Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement on Wednesday against the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), which he had previously threatened to file, over their refusal to include the state-endorsed textbooks which included mentions of Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist.
In the statement, he points out that the conservative school board has proven that they are focused on breaking the law rather than educating students. As a result, the state is going to need to perform its tasks for them.
As he said California was going to make sure that all students in the area would be able to have access to the material that has been recommended by teachers and reviewed by parents. He added that after the delivery of the textbooks they were going to issue a $1.5 million fine to the school board over their refusal to abide by the law.
He added that the board was refusing to follow the parents’ will and that they were instead going to force students to use outdated textbooks from 17 years ago that are currently out-of-print.
The fine that Newsom proposed is going to cover all the shipping costs for the books. The governor also warned that if the school board continued to reject the textbooks then they would be facing the $1.5 million fine.
On July 13, a video of Newsom was released in which he stated that the state would take over in order to ensure that the students in the district were going to be able to have access to the same material that students in other schools in the state have. He also slammed the three board members stating that they were extremists.
As the governor pointed out the textbooks are the same ones used by thousands of children already.
