Fourteen months after Adelanto Elementary School District Superintendent Terry Walker’s hiring into her $375,417 total annual compensation position by a lame duck school board majority, it appears she is seeking to negotiate an exit and severance from the post on the best terms possible.
Longevity has not been a feature among Adelanto Elementary School District superintendents in recent years. Since 2012, the district has employed nine top administrators.
Walker’s tenure was festooned with complications from the outset, and her hiring into what was supposed to be the permanent superintendent position was marred by the consideration that it was approved by a bare 3-to-2 majority of the school board, a week after the November 5, 2024 election in which one of the three members of the board who approved her hiring was voted out of office.
The rush to finalize her hiring involved some uncommon maneuvers and action by several individuals and entities with whom Walker had previous relationships, which have now led to further complications and accusations of conflicts of interest. With the 2026 election approaching and two of the three board members who approved her hiring in 2024 up for election in that contest, the prospect of her being able to remain as superintendent until the conclusion of her contract in 2028 has been attenuated.
Walker, a journeywoman educator, began her educational career as a classroom teacher, was later the director of educational services with the Upland Unified School District, served as a principal with the Pomona Unified School District for more than 21 years, landed a position as an education consultant with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo and was hired as the assistant superintendent for instructional services in the Keppel Union School District in Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley in 2021. In April 2022, she advanced to the position of assistant superintendent of human resources with Keppel Union and four months later was promoted to superintendent. She remained in that post for six months, at which point a three-member majority of the Kepler Union School Board, without citing cause, terminated her as superintendent.
Walker recovered by Summer 2024, having been hired by Adelanto as its interim director of human resources.
The Adelanto School District was in a state of turmoil at that time, as instability in the oversight and management of the district had been a recurrent pattern over the previous two decades. Going back 12 years at that point, Darin Brawley had left as superintendent in 2012, whereupon Richard Bray served as superintendent until 2013 and was followed by Lily DeBlieux, who finished out 2013 and lasted part way into 2014. Edwin Gomez, who was in place from 2014 until 2017, and then Amy Nguyen, from 2017 until 2020, proved out as the two longest-lasting superintendents the district employed in recent years. Thereafter, Kennon Mitchell, who was in place from 2020 until 2022, was followed by Michael Krause. Krause did not make quite make it to the two-year mark, and was placed on leave in March 2024 and then reached a severance agreement in June 2024, at which point he was succeeded by John Albert.
Kruase, who lived in the southernmost electoral district within the Adelanto School District’s jurisdiction, Area 1, in the City of Victorville, filed to run for the school board that year against Area 1 incumbent Christine Turner, who had been on the school board from 2005 until 2014 and again from 2016 until that time.
Turner called upon a support network she had in the Adelanto/Victorville/High Desert community, which included two other of the board’s incumbents, Christina Steward and La Shawn Love-French, to assist her in the effort to stave off Krause’s challenge.
In September 2024, when Albert departed as acting superintendent, the board replaced him by promoting Walker from her interim assistant superintendent of human resources position to interim superintendent.
As the campaign for Area 1 board member intensified, which included Krause making an issue with regard to the lack of stability and continuity that had dogged the district over the years, Turner, Stewart and Love-French, as the board majority, called upon the district’s board counsel, Adrienne Konigar-Macklin, to see what might be brought to bear to neutralize Krause. While Konigar-Macklin was unwilling to involve herself or her firm in what could be construed as political activity involving an entity she and her firm represented, she had the district bring in outside counsel, Dominic Quiller of the law firm McCune Harber, to serve notice on Krause by letter that his candidacy was considered a violation of the non-disparagement clause of his separation & settlement agreement with the district, that the district was going to discontinue the monthly payments to Krause due him as a result of the settlement agreement, that it was going to take action against him to recover the payments that he had already received and hit him with a cease & desist order to end his candidacy for school board at once.
“Failure to cooperate will result in immediate litigation,” Quiller wrote.
Quiller did not marshal any evidence of, or follow through with action relating to, a breach of contract.
Krause did not withdraw from the race, which intensified down the home stretch in the last week of October and first few days of November. That included Walker making statements of support for Turner.
On October 29, 2024, seven days before the November 5 election, the school board voted to hire the executive headhunting firm of Leadership Associates to carry out a nationwide search for a superintendent.
The results of the November 5 balloting after votes from all three polling precincts were counted by 10 p.m. that night showed Krause leading Turner, 691 votes or 51.07 percent to 662 votes or 48.93 percent. Over the following days and weeks as the last of the mail-in ballots arrived at the registrar of voters’ office, Krause’s lead widened, after which he was designated the winner with 1,720 or 52.78 percent of the total 3,259 votes cast to Turner’s 1,539 votes or 47.22 percent.
One week after the election, on November 12, 2024, just a month before Turner was set to leave office, Turner, Stewart and Love-French voted to dispense with the nationwide search for a superintendent and instead permanentize Walker as superintendent, approving a contract with her that runs until June 30, 2028. The contract was not, as required by law, made public on the November 12, 2024 agenda. The contract conferred upon Walker a compensation package that dwarfed that of any previous superintendent, consisting of a yearly salary of $282,782, perquisites and pay add-ons of $16,747 and benefits of $75,888 for a total annual compensation of $375,417. Moreover, it involved providing Walker with a level of job security never provided to earlier superintendents. Terminating her under the contract, either with cause or without cause, required under the contract’s terms, a supermajority vote of the board, that is, four of five votes.
The vote to hire Walker was made on a 3-to-2 vote of the board on November 12, 2024, with Turner, Steward and Love-French prevailing and board members Miguel Soto Jr. and Stephanie Kyer, who were not provided with a copy of Walker’s proposed contract, in opposition.
In the district’s hiring of Walker as assistant superintendent of human resources, her promotion to interim superintendent and in the run-up to her hiring as the full-fledged superintendent, certain information was withheld from the board as a whole, which has now taken on significance.
While Walker was working as a principal in the Pomona Unified School District, Adrienne Konigar-Macklin was a member of the Pomona Unified School District Board. Konigar-Macklin, as early as 2009, began doing legal work for the Adelanto Unified School District. Part of that work involved drafting the contracts for the district’s executive level employees, including superintendents and assistant superintendents.
After Walker left her post as a principal in the Pomona Unified School District in May 2019, she immediately went to work with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo as an educational consultant. The firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo represents over 400 school districts and other educational institutions in California, including the Adelanto Elementary School District.
Walker did not disclose to the full board her previous relationship with Konigar-Macklin, that of being a principal in the Pomona Unified School District when Konigar-Macklin was a board member there. Nor did she disclose to the board that she had been a consultant to Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo.
Despite Walker having actively supported Turner in the 2024 election against Krause and both Soto and Kyer having opposed Walker’s hiring in November 2024, after Krause was seated as a board member, the board moved forward with Walker in place as superintendent at the end of 2024 and into the winter months of 2025.
In the summer of 2025, Julie St. John-Gonzales, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services, precipitously jumped ship, leaving the employ of the Adelanto Elementary School District with no forewarning and little more than a second-hand explanation that she had been offered a higher paying opportunity elsewhere. St. John-Gonzales’s departure caught the board, which was quite satisfied with her performance, unawares and sent the Adelanto Elementary School District scrambling to replace her. In short order, Walker lined up a short list of candidates for the post, among whom was the Coachella Valley Unified School District’s recently departed assistant superintendent of business services. As interviews with the job candidates were being scheduled, the board was informed that St. John-Gonzales had left to take on the post of assistant superintendent of business services with the Coachella Valley Unified School District. This was followed by the discovery that the Coachella Valley Unified School District had made a special effort to recruit St. John-Gonzales in an effort to come to terms with a $30 million hole in its ongoing budget.
Members of the board found disturbing that Walker was militating toward having the district swap assistant superintendents of business services with the Coachella Valley Unified School District, particularly given the financial straits Coachella Valley Unified was in. Walker was instructed by the board to disinvite the applicant from Coachella Valley from the interview process, which, the Sentinel is told, Walker declined to do.
After the full board had a confrontation in public over having to essentially snub the Coachella Valley candidate and maneuver around her in pursuing the selection process for the assistant superintendent, individual board members began scrutinizing a number of issues, including items voted on and passed by the board, that had been brought before them by Walker.
According to individuals close to the school district, this examination revealed several matters where the board came to the conclusion that crucial information was not being disclosed and/or which Walker was withholding from them.
Out of this circumstance what has evolved is another 3-to-2 board majority with regard to a vast number of district operational issues, consisting of Soto, Kyer and Krause.
That division on the board, as opposed to the 3-to-2 division previously when Turner, Steward and Love-French held the upper hand and Soto and Kyer were on the outside looking in, has brought to the fore what the board majority senses to be or has documented as being a lack of thorough communication and transparency, as well as what they consider to be hidden agendas.
The contretemps escalated when board members began seeking information and requesting documentation that Walker was reluctant, or refused, to turn over. This prompted the board members to go to the extraordinary steps of filing requests and California’s Public Records Act for the district records and internal documents, material that under most circumstances is routinely available to board members. In some cases, at least, the responses to those requests created alarm, as records and documents were said to be missing or did not exist. The claim that records the district kept as a normal consequence of its operations were nonexistent was perceived as a deliberate effort by Walker to stymie the board’s exercise of oversight. In other cases, the board learned of some expenditures which seemed to have no or questionable value toward the education of the students in the district. Some discoveries appeared petty. The district in one instance had paid $1,800 for an office chair, prompting exclamations that luxurious office chairs were available for $500. In another case, Walker spent $1,500 to buy an ad in a national education magazine which was intended to promote herself. Other data pertained to far more substantial outlays in which money was, if not outright squandered, spent in ways that were inexplicable. Several of those pertained to the district engaging outsourcing of services traditionally provided inhouse, such as securing bus service from outside transportation companies when the district has buses and drivers of its own. Another involved the district’s receipt of $150,000 Expanded Learning Opportunities Program funds from the California Department of Education that was spent on items that those knowledgeable about them described as “cheap and trifling items” that were unnecessary and in no way represented an effort toward expanded learning opportunities.
Over the course of more than five months, the board majority had 75-page compendium of documentation obtained through the Public Records request process which indicated district money was being expended on items or services of no or little conceivable application toward educating the district’s 7,742 students.
Soto and Kyer began pressing for an audit of the superintendent’s office and a comprehensive fiscal audit of the district, a call which Krause did not immediately join in. At some point, the board majority’s focus, at least partially, turned toward hiring decisions Walker had engaged in.
The standard mode of operation in school districts is for the school board to involve itself directly in the hiring of the superintendent and the district’s counsel. Beyond that, with the board having supervisorial input to be sure, hiring authority lies with the superintendent together with the district’s personnel director, commonly referred to in recent years as the human resources manager or director.
Evolving out of the emerging board majority’s dissatisfaction with Walker was concern over the standards being applied in both hiring and the setting of salary levels. Reportedly, a topic that emerged in the board’s closed-door executive discussions relating to the superintendent’s performance was what options the district had in finding another superintendent, which would require that Walker be eased out of the post. The termination clause in her contract, however, required that no fewer than four of the board’s members vote to terminate her. A simple majority of three was not sufficient to fire her. This prompted an examination of how that clause had been layered into her contract.
For more than a decade, Konigar-Macklin had been framing the contracts for the district’s personnel, most notably its administrators. Going back several years, well into the 2010s, Koniger-Macklin had derived a template for those employment contracts. They were basically the same document, with some variation, most notably salary and duration, with different descriptions of duties depending on the position. Names had to be changed, dates, dollar amounts and a few other particulars, such as the perquisites that came with different positions, such as car allowance, educational enhancements and tuition subsidies, communication devices and so forth. Nevertheless, the contracts – when like title with like title was compared – were remarkably similar. What was immediately apparent was that Koniger-Macklin had deviated radically from the template and had indeed dispensed with entire parts of it altogether, when drawing up Walker’s contract. In salary alone, she was paid $55,000 more than any of the superintendents who proceeded her and was given the added advantage of the requirement that the board would need to line up the votes of for of its members to remove her from the position. On top of that was an automatic renewal clause that perpetuated the agreement based on a satisfactory or better performance evaluation by the board.
That brought to light the previous relationship that existed between Koniger-Macklin when she was a board member at the Pomona Unified School District and Walker was the principal at Grover Middle School.
Further examination revealed that Walker had other previous relationships involving those professionally involved with the district that were not generally known at the time she was hired or previously by at least three-fifths of the school board. Confronted by the consideration that Walker had been a consultant with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo, the board majority was unable to determine whether hiring decisions in the district were driven by an effort to bring in the most accomplished and qualified educators and service providers that the district could afford or if those decisions reflected cronyism, in which favoritism was being shown by the top administrator entrusted with guiding the district toward her friends or those who had boosted her career in the past.
The board majority moved to end its contractual relationship Konigar-Macklin and brought in Best Best & Krieger as its board-specific advisor. The law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo remains as the district’s general counsel, but now that Soto, Kyer and Krause are aware of the firm’s preexisting relationship with Walker, the board seeks an opinion from outside counsel whenever it considers any legal issues relating to Walker.
“It is fair to say,” one knowledgeable individual told the Sentinel, “that relations between the superintendent and the board soured. You can date that to the summer, right at the start of the school year.”
A special board meeting was held on August 8, 2025 to effectuate a reorganization of the Adelanto Elementary School District Board due to significant division and dysfunction among its members. Traditionally, board reorganization occurs each December, in accordance with standard district practice. However, this marked the first time in the district’s history that such a change was required outside the normal schedule, underscoring the unusual and urgent nature of the circumstances. Notably, the agenda for this special meeting is currently not posted or publicly accessible, an irregularity that has raised concerns with some community members about transparency under applicable governance laws.
It was in this same timeframe, according to multiple sources in the Adelanto community, that Walker, or those close or otherwise aligned with her, crossed a significant line that has now made any kind of rapprochement between the current board majority and Walker practically impossible. Soto, Kyer and Krause were targeting Walker, an African American woman, for removal from the superintendent’s position, Walker’s allies charged, because they are racists.
Shortly after that, the Sentinel is informed, Walker began to show open defiance to the board by resisting the placement of items brought forth by Soto, Kyer and Krause for placement on the board’s meeting agenda. This could be construed as insubordination. California Code, Education Code § 44932, which lays out the various bases for terminating a school district superintendent does not mention insubordination specifically but under subsection a(8) does reference “Persistent violation of or refusal to obey the school laws of the state or reasonable regulations prescribed for the government of the public schools by the state board or by the governing board of the school district employing him or her.”
In Walker’s case, however, termination on the basis of insubordination which was construed as “persistent violation of or refusal to obey… the governing board of the school district employing her” could only take place if four of the board’s members concurred that the insubordination had taken place. Both Steward and Love-French have made clear that they are adamantly opposed to removing Walker as superintendent.
A contingent of parents and teachers within the district have rallied to Walker’s defense. They credit her with having, in a year’s time, having turned the district around, though that is not reflected in the California School Dashboard, which makes a comparison of school districts throughout the state in terms of academic performance. The Adelanto Elementary School District remains in the 16th percentile among schools throughout California, meaning that of the 1,015 school districts in the state, in 852 of them the students enrolled in those on average outperform on average the students enrolled in the Adelanto Elementary School District on the state’s standardized tests. Test results compiled by the California Department of Education show Adelanto students have low academic proficiency, demonstrating around 12% math in math and 23% in reading.
Walker’s supporters insist that since her arrival, the district has made strides forward in increased daily attendance and academic achievement. They insist Walker is making progress and that the board needs only stay the course with her, as Turner, Steward and Love-French intended when they hired her and ratified her contract in November 2025, to end the turnover in the district’s leadership and general instability that will create a better learning environment for the district’s 7,992 students.
That element of Walker’s support, however, which has suggested the board’s ruling majority has some level of racial animus toward her and which has prompted physical threats against board members and their families has poisoned the atmosphere around the district and particularly in the district’s headquarters. The rules of confidentiality that surround public employees in California prohibit elected officials from sharing with the public any derogatory information about those working in the public sector, from state and county employees to municipal staff and law enforcement officer to those who work with water and school districts, such as line workers and both teachers and school administrators. Nevertheless, information that is in the public domain is fair game, and it is known through open court records, for example, that Konigar-Macklin was represented by Quiller in a legal matter and that Walker was serving in the capacity of district superintendent to when the district made its unsuccessful attempt to have Krause desist in his campaign for a position on the school board while Walker was simultaneously actively supporting Turner in her bid for reelection. Though the board possesses information with regard to Walker and what are politely referred to as conflicts of interest that, at least in some cases, are costing the district money it would not otherwise spend, the board’s members are constrained from publicly discussing or disclosing that information. Members of the Adelanto community, in many or most cases unaware of that information, are perplexed by what they see as the board majority militating against Walker.
Despite their inability to openly reveal what is motivating them, Soto, Kyer and Krause appear to be persisting with a strategy to effectuate Walker’s departure. This approach included the spectacle of the three requesting that Walker, who as the district’s chief executive has the ultimate authority over what is to make it onto the board agenda, scheduling a special meeting at which replacing her as the superintendent would be the specified topic of discussion and potential action. When Walker did not direct the district’s clerical staff to draft the agenda and post it, Kyer, as the designated board secretary, drew up an agenda which included discussion of Walker’s performance and her possible dismissal for a board meeting herself and then, after getting clearance from Adelanto city officials to do so, taped a copy of the agenda on the window near the front entrance of Adelanto City Hall. She taped another official copy on the exterior of the school district headquarters. This allowed for the meeting and the discussion to take place but did not result in either Steward of Love-French coming across with the crucial fourth vote to terminate Walker.
Whatever information is circulating in the community, Steward and Love-French have Walker’s back.
At the December 12, 2025 board meeting, Love-French made clear her opposition to removing Walker and expressed her view that racism is a reality in the district. She said that she, as a member of the board has “sat here as an African American woman unseen and unheard. I want this stated clearly on this record: I believe that I am being targeted, and I am deeply concerned that race is a factor in how I am being treated by other members of this board.”
Love-French took aim at Board President Soto, saying, “What we are seeing now, particularly the manner in which President Soto speaks to the superintendent, is degrading, dismissive and publicly humiliating, That behavior is unprofessional and violates the principle of oversight. Disagreement does not justify hostility. Oversight does not justify intimidation. Leadership does not justify an abuse of power.”
Love-French said, “Dr. Walker, I want you to know, publicly and clearly, that I see your work. I see the long hours. I see the impossible decisions you are asked to make. I see the way you continue to show up for this district, even when the pressure is heavy and criticism is loud. I want you to hear directly from me tonight: You have my full support. It is deeply unfortunate that some of my fellow trustees choose not to see the progress, the civility and the leadership that is happening under your direction. Instead of focusing on student outcomes, staff morale and district growth, it feels like the focus is constantly on pushing you out the door. That is not leadership. That is not stable government. That is not what our students, our educators or our family deserve. Our teachers support you. Our principals support you. Our staff supports you, and that is all that matters. If the goal is truly student success, then we should be empowering our superintendent, not tearing her down.”
If the current board majority is indeed gunning to force Walker’s exit from the district, the accusation of racial bias against her stands as a two-edged sword, one that is poised to cut through Soto’s, Kyer’s and Krause’s necks just as it is conversely aimed at Walker’s throat. The question becomes whether the accusation of racial animus against the three is an accurate depiction of reality or if it is a spurious and groundless defamation which is legitimately eroding Walker’s credibility and that of her allies.
If Soto and Kyer and Krause are cross-burning members of the High Desert Chapter of the Knights & Ladies of the Holy Order of the Ku Klux Klan, that explicates why they are so intent on driving Walker out of the community. On the other hand, the insinuations that Soto, Kyer and Krause are hateful bigots who are adamantly committed to preventing black women from succeeding is virtually indistinguishable from the refrain of those who protested when the Keppel Union School District terminated her in 2023.
The charges of racism against Soto, Kyer and Krause have been raised repeatedly and by multiple individuals. In contrast, Krause, as superintendent, is credited with hiring more African American females into leadership positions within the district than anyone else before or after him, several of whom remain in those positions.
Even though Soto, Kyer and Krause compose only three of the four votes needed to force Walker’s exit, they appear intent on scheduling a closed session discussion of Walker’s performance at each school board meeting going forward, as this provides a forum, outside the presence of the public, to confront Love-French and Steward with the consequences of their participation in the November 2024 vote with the lame duck Turner to hire Walker as superintendent and commit the district to a three-and-a-half-year contract with her.
The term “lame duck” refers to a politician/elected official who has lost an election or who did not run for reelection whose successor has been elected but whose term in office has not yet ended. The politician about to leave office is, in American parlance, said to be a lame duck, an official whose influence and political power has waned but who still holds authority. In this lame duck state, the about-to-depart politician generally speaking has little opportunity to achieve much but, conversely, is sometimes in a position, with the assistance of other officeholders, some of whom might or might not be lame ducks themselves, to take potentially bold last-minute actions before leaving office.
The 3-to-2 vote to hire Walker in November 2024 by the board majority that counted among its members Turner, whose time in office was to come to an end the following month, stands as one such bold last-minute action.
There is precedence in San Bernardino County for terminations or employment realignments that followed either lame duck chief executive/administrative personnel hirings or key changeovers on the political bodies heading governmental entities and agencies of which Turner, Love-French and Steward should have been aware.
Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was the November 2018 vote by the Upland City Council, as it was then composed, to promote Jeannette Vagnozzi, Upland’s deputy city manager who was then serving in what was supposed to be the temporary assignment of interim city manager following the September 2018 resignation of Upland City Manager Bill Manis Two of Upland’s council members – Gino Filippi and Carol Timm – had been voted out of office in the November 6, 2018 election and another council member, Sid Robinson, who had been appointed in 2016 to fill a two-year term vacancy on the council and had opted against running in that year’s election and was due to leave office in December 2018 as well. On November 26, 2018, at the city council’s last meeting before its first meeting in December when the ceremonial exit of the three departing members and the swearing-in of the new council members was to take place, the council considered elevating Vagnozzi from the capacity of acting city manager to the official position of full-fledged city manager. After the public weighed in with arguments for and against promoting Vagnozzi and after a letter from the outgoing Councilwoman Timm, who was vacationing with her parents in North Carolina over the Thanksgiving holiday, endorsing Vagnozzi was read into the record, the council voted 3-to-1 to make her the city manager.
Six months later, in May 2019, the newly composed city council voted unanimously to let Vagnozzi go as city manager, conferring upon her the $155,000 severance guaranteed in her contract.
As if Upland’s experience was not illustration enough of the risk a bare majority of an elected governmental decision-making body that includes a lame duck or lame ducks subjects the entity those decision-makers represent to in making a managerial appointment that will saddle the future decision-makers with a top administrator not preferred by the incoming majority, there were the more recent examples of the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino.
Just as the Adelanto Elementary School District going back over a decade has had difficulty in hiring a superintendent and keeping him or her in place for a sustained period, the City of Rialto has been equally challenged in maintaining consistency with its top administrators, employing 12 city managers in the less than a quarter century from 2000 to 2024. One of those was Marcus Fuller, who for two-and-a-half years beginning in 2012 had served as Rialto’s public works director/city engineer before departing to serve as the assistant city manager/chief operating officer position in the public works division with the City of Palm Springs. In June 2021, while Deborah Robertson was Rialto mayor, Fuller was lured back to Rialto with the offer to serve as city manager on a contract that was to pay him a $275,000 annual salary along with benefits and perquisites of $118,500 for a total annual compensation of $393,500. In November 2022, Joe Baca Sr., a one-time California Assemblyman, California State Senator and U.S. Congressman, ran for Rialto mayor, defeating Robertson. In the same election Two months later, Fuller and Rialto parted company. While Fuller was hired almost 17 months before Robertson was voted out of office, it was Baca’s replacement of Robertson as mayor that precipitated Fuller’s departure. In working out a severance package to effectuate Fuller’s leaving, Rialto provided fuller with a payout of $555,106 over the course of 2023, which included the 291,747.50 salary he was due to receive that year despite the consideration that he left in January and did not have to work at all the remaining 11 months, as well as another $263,358.50.
In 2024, simultaneous to what was plying out in the Adelanto Elementary School District, the City of San Bernardino, which has had 16 full-fledged, acting or interim city managers in 16 years, was involved in a situation in which it had three lame duck members of the city council – Ben Reynoso, Kimberly Calvin and Damon Alexander – all of whom had been voted out of office in the March 2024 primary balloting and were due to leave office in December while the city was dealing with finding a replacement for City Manager Charles Montoya who had been terminated by the council that May. The council had designated Rochelle Clayton to serve as Montoya’s temporary replacement while it considered how to fill the city manager’s slot. Clayton had been hired as deputy city manager by Montoya in April of that year, a mere month before his sacking,
In that year’s election cycle, incumbent Juan Figueroa had been reelected to the council, while ultimately three newcomers – Kim Knaus, Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz – were elected to replace Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander. What had started out as virtually unanimous positive feeling toward Clayton by the entire council and the mayor fluctuated over the summer and into the fall, as Mayor Helen Tran and Councilwoman Calvin became focused on having Clayton designated to take on the city manager’s post and locking her into place for a likely duration of no less than three years and perhaps as many as five. Their intent was to do so by getting the five needed votes among the eight person panel consisting of the mayor and council before Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander left in December 2024 and Knaus, Flores and Ortiz replaced them. At different times in the fall of 2024 it appeared that Tran and Calvin had the votes lined up to extend a contract to Clayton, but a firm consensus never emerged, and Clayton’s hiring as city manager in San Bernardino on a permanent basis never took place, primarily, it is said, because Alexander was unwilling to commit the future members of the council to working with a city manager those members had not had an opportunity to vet and vote on. In early 2025, the matter became moot when Clayton was offered and accepted the position as Barstow city manager.
In April 2019, Nikki Salas, who had previously served as the assistant town manager in Apple Valley, was hired as city manager in Barstow. Nineteen months later, in November 2020, Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre and Councilwoman Carmen Hernandez were defeated in that year’s election by Paul Courtney and Marilyn Kruse, respectively. In addition, Barbara Rose was elected to the council in the same balloting to fill the void on the council that had existed since December 2019 when Richard Harpole, had resigned from the council to move to Texas. Hackbarth-McIntyre, Hernandez and Harpole had participated in the unanimous vote to hire Salas. Two months after the 2020 election and one month after Courtney, Kruse and Rose were installed on the council, they voted to place Salas on administrative leave. Less than two weeks later, recognizing that if she did not do so she would be fired, Salas resigned.
There is no guarantee that the members of the Adelanto Elementary School Board knew about all or any of the recent or historical instances within the county where a hiring of a senior governmental administrator was in short order countermanded when one or more of that administrator’s political masters were voted out of office. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Turner, Love-French and Steward recognized when they elevated Walker to the superintendent’s position and in so doing conferred upon her a contract of three-and-a-half years’ duration that was to provide her with a total annual compensation of $375,417 and be unbreakable unless four out of five future board members agreed to terminate her with or without cause that at the very least Soto and Kyer would find that arrangement objectionable and there was an even or better than chance that any new board members would concur with them. Similarly, given their political alliance, it is virtually inconceivable that they did not know that Walker had involved herself politically in that year’s election, specifically in that she had supported Turner and had been in the loop with regard to Quiller’s efforts to prevail upon Krause to drop out of the board race.
. In December, Love-French lamented that Walker was being undone by politics. Love-French’s observation was correct.
At this juncture, more than a year after the 2024 election season, some of the political eggs that were laid then have hatched and those chicks have come home to roost. Whatever her skill as an educator and administrator and her value to the Adelanto community by remaining in the superintendent’s position, while she was serving as the interim superintendent in 2024, Walker, instead of maintaining a professional distance from the electoral process became politically involved. It is not just Soto, Kyer and, most assuredly, Krause, who are aware of that but a substantial contingent of the voters and parents in the Adelanto Elementary School District. Walker was the top-ranking executive officer when the district trotted out the big gun in the form of Quiller, who took a carefully aimed shot and missed. Krause in now on the board, having replaced Turner, which has flipped the district’s political direction by 180 degrees. In the November 2024 sweepstakes, Walker put all of her money on the horse that lost.
Politics, in the current context, cut both ways. There are three votes on the Adelanto Elementary School District Board, apparently, to remove Walker as superintendent. Still, four, not three, votes are needed to effectuate her removal. She is still standing, saved by a margin of one vote.
Of some moment is how long that margin will last.
This is an election year and the board members who provide the two votes that are sustaining Walker for now – Steward and Love-French – must stand for reelection if they are to remain on the board past December. There are strong indications the union representing teachers in the Adelanto Elementary School District, the Adelanto District Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association, will oppose both Steward and Love-French if they run. There stands a fair possibility that one of them will be replaced with a community member who might side with Soto, Kyer and Krause, providing the fourth vote needed to cashier Walker. If a fourth vote manifests, there is a remote possibility that the termination would be made for cause, which might range from insubordination in refusing to place the items on the board agenda that members of the board majority asked for to undeclared conflicts of interest involving Walker’s relationship with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo to the deliberate and active withholding of other information deemed important by the board majority.
Though Steward and French have decried the board majority’s tactic of repeatedly acting to place Walker’s performance reviews on the board’s agendas as an effort to undercut Walker, it is possible to perceive that what the board is doing is seeking a middle-ground compromise by allowing a dialogue between the board and Walker to take place in closed session during which some sort of severance from the district that is relatively favorable to Walker can be negotiated well ahead of the November election, after which, it is possible, Walker will have no leverage left.
There is evidence to suggest that is what is indeed taking place. Toward the end of the January 13 meeting, Walker sounded like she is much closer than two-and-half years away from departing from the district.
“It has been an extreme pleasure and joy to do the work that we have done together,” Walker said.

Eight months after Redlands officials were caught phoneying up official city documents, the city has embarked on the wholesale shredding of the contents of its files, including records, forms, logs, chronicles, reports, contracts and other and materials that fall under the rubric of municipal documents.
The city maintains that it is scanning or otherwise electronically recording those materials it is required under the law to retain for the specified durations provided for in the California Government Code. Nevertheless, there is no independent system to ascertain what materials re being preserved, and after the paper-to-digital conversions are made and the hard copies are destroyed, there is no mechanism to verify that all of the records, files and documents eradicated were converted into a recoverable format.
One aspect of the city council’s authorization of the destruction that some city residents are alarmed about is that a portion of the material slated for destruction consists of digitally-formatted material that was put into miniaturized formats with the originals having been shredded long ago. That the city is maintaining that the rationale for destroying this material is it does not have adequate space to store and preserve it even though it is not in its current format space intensive, is seen as as being a ploy to eliminate documentation that is in some fashion or other implicative of City Hall, the city’s elected leadership, city administrators or lower-down members of city staff in activity that is wasteful, wrong, potentially illegal, outright illegal or embarrassing.
In February 2007, the Redlands City Council as it was then composed adopted Resolution No. 6576, which specified regulations governing the retention and disposition of public records, with the intention of providing an ongoing and relatively comprehensive historical backdrop and recordation of past and ongoing city decision-making and official actions as both the present and future transition to the past. Thereafter, laws changed with regard to what municipal records should be kept or were mandated to be kept, in what medium, and the appropriate length of time of retention. Central to these changes were allowances for eliminating paper records if they can be converted to digital format. Due to the complexity and the various statutes regulating public
records retention, the city attorney recommended the expertise of a consultant be brought to bear to determine how the city should proceed.
In November 2023 the city engaged Gladwell Governmental Services, Inc. to upgrade its records’ management program.
Based upon what was represented as being “very limited space in city facilities, many departments filing and storing copies of the same records, Redlands produc[ing] and manag[ing] many permanent records, escalating records storage expenses, technology advancements [and that] Redlands will realize significant savings in labor costs, storage costs, free filing cabinet and office space, and realize operational efficiencies, the city council on July 2, 2024 voted to move forward with a protocol Gladwell came up with for retaining records or destroying them.
According to a model schedule and policy Gladwell provided to the city upon which to base its retention and destruction of records, there is no specified retention period beyond ten years. A two-year retention is suggested for documents and records relating to legal noticing; staff reports, agendas, audio recordings and video recordings and minutes relating to city board, employee board or city council subcommittee meetings and actions; routine correspondence; grant applications; vehicle trips and maintenance; appraisals on reals estate not purchased or sold; policies, procedures, manuals, flyers, handbills, newsletters; special project subject files; manuals; subpoenas and surveys. A five year retention is suggested for documents and attendance records relating to training provided to city staff; documents related to federal grants and reimbursements; cash receipts; real estate appraisals; special districts, assessment districts, landscape maintenance and lighting districts. Gladwell recommended retaining agreements and contracts; studies and reports including annual reports for ten years. In the case of several types of records, including those for boards of what are termed “outside organizations,” preliminary drafts; calendars; text messages; transmittal letters; PowerPoint presentations; emails, social media postings, preliminary notices for construction projects; photographs; and newspaper clippings, the recommendation is that they be destroyed when “no longer needed.”
Gladwell calls for permanent retention of only two categories of records, those being “historically significant” reports and zoning studies and minutes for boards of commissions, committees and advisory committees.
Curiously, Gladwell’s recommendations provide for allowing for city council meeting minutes, audio recordings and videos to be destroyed after four years.
The City of Redlands ran afoul of public opinion last year when it was revealed that something was amiss with documentation recording action involving the city’s planning, building & safety departments and its overarching development services division. As was reported in the Sentinel and other publications in May 2025, the City of Redlands issued permits for the construction of an accessory dwelling unit located at 12747 Hilltop Drive, which included the project proponent succeeding in having city officials check off a series of met requirements in the application and planning process for the project, which was to entail the construction of the retaining wall and the installation of a new septic system, including the addition of a 1,000 gallon tank Those included the granting of the grading permit on November 15, 2024, the issuance of a permit to construct a retaining wall on December 2, 2024, the issuance of a permit to construct a 1,200 square foot structure on December 19, 2024 and the issuance of a permit to install a new septic system on March 25, 2025.
Documentation relating to the project shows that on March 14, 2024 and March 28, 2024, Chris Jensen signed off on a fire safety review and a plan check for fire safety, respectively. Similarly, on March 14, 2024, July 8, 2024 and August 7, 2024, Andrew Carothers is shown on city documents to have done pre-construction reviews of the plans for the accessory dwelling unit, which included, a correction to a building review, another correction to a building review and comments with regard to a building review, respectively.
Jensen was the Redlands Fire Department’s fire marshal from 2020 until 2022, but left Redlands to become the fire marshal and a division chief in Rialto in 2022. He thus was not available to undertake the review and plan check in 2024 as he is credited with on the city’s official document.
Carothers began with the City of Redlands as a plans examiner in Redlands in April of 2016 and remained in that assignment until April of 2020, at which point he promoted to the city’s chief building official. In February 2022, Carothers left Redlands to become the senior plans examiner with the City of Riverside. He, too, was not available to undertake the review and plan check in 2024 as he is credited with on the city’s official document.
In the same timeframe in which city documents were being forged with regard to the application to construct an accessory dwelling unit at 12747 Hilltop Drive, the Redlands City Council as it was then composed voted to permit city staff to dispense with the rules put in place by a previous city council 2007 aimed at keeping city records intact.
On July 2, 2024 the Redlands City Council unanimously passed Resolution No. 8597, adopting a records retention schedule and authorizing the destruction of certain city records. In that resolution, the members of the city council, which then included Paul Barich, Eddie Tejeda, Denise Davis, Mario Saucedo and Jenna Guzman-Lowery justified making the change because “the maintenance of numerous records is expensive, slows document retrieval, and is not necessary after a certain period of time for the effective and efficient operation of the government of the City of Redlands and Section 34090 of the Government Code of the State of California provides a procedure whereby any City record which has served its purpose and is no longer required may be destroyed.” In adopting Resolution No. 8597, the council repealed Resolution No. 6576.
In so doing, the city council washed its hands of any further involvement in the destruction of city records, granting autonomy to do with city records as was deemed fit by those further down the municipal chain of command.
The city council did not limit the destruction of city records to those that existed in paper form. Rather, the council defined the records and documents eligible for destruction as “documents, instructions, books, microforms, electronic files, magnetic tape, optical media, or papers; as defined by the California
Public Records Act.”
The council said such destruction was to take place “upon the request of the department head and with the consent in writing of the department head, city clerk and city attorney, without further action by the city council. of the City of Redlands.
The city council’s authorization gave city staff license to destroy the original documents pertaining to the construction of an accessory dwelling unit at 12747 Hilltop Drive which included Jensen’s and Carothers’ forged signatures, which potentially or likely yet bore the fingerprints of those who had committed the forgeries.
City officials declined the Sentinel’s invitation to respond to those who have asserted that the city is being indiscriminate in what is being preserved and what is not and feel that the destruction of the original paper/hard copies obviates a type of analysis that can in some instances be done and which cannot be replicated with digital files, such that the original records/documents should be maintained. Those officials, asked to offer an assurance that nothing crucial is being lost as a consequence of this action provided a generic statement provided in the July 2, 2024 resolution by the city council that “It is standard business practice for California cities to authorize the routine destruction of records that have exceeded their adopted retention period, upon the request of the department head and ith the consent in writing of the department head, city manager (records manager) and city attorney. This will reduce costs and improve efficiency for the city.”

Far more rapidly than was anticipated, the U.S. Supreme Court has responded to an effort by a conservative public-interest group to uphold a federal court ruling in December that knelled the end of California public schools’ parental exclusion policy.
While a final decision has not been made, the tea leaves at the bottom of cup are pointing toward allowing parents to be privy to how their children are conducting themselves in public when their parents are not around.
Several of California’s highest-ranking political officials challenged the December 22, 2025 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Benitez that held schools, school districts and school faculty cannot prevent parents from knowing if their children are assuming at school a gender different from their biological sex or the gender they were identity as being at birth.
Judge Benitez’s decision came in a case, Mirabella et al v Olson et al, in which Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West, two teachers in the Escondido Unified School District challenged that district’s policy, which required teachers to accommodate students who represented themselves as being of a different gender than the one identified for them by medical professionals and their parents at birth and memorialized in their birth certificates while they were in a classroom setting and at school generally, including referring to them by the names those students choose for themselves but reverting to their given names and making no mention of the gender transition the students have made when interacting with the student’s parents. Mirabelli and West were joined in their suit by two other anonymous teachers from the Escondido School District and by two families in which the parents were kept uninformed by the gender transitioning of their children. They were represented by the San Diego County-based law firm of LiMandri & Jonna and the Thomas More Society, a Roman Catholic nonprofit legal organization/public interest law firm.
In rendering his decision, Benitez traversed the state’s contention that students’ privacy rights outweighed parents’ entitlement to participating in the upbringing of their children and wrote that as a consequence of parental exclusion policies in general and the parental exclusion policy in place in the Escondido Union School District, “The state purposefully interferes with a parent’s access to meaningful information about their child’s gender identity choices. It is a grave mistake to deprive parents of information about their child’s gender at school.”
Judge Benitez noted that the basis for preventing parents from learning about their children assumption of a variant gender identity was that parents of students exploring or assuming such a transition have malintent toward their children. “The problem,” Benitez wrote, “is that the parent exclusion policies seem to presume that it is the parents that will be the harassers from whom students need to be protected.” Judge Benitiez said seeking to protect students was admirable, but that the state cannot make a blanket assumption that parents are a danger to their own children.
Judge Benitez characterized as “laudable” the efforts by state officials to support and protect transgender students, but that achieving those goals cannot entail disregarding the constitutional rights of others, such as the First Amendment rights reserved for Mirabelli and West and the fundamental rights affirmed in the Supreme Court precedents of Parham v. J.R. and the Mahmoud v. Taylor establishing the parent-child relationship as older and more fundamental than the rights of the state and that parents rather than school administrators hold the “high duty” to recognize symptoms of illness or distress in their children.
“The state defendants are, in essence, asking this court to limit, and restrict a common-sense and legally sound description by the United States Supreme Court of parental rights,” Benitez wrote. “That, this Court will not do.”
According to Judge Benitez, the state and the California Department of Education, through its imposition of the principle of parental exclusion was engaging a what he termed a “trifecta of harm.” This extended to damaging children by cutting them off from parental support, hurting parents by usurping their rights to engage in decision-making pertaining to their offspring and harming teachers by compelling them to lie.
Judge Benitez said parents are entitled under the law to exercise oversight over their child’s medical treatment and he analogized withholding from parents information about their children’s assumed gender identity to educators failing to share students’ physical injuries or other health-related concerns with parents.
“When it comes to a student’s change in gender identity, California state policymakers apparently do not trust parents to do the right thing for their child,” Judge Benitez stated.
The California Attorney General’s Office, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and members of the State Board of Education testified at trial that parental exclusion on balance was more beneficial than disclosing to parents information about their children’s efforts toward gender transition because it would provide a “safer environment” for those students. The state defendants maintained they had a duty to provide safe learning conditions for students and that “outing” students to their parents could lead to bullying, harassment and both physical, psychological and emotional abuse. Students, despite not having attained the age of majority under both state and federal law, the defendants argued, had privacy rights and were entitled to “bodily autonomy.” Schools and school districts were bound to provide students with those protections and guarantees, according to the defendants.
The defendants disputed that honoring a student’s choice of gender identity, name or pronoun constituted medical treatment but was a social nicety or courtesy that grew out of basic human decency.
According to Judge Benitez, the defendants were unable to cogently demonstrate how perpetuating parents’ ignorance about their children’s assumption of an altered gender represented a “narrowly tailored solution to a compelling state interest.”
“Simply because the decision of a parent is not agreeable to a child or because it involves risks does not automatically transfer the power to make that decision from the parents to some agency or officer of the state,” Judge Benitez stated, concluding, “Disagreement is not abuse, and the court so finds.”
The decision in Mirabelli et al. v. Olson et al., which was litigated in federal court, marks a significant deviation from the tenor of decisions reached in cases dealing with the same topic in state court.
Federal law supersedes state law. According to the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, (Article VI, Clause 2), federal laws made pursuant to the Constitution are the “supreme law of the land, “supreme law of the land,” such that if a state law conflicts with a feeral law, federal law will override the state law, a concept referred to as preemption. In Mirabelli et al. v. Olson et al., Judge Benitez ruled that the parental exclusion policy in place at the Escondido Union School District, which is virtually indistinguishable from policies in hundreds of other school districts in California, violated the 14th Amendment’s substantive due process clause and the First Amendment rights of religious parents and teachers.
Judge Benitez’s order grants summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and issues a permanent injunction. This effectively prevents schools or school districts from stopping teachers from disclosing to parents the gender identity their children have adopted in a school or classroom setting or in any way punishing those teachers for doing so. It prevents schools from requiring that teachers or educators lie to parents.
The ruling applies to all public-school districts in California, eradicating the parental exclusion policies now in place in hundreds of school districts throughout California.
Judge Benitez’s ruling in Mirabelli et al. v. Olson et al. carries with it not just the possibility but the likelihood that it will undo several decisions in state court and parallel policies, including the in San Bernardino County Superior Court involving the Chino Valley Unified School District’s parental notification policy.
Judge Benitz’s ruling clashed with the policy recommended to schools by the State of California, the California Superintendent of Schools, the California Board of Education and the California Department of Education.
Throughout California, fewer than a dozen of the 1,015 school districts statewide did not adhere to that policy. One district which led the way in defying the state trend was the Chino Valley Unified School District, where, in July 2023 the school board on a 4-to-1 vote passed a parental notification policy requiring that teachers inform the parents of any students who on campus assumed a gender identity at odds with their biologic gender as recorded on their birth statistic and extrapolated into the student’s academic file.
Prior to the Chino School Board adopting the policy, it garnered the opposition of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who vowed to take action against the district if it pushed forward with the parental notification mandate. Indeed, the following month, as the 2023-24 school year was beginning, Bonta, in hsicapacity as California Attorney General, filed suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court to block the district from actuating the policy. The court issued a stay on the implementation of the policy while the matter was considered and ultimately issued a ruling in favor of Bonta and against the district, but carved out a lone path for the district to pursue its intended parental notification by ruling that if a student’s official academic records and transcripts were altered at the student’s request, his or her parents had a right to be informed about any such change.
The Chino Valley Unified School District Board responded by adopting a policy that called for alerting parents if students on their own initiative made any alterations of their official school records.
The California legislature then passed and Governor Gavin Newsom on July 15, 2024 signed into law AB 1955, prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their child assumes a gender different from the one assigned him or her at birth without the child’s permission. 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.
While those issues were being hashed out in state court, similar questions were being litigated in the federal court in the form of the Mirabelli v. Olson case.
In the aftermath of Judge Benitez’s ruling, Bonta, Thurmond, California State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond and California State Board of Education Board of ducation members Cynthia Glover Woods, Francisco cobedo, Brenda Lewis, James J. McQuillen, Sharon Olken, riela Orozco Gonzalez, Kim Pattillo Brownson, Haydee R riguez, Alison Yoshimoto-Towery and Vanessa Ejike p ti ioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit f r n emergency stay of Judge Benitez’s ruling in the Mirabelli v. Olson case to prevent any of California’s s school districts from proceeding with the practice of parental notification.
In the emergency motion, which was drafted by Bonta, the California Attorney General maintains Judge Benitez’s interpretation of federal constitutional issues is erroneous and in glaring conflict with the State of California’s anti-discrimination and privacy laws. The State of California will prevail in its appeal of Judge Benitez’s ruling, and he asked the Ninth Circuit to intervene in the meantime to avert the serious risk that teachers and schools will begin disclosing sensitive information about students’ gender identities, which cannot be undone after the fact. According to Bonta, students up and down the state who have chosen to express their true selves did so under the belief that the schools would remain true to their policy of confidentiality and protecting them as is codified in the state’s currently existing statutes and laws.
“Outing transgender students to their parents before they are ready threatens severe mental and emotional anguish, depression, and in extreme cases, even suicide,” Bonta asserted in the emergency motion. Averting the harm that lesbian, bisexual, gay, transsexual and queer students will sustain as a consequence of Judge Benitez’s ruling should prevail over parents’ rights, according to the state attorney general. The Ninth Circuit on January 5 granted the emergency motion for a stay, pending the state’s appeal of the ruling.
Thereafter, the Thomas More Society filed a motion seeking an “en banc” reconsideration of the stay order with the full Ninth Circuit and simultaneously pursued review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thomas Brejcha, Peter Breen and Christopher Galiardo of the Thomas More Society’s Chicago office and Michael McHale of the Thomas More Society’s Omaha office, along with attorneys Paul Jonna, Charles Limandri and Jeffrey Trissell of the law firm Limandri & Jonna in Rancho Santa Fe filed an emergency application to vacate the interlocutory stay order issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit lodged specifically “to the Honorable Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit.”
Justice Kagan is one of only three of the Supereme Court’s members who are not Catholic. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Amy Coney Barrett are all Catholic.
In the request for the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the Ninth Circuit’s interlocutory order staying the Judge Benitez’s ruling, Brejcha, Breen, Galiardo, McHale, Jonna, Limandri and Trissell wrote, “A social transition encompasses behaving—in all regards—as a member of the opposite sex. That includes adopting a new name and pronouns, adopting a new opposite-sex presentation (hair, clothes, makeup), and beginning to use sex-segregated facilities and participating in sex segregated activities as a member of the opposite sex. Examining the nation’s historical traditions, several courts have held that ‘parents retain a constitutionally protected right to guide their own children on matters of identity, including the decision to adopt or reject various gender norms and behaviors,’ and ‘to have a say in what a minor child is called and by what pronouns they are referred.” Whether viewed under the traditional understanding of in loco parentis [in the place of a parent], or a more modern understanding, this right reaches into the schools. Parents only delegate authority over their children ‘under circumstances’ when they ‘cannot protect, guide, and discipline them.’ They do not delegate authority to expand those circumstances and cut them out. More, parents only relinquish authority needed for the school to carry out its ‘educational mission,’—they do not delegate the authority to make decisions regarding whether their child is a boy or a girl.”
Justice Elena Kagan agreed to provide an expeditious decision with regard to the issues raised in the case, and gave Bonta until next Wednesday, January 21, to respond.
Thus, it appears the request to reinstate Judge Benitez’ December 22 ruling that California’s parental exclusion policies are unconstitutional and that parents cannot be deprived of information that may affect their child’s wellbeing and health will potentially be settled by the end of the month.

State Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes (D–Colton) on January 6 introduced legislation that aims to prevent federal immigration agents from engaging in enforcement activity at in or around courthouses in California.
The intent of Senate Bill 873, Gómez Reyes said, was to prevent federal agents from disrupting court hearings and discouraging individuals from making regularly scheduled court appearances through what she termed “unannounced and indiscriminate arrests.” She said that after SB 873 undergoes adjustments during the legislative process and is passed into law and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, it “will provide legal assurances that Californians are safe from immigration agents in and around the grounds of a courthouse. The issue is clear cut. One of the core responsibilities of government is to protect people – not to inflict terror on them. California is not going to let the federal government make political targets out of people trying to be good stewards of the law. Discouraging people from coming to court makes our community less safe. I look forward to the robust discussions that will come from this measure, and ultimately, toward providing relief to impacted communities across the state.”
Senate Bill 873 seeks to stop agents with the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from disrupting court appearances and deterring community members from participating in legal proceedings, which supporters argue makes communities less safe.
According to Gómez Reyes’ office, SB 873 is “a response to aggressive federal immigration tactics that have used courthouses as sites for arrests, creating fear. If passed, the law will prohibit unannounced and indiscriminate immigration arrests at courthouses and on their grounds and ensure courthouses remain safe spaces for all participants and to build trust in the legal system.”
Among the bill’s supporters are the California Public Defenders Association. “Using courthouses as arrest sites turns access to justice into a trap,” said Kate Chatfield, Executive Director of the California Public Defenders Association. “It drives people away from courts, harms public safety, and erodes trust in the rule of law. This past year, we have seen people terrorized in and around courthouses by ICE arrests. We are pleased that Senator Reyes is championing legislation to protect California’s residents and California’s justice system.”

The federal manhunt for Larry Castillo is continuing.
Castillo, 42, with a last known residence in Victorville, also goes by the name of “Lil Dee.”
He was among 20 defendants and fugitives state and federal law enforcement officers and agents say are tied to the San Gabriel Valley-based, Mexican Mafia-linked, Puente-13 street gang who were named in a set of federal criminal complaints filed last year alleging their involvement in a kidnapping, two shootings, illegal firearms sales, and trafficking of narcotics, including methamphetamine cocaine, fentanyl, and carfentanil.
On December 17, 2025, following coordinated raids which involved the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Covina Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the West Covina Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, and the Baldwin Park Police Department, 18 of those named in the complaints were taken into custody. Those included included Victor Sanchez, 24, a.k.a. “Pollo” and “Chicken,” of San Bernardino; Isaiah Castro, 24, a.k.a. “Boy,” of Azusa; Isaac Estrada-Frost, 21, a.k.a. “Ghost,” of Rosemead; Heather Covarrubias, 40, a.k.a. “Snowbella,” of Diamond Bar; Dominic Ornelas, 23, a.k.a. “Dom” and “Lil Speedy,” of Rancho Cucamonga; and Adrian Lopez, 25, a.k.a. “Tapped In” and “Monkey,” of La Puente; as well as other members of the gang for whom ages were not provided were Lucky Sanchez, of San Bernardino; Fernando Carmona, of East Los Angeles; Isaac Estrada, of Rosemead;, Silvestre Ponce, of Covina; Erica Rodriquez and John Rodriguez, both of San Bernardino; Esteban Fausto, of Pomona; Otan Motamedi, of Westminster; Abel Dominguez, of West Covina; Francisco Rodriguez, of Pomona; Lorenzo Mejia, of Glendora; Daed Andrade, of San Gabriel; Taken into custody shortly afterward was Bryan Gordian-Padilla, 24, a.k.a. “Goon,” of West Covina/Baldwin Park.
Another defendant, Heather Johnson, 38, of Victorville, was already in state custody.
The criminal charges and the arrests grew out of a federal investigative effort, known as Operation Burning Bridges
Two of those targeted for arrest, Castillo and Soo Kang, 31, also know as “Easy,” of Los Angeles’s Koreatown escaped the dragnet.
It was determined that two of the 23 individuals sought, Steve Mauricio, of Fontana; and Panfilla Gallegos, of La Puente were deceased.
Operation Burning Bridges was initiated three years ago by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and soon became focused on members and associates of the San Gabriel Valley-based Puente 13 gang. Federal authorities intensified the investigation when it was learned the members of Puente 13 were trafficking – importing, manufacturing and distributing – carfentanil, a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than fentanyl.
After obtaining warrants, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives utilized wiretaps and seizures of evidence without effectuating arrests and purchased weapons from identified Puente 13 gang members and associates in what Kenneth Cooper, the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called “controlled sales.” Those weapons bought by undercover agents as well as those seized prior to the serving of arrest and search warrants on December 17 included a machine gun, 14 rifles, four short-barreled rifles and other firearms with the serial numbers removed.
While the majority of those implicated in the investigation of Puente 13 are or were residents of Los Angeles County, no fewer than five of them were living in San Bernardino County. Information developed through a non-related investigation into a double kidnapping in 2023 led to an early breatktrhough in the case.
On July 8, 2023, Covarrubias, who then cohabiting with Adrian Lopez in a home in the 17800 block of Grapevine Lane in the Rosena Ranch section of San Bernardino County reported to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department a burglary had taken place after she and Lopez had given the home’s keys to an individual identified in court documents as A.A. so he could do work on Lopez’s car. She said jewelry was among the items stolen.
On July 21, 2023, A.A. and a woman, referred to in court documents as A.C., told investigators with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that they had been abducted by Lopez and Covarrubias on July 20, 2023. During this ordeal, according to A.A. and A.C., a group of Lopez’s and Covarrubias’s associates, believed to be members of Puente 13, beat and tortured A.A. in an effort to obtain jewelry Covarrubias maintained he had taken from the Grapevine Lane abode. After A.C. was let go, A.A. claimed, he was able to escape.
A.A., who had visible injuries when he and A.C. spoke to the sheriff’s deputies and detectives, identified the home on Grapevine Road as where the beating took place.
Sheriff’s Department investigators over the next month positively identified Lopez and Covarrubias as suspects in the kidnapping and assault and obtained arrest warrants for both subjects. On August 29. 2023, Lopez was arrested in El Monte and Covarrubias was arrested in Fontana. They subsequently served a search warrant at the home on Grapevine Lane. While doing so, they found an AR style assault rifle, a 50-round loaded ammunition drum for the assault rifle which made it capable of automatic fire, a loaded pistol, and an unregistered handgun without a serial number, known as a ghost gun.
It is believed but has not yet been established that information obtained by Lopez and Covarrubias in their post-2023 arrests assisted federal investigators in the Operation Burned Bridges.
According to an affidavit filed in federal court, Lopez drove Ornelas to a home on East Hurst Street in Covina on December 18, 2022, where they opened fire. here were people in and outside the home, which is allegedly the residence of at least one indivusal associated with Blackwood, described as a “clique of Puente 13,” one which has been involved in a rivalry with another subgroup within Puente 13, known as Ballista.
Lopez and Ornelas fled after discharging more than 20 shots at the home. As ornelas was jumping a retaining wall, he lost his left shoe. After law enforcement recovered the shoe it was determined to match the size of shoes worn by Ornelas. A DNA analysis of the shoe found that it also match Ornelas.
Investigators with the Covina Police Department recover recovered 24 bullet casings from the area surrounding the residence.
Investigators have also determined that Puente 13 gang members were involved in a shooting that took place on May 2, 2025 outside the H & H liquor store at 736 Glendora Avenue in La Puente. Investigators alleged that footage from a surveillance video at that location depicts three individuals, get out of a four-door Honda Accord with an Arizona license plate driven by Estrada-Frost after Estrada-Frost parked on the sidewalk next to the store. As one of those who had emerged from the car spray painted a wall at the liquor store with Puente 13 symbology, Estrada-Frost’s attention was drawn toward a man across the street at a carwash, vacuuming his car. Estrada-Frost walked toward the man, verbally mischaracterizing him as Crip gang member, telling him, “This is Puente.” When the man sought to leave, Estrada-Frost yelled racial slurs at him and then shot at him as he was driving past, missing the driver but hitting the passenger door frame.
According to federal officials, Castillo was involved in the kidnapping of A.A. and A.C and the assaults and torturing of A.A.
Occasional monitoring of his normal haunts in Victorville have not resulted in his arrest. An all-points bulletin calling for his immediate arrest has been circulated. Despite having several distinctive tattoos visible on face and neck, he has not been apprehended.

The body found in a shallow grave off of Highway 395 in Helendale on Sunday has been identified as that of a 38-year-old woman from Whittier.
According to the sheriff’s department, “On Sunday, January 11, 2026, at approximately 7:10 a.m., deputies from the Victor Valley Sheriff’s Station were dispatched to assist the California Highway Patrol regarding a suspicious circumstances call involving a possible deceased person. The incident occurred in a desert field located east of U.S. Highway 395 and north of Buckthorne Canyon Road, in the unincorporated area north of Helendale.”
The sheriff’s department reported that while driving eastbound on Buckthorne Canyon Road, the reporting party observed what initially appeared to be a mannequin. “Upon closer inspection, it was determined to be a deceased individual,” according to the sheriff’s department. .
Detectives from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s specialized investigations division, homicide detail responded to the scene and assumed the investigation. Detectives determined the body, in what was apparently intended to be a shallow grave, was found to be Krystal Haro 38 years of age, most recently of Whittier.
The department has not provided any further information as to how Haro was killed.

The county is selling off six items of construction/excavation equipment that have run their useful life and have no been designated as surplus governmental property.
Those items are a 2009 International 4×4 Patch Truck (Vehicle Identification Number 1HTWEAAR99J126821 and county equipment No. 008709), with an estimated value of $15,000; a 2006 Ingersoll-Rand Roller (Vehicle Identification Number SN184534 and county equipment No. 065017), with an estimated value of $15,000; a 2004 Chevrolet 7500 Truck (Vehicle Identification Number 1GBK7E1E04F503580 and county equipment No. 008711) with an estimated value of $20,000; a 2005 Freightliner Flatbed Truck (Vehicle Identification Number 1FVACYDC95HU32811 and county equipment No. 008714), with an estimated value of $20,000; a 2010 Kenworth Dump Truck (Vehicle Identification Number 1NKDL50X2AJ266293 and county equipment No. 027020), with an estimated value of $20,000; and a 2010 International 7400SFA (Vehicle Identification Number IHT-WEAAR5AJ268605 and county equipment No. 008758) with an estimated value of $15,000.
At its January 13 meeting, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors declared the five vehicles as surplus, fully depreciated, no longer meeting air quality requirements, having reached the end of their service lives, no longer necessary to meet the needs of the public works department, and that all six had been replaced. The board authorize that the sale of the fixed assets to be coordinated through the county’s purchasing department, surplus property division and authorize the director of fleet management to execute all necessary documentation to transfer title and release of liability.
The department of public works is to retain the proceeds from the sales and will deposit the receipts into the county’s transportation equipment fund to offset costs of future equipment purchases.

“When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
–attributed to both Bishop Desmond Tutu and, before him, the president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta

By Phill Courtney
In August of 1966, during the first of my teen years, my father took our family, including his parents (which was my grandfather’s first plane trip), to Hawaii for a regional convention of his service club, Kiwanis. Dad had some history with the islands, having been stationed at Pearl Harbor during his service with the navy, dodging the December 7th, 1941, bombing by mere chance after his ship had left for the San Francisco Bay just a few days before.
Besides the Kiwanis convention in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, our stay also included tours of several other Hawaiian Islands including Kauai; Maui; and what’s called “The Big Island” of Hawaii to distinguish it from the rest of the state itself. Among the many spots we visited were “The Big Island’s” smoking volcanoes (which triggered an attack of my little brother’s asthma), as well as the beach where the European “discoverer” of Hawaii, British Captain James Cook, was clubbed and stabbed to death during his second visit in 1779 while battling some Hawaiians who’d apparently decided that his second visit was one too many.
Although Hawaii had become the fiftieth U.S. state seven years before, to me our trip to these faraway islands seemed like a trip to another country, where I (admittedly with more than my share of youthful naivety) expected to find the proverbial grass huts; pure-blooded Hawaiians; and bare-breasted native girls doing that alluring hula dancing, that is when they weren’t bathing au natural in the ocean. (Hey, what can I say? As I’ve mentioned, I’d just become a teenager.)
Of course, it hardly needs to be said, but I will, that this was not what I found. Although we saw many natural wonders, including Kauai’s Fern Grotto on the shore of Hawaii’s only navigable river there, and what was said to be the rainiest spot on Earth, I was instead hugely disappointed to see just more of what I’ve always found disgusting about what’s known in Hawaii as “the mainland”: trafficked roads everywhere; fast food joints; strip malls; and high rise hotels with chlorinated swimming pools just a few feet from the biggest swimming pool in the world: the Pacific Ocean. Continue reading →