A California school district's newly elected conservative board approved a resolution to spend $15,000 in taxpayer money for sessions with an anti-critical race theory (CRT) consultant.
Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) is allocating taxpayer dollars towards the program after the district prohibited the teaching of CRT in its classrooms in December.
The measure was approved on a 3-2 vote by the school board on March 13th. The new conservative TVUSD governing board members Dr. Joseph Wayne Komrosky, Jennifer Wiersma, and Danny Gonzalez voted in favor of approving the resolution. School board members Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz voted against it.
Gonzalez proposed a contract with the anti-CRT consultant and an after-school TVUSD board workshop to focus on CRT. Christopher Arend, a former school board president of Paso Robles, will also serve on a six-member panel at the workshop being held at James L. Day Middle School.
The other workshop panelists are reportedly also in disagreement with CRT. The criteria for how the panelists were selected are not clear.
Arend was hired to have "discussion groups" covering the history of critical race theory and discuss the TVUSD's banning of the framework in December, walking educators through that resolution. Arend, a fierce CRT critic, said that he served as a school board member of Paso Robles Joint Unified School District from 2018-2022 and served as president his last two years.
The school district's CRT ban was based on a 2021 resolution passed in Paso Robles Joint Unified School District, where Arend previously worked. Furthermore, Arend has written a manuscript for a new book called "Critical Race Theory Scam" which he "hopes to get published."
Barclay and Schwartz school board members pushed back against the hiring of Arend.
"He's not an expert, he's not an expert on CRT. Because he's an attorney, and he's studied it does not give him the degree in history or ethnic studies or anything that is related to critical race theory," Trustee Area 5 board member Schwartz said, noting Arend's lack of teaching credentials.
Schwartz also added that the money being used for Arend should instead be allocated toward other expenses such as high school field trips or graduation expenses.
After Schwartz questioned Arend's qualifications to lecture about critical race theory, Trustee Area 3 board member Jennifer Wiersma asked Arend to clarify his "expertise" on education code.
"This has been a subject I had been interested in for a very long time. It kind of goes hand in hand with studying the law. When you study the law, you study one of the main principles of equal protection under the law," Arend told the board.
The program is reported to consist of six sessions that will last two hours each, engage 13 people per session including staff and administrators, and would occur during the school day. It will cost TVUSD at least $15,000. Arend desires for community members to get involved as well.
"I don't think we need to spend 15,000 on a gentleman who thinks CRT is a disgustingly racist ideology," Schwartz said after Arend's remarks.
Wiersma supported the hiring of Arend, noting that the TVUSD previously spent "thousands" of dollars on diversity, equity, inclusion, and other training.
"My point is that I kind of went through our track record of what we've done for training. Things that are important to us. They come from a variety of fields and so, this is not out of the ordinary," Wiersma said. "I think as important as this discussion is on global, state, and national levels, it is important to have somebody that comes to the table and can advocate but also pull in people for the discussions from that point I would hope there would be some talk about where the resolution might need to go with the workshop which is entirely different. You're going to have five different experts that don't vote the same, they don't look the same, and they don't have the same background."
Members of the audience heckled Wiersma while she made her comments.
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Many speakers blasted the idea of hiring Arend as an anti-CRT consultant.
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One of the speakers who teaches a robotics class played an audio clip of Arend claiming he would teach CRT for gas money.
"He said he’d do it for gas money. That $15,000 is a lot of gas money. In my opinion, hiring Christopher Arend or really any of the CRT panels should be a no-go. CRT is a non-issue at TVSD and for the record, I resent the time, money, and resources being spent on this non-issue. We should be focused on our students and our educational programs at TVSD," she said.
She added that she sent one of the board members ideas on how the $15,000 could be spent, including her robotics class.
Another speaker noted that local school boards are designed to implement the curriculum as opposed to making it, per state law.
"The state has content standards and frameworks. The state of California made our curriculum. Teachers must teach that," she said. "So we have to make sure this CRT resolution you passed doesn't prevent the teachers from doing the job they must do. We must teach about racism in our society."
TVUSD did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The school district serves roughly 28,468 students and has 5 Trustee Areas and board members who serve 4-year terms.
