Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed a Temecula school board president who voted with a majority of the panel to reject a curriculum because a textbook cited gay rights activist and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.

During a public hearing on the curriculum, Joseph Komrosky, chairman of the Temecula Valley Unified School District board of directors, called Milk a “paedophile.” In a Twitter post, Newsom fired back, calling Komrosky “ignorant.”

The feud has erupted amid a nationwide trend of book bans and attacks on schools that support the LGBTQ+ community.

A majority of the Temecula Valley Unified School District’s five-member board on May 16 rejected a new social studies curriculum, which included a textbook that would be assigned to the district’s 18 elementary schools in southern Riverside County.

A supplemental section of the textbook includes a biography of Milk, a pioneering gay activist who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. The following year, he and Mayor George Moscone were shot by a disgruntled former city supervisor.

The conservative majority of the Temecula school board claimed that parents were not involved enough in the approval of the social studies textbook and two members, including Komrosky, said they opposed the textbook because of the section on milk.

“My question is, why even call it a pedophile?” Komrosky asked at a hearing on the subject.

Members of the public stammered in response and some shook their heads in video of the board meeting.

Board member Allison Barclay said, “He’s not a pedophile.”

“I beg to differ,” Komrosky said. “What does that have to do with our curriculum and our schools? Why?”

Milk’s work focused on protecting classes of people from discrimination, including the LGBTQ+ community, Barclay said.

Komrosky asked, “So you think pedophilia is protected?”

“Excuse me, absolutely not,” Barclay said. “I’m not talking about pedophilia.”

Komrosky, a tenured college professor at Mt. San Antonio College, did not respond to requests for comment.

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In a Twitter post on Saturday, Newsom fired back at Komrosky.

“An insulting statement from an ignorant person,” the governor wrote. “This is not Texas or Florida. In the Golden State, our children have the freedom to learn. Congratulations Mr. Komrosky, you have our attention. Stay tuned.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how the state would respond, but last week Newsom’s office, along with Atty, did. General Rob Bonta and Tony Thurmond, California superintendent of public education, called on school officials across the state to be careful about the subject of book bans.

“In the first half of this school year alone, 1,477 books were banned nationwide, with teachers and librarians threatened with jail for putting the wrong book on the shelf,” the officials wrote in their letter.

As state leaders who have chosen to represent the values ​​of all Californians, we offer our response with one shared voice: access to books, including those that reflect the diverse experiences and perspectives of Californians, and especially those that can challenge us to struggle with uncomfortable truth is a deep freedom that we all must protect and cultivate, the joint letter said.

The letter did not address the vote in Temecula directly, but warned that if California school administrators remove or ban instructional materials from classrooms or libraries, the state may request information about the removal for analysis.

Before the Temecula school board rejected the social studies textbook, about 1,300 students were involved in a pilot program,

using

the curriculum materials and 45 parents responded to a survey asking them for feedback on the curriculum, district officials said.

Also, a group of 47 teachers agreed that the district should publish the textbooks California Studies Weekly for preschoolers and TCI Social Studies Alive for

1st first

Through

5th fifth

grade students.

The board disapproved the adoption by a 3-2 vote. Board members Jennifer Wiersma, Danny Gonzalez and Komrosky voted against the curriculum while board members Steven Schwartz and Barclay voted in favour.

Without the approval of the new curriculum, the district will be short of the books students need, which could violate a California law that requires adequate instructional materials, such as textbooks, to be provided for each student.

Edgar Diaz, president of Temecula Valley Educators Assn., said the lack of materials means teachers have to find their own materials.

There’s an enormous amount of work to be done, Diaz said.

Wiersma, Gonzalez and Komrosky were voted into office last year, with the endorsement of the Inland Empire Family PAC, which aims to support candidates who oppose critical race theory, LGBTQ+ acceptance and the promotion of transgenderism, according to the website of the political group.

In December, the board banned the teaching of critical race theory within the school district.

Lawmakers in Sacramento are now considering a bill from State Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Riverside)

which that

would require a supermajority vote from a school district’s governing body to remove a book from a school’s curriculum. Assembly Bill 1078 would also create an appeals process for parents to challenge a book ban.

“As a Christian, I am deeply shocked that these individuals are distorting our faith to create division and suppress the history of others,” Jackson said in a statement. “This will not happen on my watch.”

Staff writer Saumya Gupta contributed to this report.