California legislators are acting quickly to protect the state from voters.
One of the surprises in California’s primary elections this year was the success of Sonja Shaw, a Southern California school board member who has led an effort to secure parental notification policies in a state that wants to protect secret sexual discussions between groomer teachers and children. With Shaw as its president, the Chino Valley School Board adopted a policy requiring school officials to notify parents when students declare a new gender identity on campus.
That local policy effort led to bruising litigation that ended with a tenuous victory for parents. Though ongoing appellate litigation purportedly places school districts in a “legal limbo,” the state can’t currently prevent districts from adopting parental notification policies.
This year, Shaw ran for a statewide role as California’s superintendent of public education. In a deep blue state that doesn’t elect Republicans to statewide office, Shaw was the top vote-getter in the primary, with close to a quarter of the vote against a crowded field. A pro-parent conservative has a real shot at becoming the state’s top public school official.
So here’s a Friday headline from an education news website: “State superintendent will no longer manage California schools under deal Newsom cuts with Legislature.” The conservative activist Lance Christensen, a vice president at the California Policy Center, sounded the alarm about a “gut-and-amend” bill that had no text until late last week but is suddenly set to race to the governor’s desk for a signature.
You can read the full text of AB 181 here. The likely-to-succeed bill proposes to transfer authority for public schools to an “education commissioner” appointed by the governor, turning the role of the superintendent of public schools into a functionally empty advocacy role: “the independently elected nonpartisan voice for the public interest in the governance of the state’s educational system.” The job would be to give speeches and attend rallies.
Shaw’s reaction:
New blue state tactic: When conservatives threaten to win public office, make the office meaningless.
