Conservative Christians have spent years trying to ruin this school district. Now they’re in charge.
What happens when conservative Christians from the same megachurch take over a public school board? The answer is obvious: They do whatever they can to inject their faith into the system even if that means destroying the things that make the district great.
In the case of one particular school district in California, the problems have been festering for well over a decade.
Harris wrote about how three of the five board members—Andrew Cruz, James Na,and Sylvia Orozco—were all members of the megachurch and they were using their power to turn meetings into church services, full of explicitly Christian prayers and Bible verses and rants against gay marriage. They eventually lost a lawsuit over the prayers filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but only after multiple rounds of appeals. That charade cost the district over $282,000.
In addition to the prayer lawsuit, Cruz had been criticized in 2015 for going on an absurd rant trashing gay marriage, invoking the Confederate Flag, arguing that racism was over, and complaining about California’s mandatory vaccination laws
This current board (which includes one other conservative member), led by Shaw, has cozied up to right-wing extremists groups like Gays Against Groomers and passed a resolution supporting a bill that would “out” trans kids to their parents if they identified as a gender that wasn’t declared on their birth certificates. When one high school counselor proposed building a private office in its wellness center for mental health breaks, Shaw declared such a space could become a Planed Parenthood clinic, a move that dissuaded one group from fundraising for the project and led to a harassment campaign against school staffers.
This is what happens when Christians who don’t give a damn about LGBTQ students, educational expertise, or the mental health of young people take over a public school district. It’s chaos for everyone who doesn’t believe one conservative evangelical megachurch’s cruel and thoughtless beliefs should guide school board policies.