Four seats are up for election in the TVUSD. A Christian conservative political action committee has backed two candidates in the hope of resetting a controversial agenda. The Inland Empire Family PAC has put forward candidates Jon Cobb in Trustee Area 5 and the familiar face of Dr. Joseph Komrosky in TA 4.

Komrosky previously served on the TVUSD board representing TA 4 after being elected to the seat in November 2022. He was appointed board president by his like-minded colleagues Danny Gonzalez and Jennifer Wiersma, who were also elected to the board in 2022. The three trustees were backed by the Inland Empire Family PAC. Pastor Tim Thompson of 412 Church Temecula Valley has been the PAC’s spokesperson.

However, ongoing concerns over the trio’s controversial decisions prompted a June 4 Special Recall Election that targeted Komrosky.

Critics, including national organizations, blasted Komrosky, Gonzalez and Wiersma over their critical race theory ban; their controversial critical race theory “panel” that many TVUSD teachers dubbed “indoctrination camp”; their censoring of instruction about California’s gay rights movement; their attempted defiance of state education code; their firing of the district superintendent; the hiring of their team of attorneys at taxpayers’ expense to defend against ongoing lawsuits over their actions; their ban on pride and other flags; and their mandate that educators report to parents about transgender students.

Ultimately, TA 4 voters gave Komrosky the boot and the seat has remained open. Gonzalez had already resigned his TA 2 seat one year into his four-year term; the vacancy has continued.

Wiersma’s TA 3 seat is not up for reelection until 2026. She has remained on the dais as the sole far-right voice. With Cobb and Komrosky on the ballot, the Inland Empire Family PAC is attempting to reclaim a majority on the TVUSD governing board.

The PAC’s website continues to make statements that align with politicians who support Christian Nationalism. For example, the site claims that “public schools across the nation have become a place of indoctrination into a woke ideology. … Conservative school board members who hold to a Judeo-Christian set of principles is this nation’s ticket back to American academic superiority on the world scene.”

This year’s races for the TVUSD board are well-watched. In TA 4, Komrosky faces David Sola. Despite being recalled, Komrosky successfully filed paperwork to run in the November election.

In TA 5, Cobb vies against incumbent Steven Schwartz.

Schwartz, along with Trustee Area 1’s Allison Barclay, frequently criticized Gonzalez, Komrosky and Wiersma for their policies. Barclay is up for reelection and is facing off against Melinda Anderson.

Also running in the TVUSD board races are three candidates looking to fill the TA 2 seat vacated by Gonzalez. Emil Roger Barham, Gary Oddi and Angela Talarzyk are vying for the open spot.

In addition to the TVUSD races, the Inland Empire Family PAC is attempting to influence other school districts across the IE. The PAC is backing candidates in the Redlands Unified School District and the Riverside Unified School District.

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From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.

Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.

The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.

But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.

That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.

“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”

Across California, conservative board members elected as part of the same wave that swept Mr. Komrosky and his colleagues into office are facing similar recall efforts.

In March, two conservative board members in Orange County were recalled for supporting policies similar to the ones enacted by the Temecula Valley board. The same month, a trustee backed by a Moms for Liberty group in a district outside Sacramento was ousted after she called transgender identity “a social contagion.” Next month, voters in a tiny district in the Bay Area will decide whether to remove two conservative board members.

There were no school board recalls on a ballot in California last year, according to Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law who closely tracks recalls nationwide. The similarly themed recalls against conservatives in California this year are unusual, he said, because in the past, most ouster attempts were driven by a specific local conflict.

“This is a hot-button issue that voters are very engaged on,” he said.

Temecula, like many communities in inland California, has grown in recent decades by attracting an array of families priced out of cities closer to the coast. (In 1990, Temecula’s population was 27,099, according to census data. In 2023, it was about 110,700.)

The city is within commute distance to northern San Diego County, where there are large military installations and tech companies, as well as southern Orange County and Riverside. Separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Santa Ana Mountains, Temecula is a particular destination for young parents seeking bigger homes than they can get in the pricier coastal suburbs — without sacrificing access to top-tier public schools.

But the politics there are far from settled. The recall barely passed, with 51 percent voting to recall Mr. Komrosky and 49 percent against. Only 212 votes out of 9,714 separated the two sides.

It was close enough that Mr. Komrosky said that he would most likely run for the seat again in November.

“My commitment to protecting the innocence of our children in Temecula schools remains unwavering,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Komrosky and two conservative colleagues were elected to the Temecula Valley Unified board in November 2022 amid a wave of efforts by like-minded groups to elect school board members across California. Many conservatives believed their resources were better spent trying to influence local schools to join a national “parental rights” movement than trying to elect legislators or statewide leaders in Democratic-dominated California.

Of the three Temecula Valley Unified board members elected in 2022, only Jennifer Wiersma, who describes herself as a faith-motivated “advocate for parental rights,” remains; the other conservative board member, Danny Gonzalez, stepped down in December to move to Texas. His seat is vacant.

Supporters of Mr. Komrosky and the board’s majority blamed the state’s political establishment and labor unions for his ouster. They said that conservatives on school boards who had tried to limit the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. history and add notification requirements for children’s gender identification had done so to protect the rights of parents.

The conservative bloc at Temecula Valley angered Democratic state leaders last year when they refused to approve a social studies curriculum that mentioned Harvey Milk, the slain gay rights pioneer — whom Mr. Komrosky had called a “pedophile.” They later changed course after Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to fine the district $1.5 million.

“It’s saddening and frightening that good people are targeted for standing up for parent involvement and common sense for the betterment of our children’s education,” said Sonja Shaw, an outspoken conservative activist who leads the Chino Valley Unified School District board, not far from Temecula. The Chino Valley district is currently embroiled in a legal fight against the state to defend its parental notification policy.

Leaders of the campaign to recall Mr. Komrosky said that parents in Temecula — and across California — had long taken for granted that school boards generally focus on the mundane work of maintaining school buildings, recruiting strong teachers and making sure after-school programs run smoothly. Now, many said the actions of the new board had snapped them back to attention.

Mr. Pack said he started the One Temecula Valley PAC in 2022 to recruit candidates for nonpartisan local offices, including the Temecula City Council, where he felt recently elected officials were using their positions to make national political statements rather than focus on local government affairs. He cited one Temecula City Council member who tried to make the city a “sanctuary” for the unborn, even though abortion is legal in California and cities can’t ban the procedure.

He said he quickly found that ousting school board members was a top priority for many parents, who felt that the group, under Mr. Komrosky’s leadership, had racked up unnecessary legal bills and strayed from the mission of educating students.

In one recent case, the district agreed to pay $75,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by two residents whom Mr. Komrosky had removed from school board meetings because he said they were disruptive. The residents claimed that he had violated their free speech rights; lawyers for one of them, Upneet Dhaliwal, said in a complaint that Mr. Komrosky asserted that her questioning of the superintendent hiring process was off topic.

Ms. Dhaliwal, 42, moved in 2022 from San Diego to Temecula with her husband and daughter, who will be an eighth grader in the district. When they were looking for a new community, Temecula fit the bill on their two main requirements: good schools and affordable housing.

Ms. Dhaliwal said she had never so much as called her daughter’s teacher in San Diego, where “usually an email would solve any issue.” But after seeing Temecula in the news for defying the state’s social studies curriculum, she decided to attend the meeting in which the board fired the superintendent. She grew alarmed.

“I came back home,” she said, “and recall seemed like the only option.”

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California’s Secretary of State is poised to certify that the California Personal Finance Act is eligible for the November ballot, which would add financial literacy to the list of high school graduation requirements beginning with the class of 2030.

Students would learn about paying for college, online banking, taxes, budgeting, credit, retirement accounts, loans, how the stock market works and other topics. The issue is critical, organizers said, as students face a shifting economy and difficult decisions about college, careers and their futures.

“No one comes out of the womb knowing how to manage their credit score. It has to be taught,” said Tim Ranzetta, co-founder of a personal finance education nonprofit and a chief backer of the initiative. “And right now there’s a dramatic gap between what students know and what they need to know. We have to change that.”

Voters seem to agree with him. A 2022 survey of adults nationwide showed that nearly 90% support a financial literacy requirement in high school, and nearly as many wished they had taken such a course when they were students. 

That’s not surprising, considering the financial woes many people incur. The average credit card debt in California is $8,366, the sixth-highest rate in the country, and 1 in 6 borrowers nationwide are in default on their student loans. 

Financial literacy already in classrooms

But some education experts have pushed back, not because they’re opposed to financial literacy for students but because they question whether voters are best equipped to dictate what’s taught in classrooms.

Currently, the state’s History-Social Studies framework includes a one-semester course in economics, required for graduation, that covers much of the same material proposed by the financial literacy ballot initiative proponents. Financial literacy is also included in first, second and ninth grade curriculum. First graders, for example, learn that money can be exchanged for goods and services, and people make decisions about how to spend their money.

But Ranzetta said the curriculum, which was last updated in 2017, doesn’t focus enough on financial literacy. Personal finance is covered for only a few weeks in the economics course; the rest covers more abstract economic concepts like international trade, resource allocation and the benefits and drawbacks of capitalism. Individual teachers can choose how much they want to focus on certain topics.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond wouldn’t answer questions about the ballot initiative, although he endorsed it. Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the State Board of Education, also wouldn’t answer questions. 

Leaving curriculum decisions to voters is ‘a bad idea’

The proposed ballot initiative so far has almost zero opposition, but some are questioning the idea of letting voters — and not education experts — decide what students learn in the classroom. Ordinarily, curriculum in California is developed by a group of teachers and subject-matter professionals who serve on the Instructional Quality Commission, which meets publicly six times a year. New curriculum is subject to multiple reviews, edits and public vetting, ultimately going before the State Board of Education for adoption. Local school boards can adjust curriculum according to the needs of their students.  

“Most voters don’t know much about education policy, and having them decide what can be taught in schools is a bad idea,” said Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California. “We already have a process in place for adopting curriculum, and if people are unhappy with it there are plenty of avenues to have their voices heard — they can go to meetings, they can vote people out of office, they can talk to their representatives.”

Polikoff worries that adopting curriculum through ballot initiatives could set a dangerous precedent. Religious or anti-LGBTQ curriculum, for example, could be approved by voters, setting up costly and lengthy legal showdowns with the state Department of Education. 

Curriculum can be complicated, as well. When writing new curricula, the Instructional Quality Commission looks at the broader context, making sure students get new material every year that builds on what they learned previously, subjects don’t overlap and topics are flexible enough for teachers to adapt lessons to the individual needs of their students. Textbooks and tests are also taken into consideration. 

Legislature weighs in

Most curriculum updates and changes originate with the commission, but sometimes the Legislature weighs in. The state’s new ethnic studies and media literacy requirements, for example, stemmed from Assembly bills. Another bill, AB 2097, would add computer science as a graduation requirement.

AB 2927, a financial literacy bill proposed by Democrat Kevin McCarty of Sacramento, would actually do almost the same thing as the ballot initiative. The bill would require financial literacy as a graduation requirement, although it would go into effect until 2031, a year later than the ballot measure.

Bruce Fuller, education professor at UC Berkeley, said he worries about the increasing politicization of curriculum — either from the Legislature or those pushing for ballot initiatives.

“We have these political interests unabashedly trying to control what’s taught in the classroom, instead of leaving it up to teachers and locally elected school boards,” Fuller said. “We should trust those folks to devise thoughtful curriculum that’s appropriate for their students.”

He also questioned the ever-growing list of graduation requirements. High schools only offer six or seven class periods a day, and with more required classes there’s less room for art and other electives. Some districts have started adding an extra period so students can fit in all the classes they need to take to graduate, finish a career pathway and qualify for California’s public universities. 

“I’m not sure how adding more required classes is going to motivate restless teenagers,” Fuller said. “With more requirements, we’re giving them almost no chance to study things they’re actually interested in.” 

McCarty’s bill  is not the Legislature’s first attempt to wade into financial literacy. A dozen bills requiring financial literacy have died or been vetoed in recent years, in most cases because financial literacy curriculum already exists and the state already has a system for adopting curriculum.

As Gov. Jerry Brown wrote in 2018 when he vetoed a bill that would have made financial literacy materials available to teachers: “This bill is unnecessary. The History-Social Science Framework already contains financial literacy content for pupils in kindergarten through grade 12, as well as a financial literacy elective.”

Ranzetta said the Legislature’s inability to pass a financial literacy curriculum is what spurred him to take the matter directly to voters.

“I recognize the value of the process, but it’s slow and so far it hasn’t worked in California,” he said. “The issue is too urgent and too popular to wait any longer.”     

Ranzetta grew up in New Jersey, where his father was a banker and his mother was a community volunteer who raised six children. He learned financial literacy from his parents, and assumed other young people did, too. It wasn’t until he started volunteering at an East Palo Alto high school that he realized many students are clueless about money, and that ignorance can hamper them throughout their lives. But they were eager to learn, he said, and share the information with their parents.

That experience inspired him to start NextGen Personal Finance, which offers free financial literacy curriculum and training for teachers. At least 7,000 teachers in California and more than 100,000 nationwide have participated, he said.

A class that demystfies money

At Berkeley High, Crystal Rigley Janis teaches two economics classes and three personal finance classes, covering topics she wishes she knew as a young person: how to negotiate a salary, not relying on gut instinct when investing, and avoiding individual stocks in favor of index funds.

“It took me 15 years to understand those things, and it probably cost me millions of dollars,” said Rigley, who worked for several years at a wealth management firm before going into teaching. “I don’t want other people to make the mistakes I did.”

Eliza Maier, a senior, was so inspired by Rigley’s class that she opened a Roth IRA when she turned 18 and transferred money from her low-interest savings account. The class, she said, helped demystify money and the role it can play in major life choices.

“We learned that money isn’t good or bad – it’s a tool,” Maier said. “It can help you realize your goals. It can help you be prepared for whatever happens in your life. I didn’t know anything about money when I started taking this class, but I think it’s so important, especially for high school students.”

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