were represented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin in 2014 in a suit filed in Federal Court in Riverside against the district. The suit resulted in a U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal in 2016 issuing a ruling, later upheld on appeal, that the district desist in evangelism, extending to so-called Christian witnessing as well as “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing” in school settings.
In the years since, Orozco left the school board but two others of like mind, Sonja Shaw, another member of the Calvary Chapel congregation, and Jon Monroe were elected to the board in 2022. With the school board under the tight grip of Na, Cruz, Monroe and Shaw, who was established shortly after her election as the school board president, the district contemplated taking up once more an effort to acculturate public education in Chino Valley in accordance with Christian principles.

With much fanfare, the Shaw-led school board at its July 20, 2023 school board meeting, with State Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond in attendance to express his opposition, adopted a parental notification policy requiring teachers to inform parents of any student who reidentified his or her gender at school from the gender indicated on his or her birth certificate in a classroom setting. This ran counter to the advisal and recommended policy advocated by the California Department of Education and the state’s prevailing political establishment, which held that minor children in middle school and high school settings be allowed to assume a gender identity of their choosing without any interference.
A month later, just as the 2023-24 academic year was about to begin, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court a civil suit to enjoin the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing its parental notification 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, as the court granted the State of California a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing the policy.
Ultimately, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs. Judge Sachs ruled that the district policy “singled out” transgender students for disparate treatment by requiring that faculty members in essence “out” transgender students to their parents. This, Sachs found, 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. His ruling disallowed the policy’s enforcement.
The Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees 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.
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 was raging in state court, a federal lawsuit, Mirabelli vs. Olson, relating to two teachers in the Escondido School District suing the district in which they worked over that district’s order that they not inform the parents of their students about the names they used in a classroom setting when those names reflected a difference from those students’ biological gender was playing out. That case paralleled the issues of contention between Bonta and the Chino Valley Unified School District. Federal Judge Roger Benitez made rulings in the Mirabelli vs. Olson case which essentially vindicated 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. Judge Benitez’s rulings held that a school district or educators to whom parents have entrusted their children cannot actively deceive those parents.
With approximately 26,562 students, Chino Valley Unified is San Bernardino County’s third largest school district and the 33rd largest school district in the state. In reaction to it having carried out what some perceived to be the good fight in being the first district in California to adopt a parental notification policy, several other districts in the state, including the Orange Unified School District, the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, the Temecula Valley Unified School District, the Rocklin Unified School District, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District and the Cajon Valley Union School District, followed suit.
Shaw, Na, Cruz, along with Shaun Smith and John Cervantes, who have now joined Shaw, Na and Cruz on the school board, have come to be viewed as folk heroes for having stood up to the liberal and progressive forces within and outside of the Chino Valley who fought them so virulently with regard to the parental notification policy and other issue relating to how school district’s shape the socialization of the students entrusted to them.
A characteristic of those involved in the outgrowth of Pastor Hibbs’ political approach is their readiness to resurrect issues after they were seemingly settled in a way that is contrary to their underlying philosophy if they perceive social or political or legal standards have shifted in their favor.
Last year, the Chino Valley Unified School Board perceived that it was a propitious time to have the courts reconsider the concept of school prayer on which they had seen the door closed so decidedly against them in 2016. en
The U.S. Supreme Court at this point is laden with six justices appointed by what are deemed to be “conservative,” i.e., Republican, presidents and three by “liberal,” i.e., Democrat, presidents. In 2022, the Supreme Court took up the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case in which a football coach’s praying with members of his team on the field in a game setting was at issue. The Supreme Court, in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case, ruled 6-to-3 ruling, indicated that the 1971 case, Lemon v. Kurzman, which set the previous precedent/standard that disallowed prayer in schools because such activity represented an “excessive government entanglement” with religion was not necessarily universally applicable. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Supreme Court held that the coach’s free speech rights might have been violated when he was prevented from praying with his players and that before prohibiting prayer straight out, a governmental entity should consider “historical practices and understandings” with regard to prayer in the particular community involved.
Na, Cruz, Shaw and Monroe, heartened by the Kennedy v. Bremerton decision, in July 2025 rolled the dice in an effort to see whether the unwinding of the controlling precedent in Lemon v. Kurzman might carry over and provide a different outcome than the district had in its 2016 loss at the trial court level and its loss at the appellate level in 2018 if it were to test the school prayer issue again.
Quietly, the district retained Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a Murrieta-based nonprofit law firm specializing in issues relating to religious liberty to represent it with regard to what was generically described as “anticipated litigation.” On July 31, 2025 Advocates for Faith & Freedom, on behalf of the district, filed with the Federal District Court in Riverside for relief from Judge Bernal’s 2016 injunction enjoining the board from permitting or endorsing prayers during meetings.
The district’s filing incorporated wording from the Supreme Court’s decision in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case, propounding that a majority of the board are intent on adopting a policy of kicking off the board meetings with an invocation or a prayer in keeping with the district’s “history and traditions.”
In a statement that minimized the degree to which the board as it was previously composed including Na and Cruz had virtually exclusively utilized Christian prayer as the board homilies, Shaw insisted that the district had “welcomed voices of all faiths without coercion or preference.” She said that secular “groups driven by political agendas” had straitjacketed the district into having “to abandon a unifying tradition,” namely prayer recitation. “We will not quietly surrender our right to reflect the values of our community and the freedoms our nation was built upon,” Shaw vowed.
Robert Tyler, an attorney for Advocates for Faith & Freedom who was involved in 2016 and 2018 when the district policy was successfully challenged by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and lost on its appeal of Judge Bernal’s ruling, said the district was banking on the reorientation the Supreme Court has made with regard to the subject of public religious expression in recent years.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation immediately reacted to the filing, and stepped in to oppose the district’s petition.
As a matter of course, the case was routed to Judge Bernal. Based on his familiarity with the subject matter and being up to speed with regard to the case law pertaining to the full range of issues involved.
On October 13, 2025, Judge Bernal denied the district’s petition for the board to be able to engage in religious invocations at its meetings. Judge Bernal utilized the same citations and references as he had in 2016. He ruled again that the school district cannot open board meetings with prayer.
Two months ago, in June 2026, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled AB 1955, the law passed by the California legislature prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their children are assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth in reaction to the Chino Valley Unified School District’s parental notification policy is, in essence, unconstitutional.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit’s June 2026 ruling on AB 1955 and Benitez’s rulings in the Mirabelli case are seen as a bellwether that the pathway explored by the Chino Valley Unified School District will become the standard for keeping parents abreast of what their children are being exposed to in a public school setting.
The Chino Unified School District Board of Trustees was at the cutting edge of other cultural issues.
Na, in particular championed strict conservative measures, and has frequently introduced or votes for socially conservative resolutions, such as opposing California bills originating wit what he has characterized as the left wing of the state’s Democratic Party. He has gone on record as being opposed to “reproductive rights,” insofar as that translates to support of abortion.
The Chino Valley Unified School District board voted 4–1 in June 2023 to ban pride flags and other non-government or non-military flags from classrooms.
The school board voted unanimously to send a letter and file complaints urging the federal government and the Trump administration to intervene against California’s state-level protections and policies permitting transgender student athletes who began life as males and who now identify as females to play on teams matching their asserted gender identity.
In October 2023, it adopted a book restriction policy that allows any member of the community to challenge the propriety of any book in the district’s school libraries. That policy called for any book so challenged to be removed within three days, followed by an expedited hearing process, including public input, with regard to the book within 45 days, followed by a board discussion and final board vote to either allow the book to go back on the library shelves or remain banned.
Within the larger context of California politics, despite a trend by the vast majority of the state’s constitutional officers including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, superintendent of schools and insurance commissioner and both houses of the state legislature being in favor of parental nondisclosure when it comes to school-age students taking on a gender identity at odds with their biology, an equally vast majority of parents in the Golden State are in favor of parental notification if their children have assumed a variant gender identify. Superintendent of Schools Thurmond, who previously served in the Assembly before he was elected state schools superintendent in 2018 and reelected in 2022 and played a central role in opposing Chino Valley Unified’s parental notification policy, will be termed out of office as superintendent of schools following his current term. He made a run for governor in 2026 but performed dismally, at least in part because of the unpopularity of his stand with regard to parental notification.
In counterpoint, Shaw, who garnered a great deal of local, a fair degree of state, and a smattering of national, attention as a leading advocate for parents’ rights, tossed her hat in the ring in the contest to succeed Thurmond as California Superintendent of Schools and in June fared far better in her effort than Thurmond did in his. Indeed, Shaw proved the top vote-getter among 10 candidates for the post. This qualified her to compete in the November 3 runoff against the second-place finisher, Richard Barerra, a school board member with the San Diego Unified School District.
In this way, Shaw has in a mere four years transformed herself into a potent representative of the conservative, or more accurately, the Christian conservative, movement with regard to public educational values that is extant throughout the country and in some areas thereof in ascendancy, and in California is making some meaningful inroads on the liberal chokehold of the public school system. Still, no one with any political prognosticating experience givers her even a slim chance of besting Barerra to become the California Superintendent of Schools.
Of note is that Shaw is a Republican. In the June Primary, five of the ten candidates were clearly identified Democrats – Barerra, Los Angeles Community College District Trustee Nichelle M. Henderson, former Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, former Assemblyman Anthony Rendon and former Assemblyman Josh Newman. Two of those running, Semitropic Elementary School District Superintendent Wendy Castaneda Leal and Ainye Long, a teacher, had no formal party affiliation, although it has been reported that they are, in fact, Democrats. Frank Lara, an education union leader, is a member of the Peace and Freedom Party. There was, in addition to Shaw, one other Republican running, that being Gus Mattammal, whose previous political efforts consisted of unsuccessful runs for Congress and the California Assembly.
When the votes were counted after the June 2 polling, Shaw was on top with 1,737,735 votes or 22.6 percent, ahead of Barerra, who polled 1,558,298 votes or 20.3 percent. Henderson brought in 738,236 votes or 9.6 percent. In Fourth place was Leal, with 675,968 votes or 8.8 percent. Muratsuchi place fifth, with 646,329 votes or 8.4 percent. Rendon came in sixth, tallying 624,266 votes or 8.1 percent. Lara’s 578,171 or 7.5 percent earned him seventh place, while Newman, capturing 522,758 votes or 6.8 percent, placed eighth. Long captured ninth place with 426,104 votes or 5.5 percent. Mattammal finished last, with 167,723 votes or 2.2.
Thus, the two Republican candidates – Shaw and Mattammal, claimed 24.8 percent of the total vote, less than one-fourth of the votes cast. The Democrats without Leal and Long, claimed 53.2 percent of the votes cast. With Leal and Long, they claimed 67.5 percent. When Leal and Long are considered to have no direct link to the Democratic Party, the three candidates with no ties to the Democrats or Republicans accounted for 21.8 percent of the vote.
The most recent statewide figures on party registration in California, which are from April 3, 2026, show that of California’s 23,112,854 registered voters, 10,382,269 or 44.92 percent affiliate with the Democratic Party, while 5,784,486 or 25.03 percent are Republicans. More than one fifth of the voters in the state – 5,259,808 or 22.76 percent – have no declared party affiliation. The remaining 1,686,291 voters or 7.3 percent, are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom or other more obscure parties. Given the intensive party loyalty evinced by California’s voters and the state’s past voting patterns, it is highly likely that the Democrat Becerra will prevail in November.

All the same, the cultural revolution that Hibbs initiated some two decades ago is progressing. The issue around which that movement coalesced, parental notification, is headed toward normification in California. The cultural conservatives are loading the canons with the next cause, which is the limitation on sexually explicit/age inappropriate literature availability in classrooms and school libraries.
The progress that Hibbs and Shaw and their allies are making, however, does not translate into the state’s progressive forces simply giving up.
A recurrent element in the push for conservative values by the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees, those progressives assert, is a suppression of homosexual culture. Those philosophically at odds with Shaw, Na, Cruz. Smith and Cervantes have begun to push back on this basis. Several of the school board’s opponents noted that prominent among many of the books removed from the district’s libraries under the book challenging policy are ones that have homosexual themes or make mention of homosexuality as a lifestyle. That prompted action.
On August 17, 2026, Los Angeles-based Public Counsel filed a complain with the California Department of Education, seeking an investigation into the Chino Valley Unified School District’s book removal policy’s consistency or inconsistency with the State of California’s Education Code. The complaint alleges the policy is at odds with the code and calls for the book challenging policy to be rescinded and those books that have been removed from the district’s school libraries to again be available to the students who want to check them out.
Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm headquartered in Los Angeles and touted as the largest pro bono law firm in the United States, was founded in 1970 by the Beverly Hills Bar Association and was later embraced by the Los Angeles County Bar Association. It exists as the Southern California affiliate of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. It has pursued cases that are more closely identified with liberal or progressive ideals than so-called conservative ones.
According to the complaint, “Books in Chino Valley School District libraries are disappearing without any documentation, accountability or community input.”
The filing alleges the books targeted in the bans are ones dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual of queer characters or ones who are members of minority communities and that the authors tend to be lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, queers, African Americans, Latinos or Latinas, American Indians, or those of Pacific Island or Asian lineage.
The complaint lists 22 books pulled out of the district’s libraries since 2023, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X; Looking for Alaska by John Green; Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath; Push by Sapphire; More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews; It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris; and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses as well as Kingdom of Ash.
The complaint calls the district’s application of the policy “a gross overreach of power by the school board” that was a “targeting of marginalized identities and vulnerable communities.”
According to Public Policy, the district prior to adopting the book-removal policy was already making selective removals of books based on the prejudices of school board members and in the abscence of any formalized complaints.
Public Counsel noted that a complaint against the Bible had been lodged early on but that the district did not bother to process the complaint or hold a hearing to reach a conclusion with regard to that book’s racier sexually-based passages.