TEMECULA, CA — The Temecula Valley Unified School District governing board members signed off this week on a consulting agreement to pay an attorney — who denies the existence of systemic racism — to lecture TVUSD teachers about critical race theory and to share his viewpoint with students and their parents.
During Tuesday’s board meeting, trustees voted 3-2 to OK the agreement from Attorney Christopher Arend of Paso Robles. The 71-year-old lawyer will provide lectures, Q&As and discussions on CRT to district educators and personnel over a two-day period. The district will pay him $400 per hour for Zoom sessions and $500 an hour for in-person. The fees do not include travel and any overnight expenses, according to the agreement.
A self-proclaimed CRT expert, Arend doesn’t hold a teaching credential, but he did serve on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District board from 2018 to 2022, during which time a resolution was passed to ban CRT on all PRJUSD campuses.
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New TVUSD governing board members Dr. Joseph Wayne Komrosky (Trustee Area 4), Jennifer Wiersma (Trustee Area 3) and Danny Gonzalez (Trustee Area 2) voted in favor of approving Arend’s consulting agreement, while Allison Barclay (Trustee Area 1) and Steven Schwartz (Trustee Area 5) voted against it.
Gonzalez spearheaded the Arend contract as well as a 6 p.m. March 22 TVUSD board workshop to focus on CRT. Arend will serve on a six-member panel at the workshop being held at James L. Day Middle School’s Multi-Purpose Room. TVUSD teachers, students and parents are invited to the event.
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The workshop panelists appear united against CRT and have spoken on the issue. In addition to Arend, the panelists include Dr. Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation; Esther Valdes-Clayton, attorney; Walter H. Myers, III, adjunct faculty member at Biola University; Dr. Joseph Nalven, University of California San Diego professor; and Dr. Brandy Schufutinsky, director of education and community engagement at Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.
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It’s not clear what criteria were used to select the panelists or whether anyone outside of Gonzalez had a say in picking the individuals. Questions posed to the TVUSD by Patch about those issues went unanswered Wednesday.
Komrosky, Wiersma and Gonzalez have sparked controversy over their push to ban CRT in a district that never taught the subject in the first place. All three trustees were newly elected to the board in November, and their first order of business was a CRT ban that is now in effect following a 3-2 board vote in December (Barclay and Schwartz were the dissenters).
Gonzelez said during Tuesday’s meeting that the March 22 workshop will help the community learn where he, Komrosky and Wiersma are coming from.
It will show “our perspective,” he said.
In a phone interview last week, Arend told Patch that CRT is not open to different interpretations.
Barclay countered Gonzalez. She said the continued emphasis on CRT “is sowing division in our community. We are throwing gasoline on the fire.”
Instead of pushing through an anti-CRT agenda, Barclay argued the board should have consulted district teachers, parents and other stakeholders first.
“[We need] to listen to input from all sides,” she said.
During Tuesday’s meeting, 15 people from the public spoke against Arend’s consulting agreement, while two showed support.
TVUSD Superintendent Dr. Jodi McClay told the board that teachers have signed up for Arend’s lectures but are more interested in a discussion about how the district’s CRT ban affects what they can teach in the classroom.
The teachers want to go through the ban “line by line,” McClay said.
One Temecula Valley, a political action committee working to “support and foster a stable and common sense approach to governance for Southwest Riverside County,” criticized the agreement with Arend, calling the board’s move “politically-motivated grandstanding and misuse of public funds for personal, political reasons.”
In a news release issued Wednesday, One Temecula Valley said it is organizing a protest to coincide with the board’s workshop next week.
“This new TVUSD board majority is quickly chipping away at the stability and future of one of the best school districts in the state and we need to wake people up to that fact,” the release said.
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