Public schools are in the business of offering education, not enforcing it at gunpoint. Too often, districts treat parental opt-outs like a threat to the system, when in reality they’re just a reflection of choice. 

If parents want to pull their kids out of health class, history lessons, literature, locker rooms, or extracurriculars, let them. It’s not the district’s role to force feed knowledge to unwilling families.

When ideologues seize local school boards, they don’t just inflame meetings. They run up bills. A first-of-its-kind study from UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access tallied the national price tag of these culture-war fights—legal fees, investigations, security, PR, and staff time—and found U.S. districts spent about $3.2 billion in 2023–24 responding to politically manufactured conflict. That’s money not spent on teachers, tutoring, arts, buses, or repairs.

When Murrieta Valley School District Board President Nick Pardue cited the so-called “45 Communist Goals” as “history” during Tuesday night's MVUSD school board meeting, he wasn’t just making a casual error — he was peddling a decades-old piece of political fiction as fact. 

This isn’t a matter of differing interpretations; it’s a matter of documented truth versus ideological invention.

And why did he tell this fable to Murrietans? To justify voting against $800,000 in funding for mental health programs for the school district.

It is yet another chapter in the long, sordid saga that is Jen Wiersma’s making and is designed to only benefit Jen Wiersma.

Students be damned. 

Wiersma’s behavior has paralyzed the board and fractured the community. Board meetings have devolved into spectacles, dominated by angry partisans and culture war rhetoric. 

In this conversation, Jeff Pack interviews Alison Barclay, a former school board member at TVUSD, about the controversial anti-CRT resolution passed by the then-TVUSD board majority in 2022. They discuss the implications of this resolution, the subsequent lawsuit (Mae vs. Komrosky) and impending possible seven-figure settlement, and the educational consequences for the district.

The meeting devolved into yelling, name-calling, violation of Robert’s rules of order, lack of adherence to proper procedure, Brown Act violations, and multiple audience members being removed. There are many ways this meeting could have been shorter, professional, and more productive; there is enough blame and responsibility to share.

The recent release of a third-party investigation thoroughly discredited Wiersma’s public sexual harassment accusation against fellow Trustee Steven Schwartz. The report from Nicole Miller & Associates found the claim unsubstantiated, inconsistent, and likely driven by political and personal grievances, including Wiersma’s disappointment at not being named board president.

Temecula Valley Unified School District has endured two years of political chaos, failed policies, costly lawsuits, and misinformation at the hands of trustees Jen Wiersma and Joseph Komrosky. Their time in power was defined by culture war distractions, personal attacks, and a refusal to take responsibility for the damage they caused.

But there is hope.