Torrance School Board Debate, 2024: Very Disappointing

On October 11, 2024, The Torrance-area League of Women Voters hosted a debate for the school board candidates running to replace Jeremy Gerson (who was elected to the city council) as well as for the two candidates running for state assembly.

I was really surprised to hear about this. Last year, Al Muratsuchi didn't bother debating George Barks for the state assembly seat. I assumed he would just ignore Barks again and "coast" to re-election. However, there is a growing unease among Democrats across the country, including in California, so it seems.

Not only that, but it seemed as though there was very little notice for this debate. Normally, I am pretty well on top of information like this. Someone in Hermosa Beach had to inform me about this debate, and it was only the day before!

Why are Democrats like Al Muratsuchi participating in debates? Adam Schiff debated Steve Garvey, as well. Are things more competitive on the ground than I had realized?

California is a battleground state, at least as far as the Congressional races are concerned. Kamala Harris is not as popular as people think she is, and she is bleeding support with key Democratic demographics. Add to that the fact that the California Democratic state legislative supermajority basically defied and dismissed the Black Supremacist movement and rejected all the major reparations legislation this past session ... and Democrats are feeling nervous!

Before I talk about the state assembly debate, I want to comment on the school board debate for Trustee Area E. David Zygielbaum, Tony Yeh, and Charles Deemer are all running to replace Jeremy.

Tony Yeh

That debate was ... disappointing.

It's clear that Zygielbaum is the establishment favorite, based on all the endorsements has has racked him, which he repeated at length. He spent so much time talking about his endorsements, including from the hostile Torrance Teachers Association, that he failed to answer a significant question: how did he feel about California AG Rob Bonta's lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified School District regarding their transparency policy about student identity issues?

Dave Zygielbaum

He refused to answer the question, but dodged with the empty pablum about making schools "Welcoming for all students."

Of course, how can a school be welcoming for anyone if biological males are using female facilities on a campus? He also dismissed that concern as a "national issue," even though candidate Tony Yeh clearly addressed the issue, and that parents in the district were raising alarms about this issue.

Charles Deemer

I will add, however, that Yeh spent so much time focusing on the transgenderism problems in the school district, that he spent very little time explaining anything else. Yes, I am glad that he wants children to be safe, and I am really pleased that he directly answered the question about Rob Bonta. On the other hand, I was really unhappy with the lack of preparation or attention to school issues evinced by the candidates, aside from Zygielbaum.

 Charles Deemer may be a perennial candidate, but he sure didn't act like one tonight. He seemed unsure of his answers, or unfamiliar with the school district. He actually said that he would visit all the schools in his trustee area if he gets elected. Zygielbaum boasted that he had already visited the schools and the principals (and the teachers union--can't forget that!), and Yeh informed the audience that he had spoken with parents about issues with the school district.

Zygielbaum was certainly polished and prepared in his presentation. The only problem is that he wants to keep the status quo of moral lassitude in our schools. He is not a leader. He will just do whatever the teachers unions tell him to do. That's that basic trend in Torrance: people line up behind the person with all the big name endorsements, and hope that he won't make any noise or any real improvements.

And another issue about endorsements ...

Tony Yeh shared that he was endorsed by the Torrance Police Officers Association. Then Dave Zygielbaum countered and contradicted him, stating that since both of them had been endorsed by the TPOA in the city council elections in previous years, that neither one of them was endorsed. I followed up with the TPOA after the debate tonight, and I am waiting for them to get back to me about this controversy.

All in all, the candidates seemed either very polished (and fake) or unprepared or unfocused: a very disappointing debate.

VICTORY: Huntington Park Corrupta Graciela Ortiz Shut Out in Bid for LAUSD School Board

Here's another happy victory for Los Angeles County residents, even though there is so little to celebrate at this time.

After LAUSD School Board Member Ref Rodriguez was forced to step down for campaign finance violations, the seat opended up a multi-candidate free for all.

One of the candidates running to replace Ref Rodriguez?

Graciela Ortiz of Huntington Park.UGH!

This corrupta has no business serving anywhere or in any capacity on a governing board. She oversaw and approved the appointment of two illegal aliens to city commissions. She has been head-deep in local and LA County corruption for the last four years. She works with "Puppet-Master" Efrain Martinez, who presided over her swearing-in as the new mayor in 2016.

Please help us!

I could not stand the idea of her having any kind of chance of getting elected to the school board--of course, in the long run it doesn't matter who serves, since it's another liberal Democrat who will do more harm than good for the students.

Thankfully, Ortiz was shut out of the Top Two run-off, and the margin was oh so close!

Check out the report from MyNewsLA.com for more information:

Repenning Places 2nd to Secure Runoff Slot with Goldberg in LAUSD Board Race

Former teacher and mayoral aide Heather Repenning appears to have finished in second place Friday and secured a runoff slot for a vacant seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

With 100 percent of the votes now reported to be counted, Repenning has 31 more votes than Huntington Park City Councilwoman Graciela “Grace” Ortiz. A second place finish means the right to enter the runoff with the top vote getter, former LAUSD board member Jackie Goldberg, who far outpaced the competition in the March 5 election with 48.17 percent of the vote, although a recount of the final results is possible.

Goldberg dominated the 10-candidate field, but with less than 50 percent of the vote, she fell short of the majority needed to avoid a May 14 runoff election.

An updated vote tally released Tuesday showed Repenning with 4,334 votes, or 13.13 percent, compared to 4,299 votes, or 13.02 percent, Ortiz. The final tally was 4.341 votes for Repenning to 4,310 for Ortiz and 15,929 for Goldberg.

On election night, Ortiz originally emerged in second place with a 54-vote lead. But as county officials continued tallying mail-in, provisional and other ballots, Repenning jumped into second place late last week with a 133- vote lead over Ortiz.

Repenning, a former teacher and aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti, expressed confidence Tuesday that she would make the runoff election, despite her narrow lead.

“In case there was any question how much every vote counts, we just received the most recent update on last Tuesday’s election results,” she wrote on Twitter. “We are on pace to make the runoff by a margin of just 35 votes — with fewer than 100 ballots left to count. These results show how critical every last vote is, and how important your support has been.”

OUCH!

So much for ballot harvesting and public corruption getting the La Raza faction back onto the School Board.

This is a welcome victory! I can breathe one more sigh of relief!

MassResistance: Fighting Against Abusive LGBT Curriculum in Local Schools (Part One)

Here’s how Planned Parenthood (and their allies) defeat parents to get “comprehensive sex ed” into schools.

… And what parents can do to counter it!

Revealed: Their systematic tactics to deceive, marginalize, confuse, and overwhelm anyone who gets in their way.

Part 1 of 2

June 18, 2018

Parents challenging proposed sex-ed / LGBT curriculum in Fairfax County, VA.

For decades the national sex-ed lobby has been using sophisticated organizing tactics to defeat parents and push their radical programs into the public schools. We will show you what those tactics are (in their own words!) and explain how parents can counter them.

What we’ve all seen over the years

Sex education is very different than English, math, history, band, or anything else taught in schools. In 25 years, we have never seen a single school anywhere where it was brought in because there was a demand for it by parents.

In every case, sexuality education (now updated to “comprehensive sex ed” with LGBT components) was brought in through a targeted effort by well-organized special-interest groups affiliated with Planned Parenthood and similar organizations. It was done in a very systematic manner, as quietly as possible, using a great deal of deception to mask its radical and objectionable content.

Starting with a few key faculty members, administrators, and local activists, they would get the school authorities to let them form a formal “health curriculum committee” (or some similar name, such as “Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee” in Fairfax County, VA). They would then add many prominent community members to give it credibility (though no conservatives, of course). But the core group would control the agenda and everything the committee did. The committee would later present the School Board with a “health curriculum” which coincidentally mirrored that of Planned Parenthood and its allies. The School Board would then quietly vote it in – with little dissent or serious questioning by the Board members.

But often during this process, parents would find out what the health curriculum committee was proposing. They would be shocked at the radical and vastly inappropriate sexuality, pro-abortion messages, homosexuality, “gender identity,” and other content of the proposed curriculum. Sometimes they would form a parents’ group voice their concerns. 

But when parents would try to stop it or at least get it modified, they would be thwarted at every turn, often publicly attacked and humiliated, and completely defeated. As soon as a conflict became public, there would be a well-crafted PR campaign in the schools and local media to “reach out” to parents about how “healthy” the curriculum really is (cherry-picking the non-objectionable parts), and how “backward” the parents were who objected. It was a horrible experience for parents everywhere.

Here’s what parents have been facing

Parents don’t realize it, but they have been facing a very well-oiled machine. It appears to be something local but is actually organized on a national level.

Planned Parenthood and its affiliated groups (including LGBT groups) are determined to push their radical programs on schoolchildren everywhere. They receive enormous funding from corporations and government, including even the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They have devoted allies in virtually every state and local education system. Most parents cannot appreciate the degree to which these people are driven by a social and political agenda. These people do not care what the average parent thinks, or how their bizarre programs affect the lives of children. Many of them are involved with these sexual lifestyles themselves.

The strategies being used against parents

“Advocates for Youth” is a national group that acts as Planned Parenthood’s hardcore organizing arm in local school districts across the country. We have seen them publicly in action against parents’ groups, but most people have never heard of them. They almost always work behind the scenes.

Back in 2008, Advocates for Youth published a series of articles outlining the strategies and tactics they had been using for years to defeat parents who interfere with their efforts to a force sex-ed curriculum into a school. The most prominent article, Managing Controversy in Pressure Cooker Situations, was recently noted on the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction website. Since then we’ve tracked down the others from that series.

Bear in mind that every year, more radical topics are brought into sex-ed or “family life” curricula, for example, anal sex or the recent push for transgenderism. But the tactics remain the same.

Here is the main article: See the counter-tactics by MassResistance in Part 2of this report

Managing Controversy in Pressure Cooker Situations
(and MassResistance counter-strategies)
This is the main set of tactics that sex-ed activists use to defeat parents who challenge the sex-ed agenda being pushed through. We’re sure that any parents who’ve been in this fight in their town will recognize a lot of these tactics which have been used against them!

These two additional articles are also useful for understanding their strategies and tactics against parents:

Curriculum Controversy – Lessons from the Field
This outlines their broader strategies for subverting parents during the process of bringing in the sex-ed. It discusses the creation of the curriculum committee (“a broad sex education working group”). It also has strategies for dealing with public hearings and School Board members.

Hot Potatoes: Keeping Cool in the Midst of Controversy
This is a fascinating guide for sex-ed activists on how to prepare for dealing with the press, and the questions they plan to have responses to. Basically, this reveals that they already know how shocking and objectionable this is to parents.

Parents need to take this seriously

The basic aim is to push radical sexuality (and LGBT) information to children under the guise of “health,” and have as much of it as possible be considered “confidential” – i.e., kept from the parents’ knowledge.

Once their curriculum gets in, school systems open the doors to bringing in all kinds of bizarre and dangerous groups targeting children. For example, the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction website is involved with several radical national groups. (And Wisconsin is typical in directing teachers and children to radical websites such as SexEtc., GSAnetwork, GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, and PFLAG.)

Overall, there is virtually no limit on what these people want to push on schoolchildren. It is extremely frightening, and parents need to take this seriously. It’s important to understand that attempting to reason with these people is completely futile. They are single-minded and quite ruthless.

Unfortunately, most parents are ill-equipped to stop it. What they intuitively think is a good approach (and what mainstream pro-family groups will tell them: be polite, have a dialogue, run for school board) is usually completely ineffective. But you can fight them and win – by enlisting more community members to help, by not being afraid, and by using the right counter-tactics and strategies.

Part 2: Commentary and counter-tactics by MassResistance.