The day before Sonja Shaw came in first place in the June 2 primary race for state superintendent of public instruction, a national political group debuted a website that accuses the conservative Chino Valley school board — which Shaw presides over as president — of being extremist and authoritarian.
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“Instead of addressing serious school staffing and infrastructure issues, the Chino Valley Unified School Board now focuses on exclusionary actions like banning rainbow flags and removing library books without proper review,” the website The Plot Against Public Schools reads.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit States at the Core, which aims to “help everyday people fight authoritarianism,” according to its fundraising page, created the site. It also works with immigrant rights groups in San Diego and is pushing back against Christian nationalism in Tennessee and election interference in the Midwest.
Shaw declined to comment for this story, writing in a text message that she didn’t want to “dignify any of this with a response,” beyond noting that the people behind the site were “old acquaintances” — presumably those who had long opposed her politically.
The other members of the school board’s conservative majority, Andrew Cruz and James Na, could not be reached for comment.
As of Thursday, June 18, Shaw leads a field of 10 candidates with 22.6% of the vote, according to the California Secretary of State’s office. The second-highest vote-getter, San Diego school board President Richard Barrera, has 20.3% of the vote. Shaw and Barrera will face off in the Nov. 3 general election.
On her campaign website, Shaw lists “Protect Our Daughters” as her top issue.
“Policies allowing boys to undress in girls’ locker rooms and play on their sports teams undermine fairness and safety. Our daughters deserve to compete on equal terms, not lose opportunities to biological males,” the site reads. “They should feel secure in private spaces, not exposed by decisions made without parental consent.”
Shaw’s campaign site repeatedly alludes to content in schools she finds objectionable, along with her complaints over pandemic-era school district policies.
“Classrooms are becoming battlegrounds for radical agendas, pushing divisive content that overshadows core education,” the site reads.
Shaw, who came to local prominence opposing the prior Chino Valley Unified School District board over its pandemic-era policies, revisits those issues on her site.
Win or lose — a Republican hasn’t won a statewide office since Arnold Schwarzenegger was reelected governor in 2006 — the new website alleges Shaw is dangerous, although it never specifically names her.
“When they win school board seats, extremists have the power to implement policies that harm all students, but especially poor and marginalized students,” The Plot Against Public Schools reads. “This includes siphoning off public school funding, gutting disability support, and stripping schools of diverse books, inclusive policies, and accurate history instruction.”
Shaw and her like-minded board members spending so much of their time on transgender issues or pulling books out of school libraries are problematic in multiple ways, said Jessica Acee, senior organizer at States at the Core.
“Those are not the things that make up a good-quality school,” she said. “Not only are we losing money when they get involved in lawsuits, but they’re also not paying attention to other things” involved in running a school district.
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“The more that we saw what was happening in Chino Valley, the more we saw it as a good example to explain what’s happening in school districts around the country,” Acee said.
The Plot Against Public Schools site never refers to Shaw specifically, but instead puts the Chino Valley school board’s actions in a national context.
The school board has been controlled by members of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills evangelical megachurch off and on for more than a decade. The board was a prominent part of the unsuccessful fight against 2013’s Assembly Bill 1266, which requires public schools to treat students as the gender with which they identify, rather than the one into which they were born. In 2019, the district also ran up $282,000 in legal fees after being sued over board member Cruz’s mid-meeting Bible readings.
Since Shaw’s election in 2022 and appointment as school board president later that year, conservative policies have been introduced at a faster pace. Shaw no longer attends the Chino-based Calvary Chapel, she said.
The board instituted a policy allowing library books to be immediately pulled from shelves if someone complained the book contained sexually explicit material. They denounced an expansion of federal Title IX protections under President Joe Biden that they said gave too many protections to transgender students. The board battled with California Attorney General Rob Bonta over a policy that required school officials to quickly notify parents if a student asked about gender-affirming bathrooms, changing rooms or sports that did not match their assigned gender at birth. And in 2023, they banned all flags from school grounds other than state, national and military flags. The notification and flag rules are both being challenged by the California Public Employment Relations Board.
What’s happening in Chino Valley may be uncommon, but it’s not unique, according to Acee. The site also mentions Temecula megachurch pastor Tim Thompson, who wields similar political influence as Calvary Chapel Chino Hills’ Pastor Jack Hibbs.
“There’s a network of people who are working in concert in this community and communities across the country,” she said. “They’re taking advantage of normal concerns that parents have about their children’s safety and their community and using those to build a larger platform.”
The goal, Acee said, is to develop conservative candidates, like Shaw, who can run for higher office.
“They want to enforce this agenda onto schools that reflects a national agenda about who’s an American, who gets to be an American,” said Acee. “A whittling-down of who belongs, what they look like, is playing out in our schools.”
The website had been in the works for a while, and going live just before Election Day in June was a coincidence, Acee said. It features familiar names for those who have been following the decades-long culture wars in the Chino Valley school district.
The site refers to these sorts of politics as “schoolhouse authoritarianism.”
The website currently only lists the Inland Empire as a place where a public school district is under attack by conservatives. But it’ll eventually cover similar local political movements elsewhere in the country, Acee said.
“There’s many Sonja Shaws,” Acee said. “They say they’re about parental rights, but they’re really not.”
Similar situations in Pennsylvania and Colorado may be added to the site next.
“The overarching themes are the same, although of course the details will be different,” Acee said.
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