Oh, we have a mess brewing here on the Left Coast. A mess worthy of a brief update of a story posted a while back regarding the antics of the school board of the Temecula Valley Unified School District. Recall its recent ban of a social studies book (and supplemental materials) because of a 1/2 page long mention of the life of murdered San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk in a supplement.

Stuff has happened.

First, one week after the protest rally mentioned in the piece, the TVUSD board met again, this time a vocal crowd of irate parents and teachers made their wishes known. This included a presentation to three school board members of Letters of Intent to Petition in order to begin the process of their recall as required by California law.

Not to be outdone, the three board members united and ousted the well-liked TVUSD school superintendent in a closed-door meeting that very day.

After a prescribed 12-day waiting period the recall campaign is moving forward, and supporters are signing recall petitions in three of the five TVUSD trustee districts. In all, 12,000 to 15,000 verified signitures are needed within the 120 days that are allotted for a successful recall to appear on a ballot, with a vote possible as early as March, 5th 2024 – the California Primary. Notably, spread among the three trustees in the recall, 12-15,000 is nearly the same number of votes the three trustees received in the November 2022 election.

Tossing in his $0.02, Congressman Darrell Issa (R CD-48) issued a press release on July 10th that includes this little gem:

“Democrat party leaders, clearly at Newsom’s direction, have organized a recall effort and are attempting to remove President Komrosky and the other conservatives on the Temecula school board….”

That’s fine. That’s what Issa does. He lies. Citing Governor Newsom as the “director” of the recall effort is a real hoot. Recall supporters in this case are not of one political party. Indeed, unlike Texas, local elected offices in California are all non-partisan. No one but Republicans are painting this affair as partisan. On the other hand, book bans are rarely – if ever- instigated by Democrats.

Fast-forward to today.

Today, we learn that the State of California will be providing one of four social studies curriculum options adopted by the state Board of Education to the Temecula Valley USD in spite of the school board ban, and will send TVUSD the bill for a cool $1.6 million.

It really is a nice gesture, don’t you think? Because without materials for the social studies curriculum, TVUSD stands to be in violation of the Williams Act that requires printed (not xeroxed) materials be provided for all curricula.

And the rumor is, a $1.5 million fine in addition to the cost of the books is in the offing. That’s roughly $100 for everyone who voted for those three bigots.