A conservative Temecula public school board president whose advocacy for race and gender policies thrust the district into the national battle over critical race theory in classrooms and the rights of LGBTQ+ students narrowly lost a recall vote , officials announced Thursday.
Joseph Komrosky, a philosophy professor at Mt. San Antonio College, was elected to the board of directors of the 28,000-student Temecula Valley Unified School District about 19 months ago. As part of a three-member conservative majority, he led the district as it joined a national wave of school boards that dove headlong into the culture wars.
The district was sued after banning the teaching of critical race theory and requiring parents to be notified if their children identified with a gender that did not match the one they were assigned at birth. The litigation is ongoing. Under Komrosky, the district banned non-U.S. and non-California flags, a move seen as targeting LGBTQ+ Pride flag displays. At a school board meeting last year, he also sparked controversy when he described gay civil rights pioneer and San Francisco County Supervisor Harvey Milk as a “pedophile.”
The final results of the recall election found that voters narrowly opposed Komrosky, who represented the eastern and central parts of the district, remaining in office.
Of the 9,722 votes counted since June 4, those in favor of the recall totaled 4,963. There were 4,751 people who opposed the impeachment.
Less than half of the 21,578 registered voters (45.1%) voted.
The ouster ends a 2-2 deadlock on the board since a Komrosky ally, Danny Gonzalez, resigned in December to move out of state. The board will not have its full five members until the November elections.
In an email to the Times on Thursday, Komrosky, who calls himself a “God-fearing patriot” in his X biography, said he was leaning toward running for the seat once again.
“Given the narrow margin, I will probably run again in the November 2024 general election,” Komrosky said.
“If not, it has been an honor to serve the Temecula community and I am proud to have fulfilled all of my campaign promises as an elected official. “My commitment to protecting the innocence of our children remains unwavering,” he stated.
The message echoed one Komrosky gave at the end of the last school board meeting on June 11. However, during that meeting, he seemed more adamant about running again. “I want to thank my community for allowing me to represent their voices and I look forward to serving my community again starting in November,” he said.
The result announced on Thursday was celebrated and lamented.
“We did it! We did it!” said Monica La Combe, a 21-year district resident whose children graduated from high school in Temecula Valley. One child graduated this year and another child, who is non-binary, graduated in 2022.
“What this board came and did was crazy. They just came in and scared everyone and made our community look very, very bad about who we are and how our children are raised,” La Combe said. “This recall election was important in getting our district back on the trajectory of progress we were headed toward.
“We have conservatives and liberals,” he added, referring to the board, “but what they were doing was really extreme.”
Jason Craig, a father of two children who attend elementary school in the district, expressed disappointment in the outcome of Thursday's election.
“Conservative parents don't want our children to be taught to be social justice warriors. The school district is not the place for that,” said Craig, who had volunteered for Komrosky’s campaign and had previously narrowly lost in his own board bid.
Craig said he supported Komrosky's policies as “preventive” ways to keep what he saw as growing social ills from reaching classrooms, including critical race theory, an academic legal framework related to institutional racism taught in some schools and universities.
“We don't want racism in schools to be at the center of everyone's identity and how we should proceed in teaching history,” he said.
The Temecula district is one of several Southern California school districts where LGBTQ+ identity and history have become major points of contention.
Chino Valley Unified School District is also being sued over a parent notification policy similar to the one passed in the Temecula district. California Lawyer. Gen. Rob Bonta took the Chino district to court and a group of parents, students, individual teachers and the teachers union sued Temecula Valley Unified.
In the Chino Valley case, the judge in a preliminary ruling found that the notification requirement was illegal. The district's school board subsequently approved a revised policy in hopes that it would be legally approved and have the same effect as the original version.
Meanwhile, a different judge upheld Temecula's parental notification policy. That decision is being appealed.
