October 31, 2023
How Black Moms in Temecula Are Fighting the School Board’s Right-Wing Takeover
By Peter Lucas
The board has banned “critical race theory” and decried ethnic studies, but a local group of Black mothers has a plan. “We’re going to use what’s available to us—the right we have as citizens to recall.”
(Anjali Sharif-Paul / Getty)
Last December, in Temecula, Calif., a small city in a blue county known for its wineries and idyllic weather, three school board members voted to ban critical race theory on the day they were sworn into office. At their first meeting, on the stage of Temecula Valley High School’s auditorium, new board president Joseph Komrosky recited the Pledge of Allegiance; Jen Wiersma declared that “every skin color has both been a slave and owned a slave” as she decried Ethnic Studies’ “overemphasis on white supremacy”; and Danny Gonzalez saw nothing in the proposed policy—which effectively banned teaching about structural, quotidian, racism—that “undermine[d] the teaching of true American history.”
During public comment, more than twenty students, parents, and educators testified against the measure on the docket that would ban critical race theory (CRT). Others—like the March for Our Lives Club at Chaparral High School—had been organizing for days, collecting nearly 300 signatures opposing the proposal prior to the board vote.
But minutes after midnight, following hours of discussion and threats to remove the audience, Gonzalez, Komrosky, and Wiersma passed the Temecula Valley Unified School District’s CRT ban—outvoting, by 3-2, the board’s two veteran members. Students booed, and left the room. “Critical race theory is a buzzword…distorted to serve political purposes,” one junior insisted. “You are ridding…discussion of race and the history of race and racism [from the classroom].”
