On Tuesday evening, May 27, I attended a Town Hall meeting organized by the COSCA firm, which has been hired to coordinate the search for a new superintendent in the Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School District (PYLUSD).  This was one of 17 scheduled sessions targeting various stakeholders.  At the beginning of the session, the two leaders of the firm emphasized how important it was for all attendees to respect the confidentiality of the session so that everyone could feel free to speak their mind without fear of repercussion.  The firm had identified confidentiality and anonymity as key features for the effectiveness of these sessions when it publicly appealed for their contract.  People should feel free to express their opinions without fear of being targeted by those who might not share them.

A Holy Mole!

It was clear, however, that one woman at the May 27 meeting was there not to participate but to report to her extremist cohorts as to what was said and by whom.  Her name is Linda Cone.  My friends at the Town Hall agreed with me that it would not be long before Ms. Cone reported to PYLUSD Trustee Leandra Blades, and that Blades would soon post details attacking those who spoke up at the meeting.  That is what happened.  I did not expect that I would be the target of the attack.  Here is what Trustee Blades posted about me, along with her cohorts Linsey Cook and chrisanderson7492.

Before treating the content of the posts, here is what I said at the town hall.  I indicated that I felt that any superintendent hired by the district should have knowledge of and be able to articulate in clear terms the science behind transgender identities.  This concern is separate from issues related to the fairness of transgender female athletes competing against cisgender females.  At recent board meetings, it has been disturbing to hear trustees repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the existence of transgender individuals as part of the order of nature, with a distinctive biology and history.  They persistently referred to the transgender female in question as “he.”  This is not only insulting, but also unscientific.  That was the point I made at the town hall.

I did “like” a post that made some good substantive points in response to someone who was referring to the transgender athlete in a disparaging manner.  I found the use of profanity unfortunate, and it is something that I try not to do.  Nevertheless, I thought the other content of the post was informative and worthy of endorsement.

I did not “demean” the two female athletes I wrote about in a recent blog post.  The two athletes have been telling their side of the story in a way that has disparaged not only the transgender athlete’s right to compete but her very existence as a transgender female.  Their story has been told throughout the Fox media empire and even a conservative paper in the United Kingdom.  They have made themselves public, not I.  None of these articles attempted to scrutinize the claims made by these two cisgender athletes that argued that the transgender female’s “biological” advantages made her an unbeatable athlete.  I examined their claims and found them wanting.  As a result, I identified their behavior as “unsportsmanlike.”  My opinion, nothing more!  My principal concern in the blog post was about the abysmal journalism around this topic, the contemptible statements by the three parochial high schools (JSerra, Crean Lutheran, and Orange Lutheran), and the utter failure to address the known science and experienced reality of people with transgender identities by elected officials.

Trustee Blades’ assertion that I have a startling “obsession with school age children” and that “former students are coming forward” to report about “the skeletons in my closet” is defamatory and fully reflective of the social pathology of which she is merely a symptom.  It is hard to imagine how anyone with such low integrity was ever allowed to wear a badge let alone get elected to a school board.  Her election is a poor reflection on the character of the section of Yorba Linda she represents. 

She knowingly violated the principle that the town halls in search of a new superintendent should operate on the principle of confidentiality and anonymity.  People like Trustee Blades and Linda Cone, however, feel that the divine mandate they believe they have exempts them from following the rules that they demand everyone else follow.  She has persistently used anonymous sources to disparage people she does not like.  She has done this to many of my friends, and now she is doing this to me. 

Trustee Blades, in characteristic fashion, claims to have anecdotal evidence from a few anonymous students that will disparage my 16-year teaching tenure in the PYLUSD.  Such anonymous anecdotal evidence should not be the measures by which a teacher should be evaluated.  What follows are some measures of my teaching career that an educational professional and responsible board should use.

A Teacher Evaluation

When the PYLUSD hired me to work in the Valencia High School International Baccalaureate (IB) Program in 2004, I had four major assignments in my portfolio.

1. Teach the Higher Level (HL) IB History curriculum.
2. Organize the research component of the IB as Extended Essay coordinator.
3. Teach incoming IB freshmen advanced reading, critical thinking, and analytical essay writing in conjunction with the Advanced Placement Human Geography course.
4. Be an assistant and later head coach for the VHS Academic Decathlon team.

The IB program at VHS is arguably the most effective site-based program in the history of the PYLUSD.  It was organized largely by former principal Jim Bell with the assistance of such educational luminaries as Rick Lopez, Joey Davis, Nancy Watkins, Fred Jenkins, Jamie Jauch, and many others.  Within a couple of years, VHS was graduating more IB diploma recipients than any high school in Orange County.  IB, along with the ValTech Academy, are programs at VHS that have attracted ambitious students from over 100 middle schools throughout Orange County and beyond.  These programs continue to bring millions of dollars of revenue to the district annually from students who would otherwise attend other public high schools outside the district, parochial schools, or homeschool. 

During his tenure in the PYLUSD, Superintendent Cherniss and the three board members who supported him showed no interest in these programs or in the people who created them.  Indeed, most of these innovators have left because of the toxic environment he and Trustee Blades created.

Here is a summary of what I did at VHS.

1. Teaching the HL History curriculum was both a joy and a challenge.  The curriculum is excellent, requiring an in-depth knowledge of selected topics rather than a superficial understanding of many.  The challenge was that I agreed to teach this two-year curriculum over one year to accommodate those ambitious students who both wanted the IB diploma as well as to pass the AP US History course.  The advantage was that many of our diploma recipients were able to gain a large amount of college credit because many colleges and universities offer credit for successfully passing both AP and IB courses.  Many of these students entered college as sophomores or even juniors with all the college credit they accumulated.  The disadvantage was the crammed curriculum was stressful for both the students and me.  The site administration decided that cramming two years of curriculum into one offered the best opportunities for our students to gain maximum college credits despite the extra stress.  I accepted the challenge and never complained about the additional work.

Despite cramming two years of curriculum into one, the pass rates for these students averaged over 95% for the years I taught the course.  This was well above the global average pass rate for the IB HL History course.  The passing grades, however, would certainly have been higher had we not compromised the two-year IB structure.  Since my retirement, VHS has aligned its curriculum with the two-year framework of IB.

• The EE Coordinator trains students in the techniques of using the research tools of the Information Age in relation to well-formulated research questions with academic merit.  This is a vital skill for successfully completing university.  Former students have identified this part of the program as being the most significant part of their experience with the IB program.  The fact that VHS has the most diploma recipients of any high school in Orange County testifies to the success of this part of the program, because research is required in many of the components of the IB program in addition to the EE.
• VHS adopted the outstanding curriculum of the Advanced Placement Human Geography course as an informal requirement for incoming freshmen intending to begin the IB program their junior year.  This was an opportunity to teach 9^th graders how to approach a college level textbook, engage the process of analytical writing, learn about the processes of global interaction across regions and cultures, and even gain college credit as high school freshmen!  Both the retention and passing rate in this class was excellent for all students.  The annual passing rate for my classes averaged over 90% for all the years I taught the course.  The global passing rate was around 45%.   About 75% of all the students who took the course scored with either a 4 or 5, with the remaining 15% or so passing with a 3.  Because our classes at VHS were so culturally diverse, this course had enrichment value that far exceeded the curricular requirements.
• Academic Decathlon measures the quality of education in a district over time, across the curriculum, and in relation to variable academic achievement levels.  VHS persistently scored among the five top schools in Orange County in this competition and we even beat the almost invincible Woodbridge High School on a couple of rare occasions.  Every year our team qualified for the California state competition where we competed against the best teams in the state and the nation, because the top California team has won the national competition every year except one this century!  This competition brought prestige not only to our school, but to the district.

This is what I did for 16 years in this district and I am very proud of what we accomplished during this time. 

Transgender Identities are Scientific and Real.

What is absolutely galling today is the disgusting insinuations about my character from people like Trustee Blades, who do not know me or the work I proudly did for this district.  For them, I am not a person with my own agency and viewpoints but the embodiment of everything that they feel threatens their understanding of the nation and the divine.  Transgender identity is a theme where they have made claims that run counter to science.  Their ignorance and bigotry have played out distinctly in relation to the AB Hernandez story. 

There are two dimensions to the story of AB Hernandez, one of which is legitimate and the other which is not.  The legitimate question is whether a particular transgender female athlete has competitive advantages because of biological characteristics associated with her male phenotypical expression.  (Obviously, not all transgender females have such competitive advantages.)  Reasonable people can dispute whether such transgender females have competitive advantages in sports. 

What cannot be disputed, however, is the very existence of transgender individuals.  This is the truly contemptible aspect of how AB Hernandez has been treated by two members of our board and by the President of the United States.  The denial of transgender identities is the denial of science, the denial of the complexity and diversity of the natural order, and the denial of the existence of an entire category of human beings.

The hat says it all.  It screams, “I am a proudly ignorant woman whose infantile understanding of biology is stuck in 1904.”  The hat also indicates that transgender individuals do not exist as anything other than people with mental disorders.  For Blades and her cohorts, transgender individuals exist outside of the natural order of creation and must be compelled by society to conform to their gender identity assigned at birth.  People like trustee Blades have deliberately muddled the questions of competitive fairness and transgender identities because that has become one of the principal partisan political topics where they perceive a tactical advantage.  Here is the conundrum: to assert the claim that AB Hernandez is inherently superior physically, they must deny her very existence as a transgender female.  Theirs is not merely an attack on this 16-year-old, it is an attack on all who identify as transgender.  The leading figure in this attack is Riley Gaines.

Riley Gaines needs to become a neologism.  Her name should become a verb or noun used to describe a cisgender female athlete who incessantly whines about the one transgender female athlete who deprived her of something even when other cisgender females outperformed both.  Rileygainesism thrives off the perception that transgender female athletes have inherent physical advantages that allow them to succeed with less training and conditioning than cisgender female athletes.  Of course, the word “cisgender” will never come out of the mouth of Riley Gaines because she has declared that transgender females do not exist.  They are just very confused men.

To a large degree, Riley Gaines has already succeeded in “rescuing” the United States from the scourge of transgender female athletes.  The NCAA has banned transgender athletes from all competitions and 26 states have passed laws forbidding transgender students from competing in sports in association with their gender identities.  The 500,000 college athletes in the NCAA will no longer have to fear losing to one of the ten transgender athletes in the nation who were competing in the NCAA.  No cisgender athlete will ever again have to worry about losing another scholarship to a transgender athlete, even though no cisgender athlete has ever lost a scholarship to a transgender athlete.  It seems that the only person who has lost anything of substance in this scenario is AB Hernandez, who now cannot possibly qualify for an athletic scholarship.  Thank you, Riley Gaines, for helping Make America Great Again by Making America Hate Again!  Trustee Blades salutes you.

While Trustee Blades is currently swimming in the wake of the global media campaign led by Riley Gaines and targeted against a single transgender female athlete, she is not new to attacking transgender youth.  Trustee Blades has been mocking and bullying transgender individuals for years.  There are numerous parents of transgender children whose anonymity will be respected here who have spoken about this.  Blades’ and Superintendent Cherniss’ friend, Andy Falco, has spent much of the last two years repeatedly mocking and bullying a transgender student at El Dorado High School.  Falco used the legally authorized and humane accommodations made to this transgender female by Principal Joey Davis as the basis for his attacks on the character and integrity of this outstanding educational leader.  Falco’s bigotry spread among significant portions of the student population, who became the source of additional bullying.  The subsequent resignation of Joey Davis is one of many examples of outstanding leaders forced out of the district by the toxicity of Blades and Cherniss.  In short, the international AB Hernandez story is a veneer covering the ignorance, bigotry, and hatred toward all transgender individuals by the likes of Trustee Blades.

The line from Trustee Blades’ ignorance and bigotry to that which operates in the White House is a direct one.  The attack of the White House on DEI programs is an attack on not just transgender identities but the queer community overall.  While people like Trustee Blades and President Trump want to pose themselves as protectors of women’s sports, the language they use to do this attacks the very identity and existence of transgender individuals.   It is not a coincidence that the dictatorial leaders who most inspire President Trump rule in lands where LGBTQIA identities and behaviors are banned (Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, et al.).   These are dark times for the queer community.  These are dark times for global democracy.

Trustee Blades has been working to destroy our district since assuming her position on the PYLUSD Board of Trustees.  She is attacking me now because I have been one of the main people who have publicly documented the fraud, abuse, waste, and corruption she has imposed on the district.  I have documented her many lies.  I have explained the absurdity of the district’s Critical Race Theory ban.  A California Court of Appeals recently overturned a similar ban in Temecula.  The PYLUSD should revoke its ban now before the state does it for us.

Fortunately, the PYLUSD did not follow other extremist regional boards in adopting the patently illegal parental notification policy that would require educational professionals to notify parents of any student who has spoken confidentially with a teacher or counselor about anxiety related to informing their parents concerning their sexual orientation or gender identity.  Every educator who has been in the classroom for more than a few years knows of students who needed to navigate their LGBTQIA identities with their parents on their own terms and timelines.  We are all aware of the tragedies that have occurred when parents do not accept the identities of their children and attempt to compel them to be something that they are not.

Trustee Blades’ friend Sonja Shaw managed to pass such a mandatory notification policy in Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), with costly consequences.  Taxpayers in the CVUSD paid $1.2 million in legal fees for a case that should never have been brought to court in the first place.  The AB Hernandez story has brought into bold relief the reasons why these mandatory notification policies can be deadly.  The language of those opposed to her participation has revealed that there are many adults who deny or disparage the very existence of gay and transgender individuals.  Sometimes love for their children can help parents overcome their confusion about and fear of LGBTQIA identities.  Sometimes it cannot.

Despite the NCAA bans, the capitulation of the CIF and Governor Newsom, and the relentless assault on her by the Trump cult, AB Hernandez has emerged as an inspiration to the open-minded and a threat to those who are not open-minded.  She is a danger to her adversaries because she has the strength that comes from knowing who she is.  She is a transgender female who loves to jump.  AB Hernandez jumps for joy.  Trustee Blades slithers for hate. 

Censure Trustee Blades!

The PYLUSD Board of Trustees needs to censure Trustee Blades to separate the district from the false and defamatory language she persistently uses against her political adversaries.  She should be censured for the following three reasons.

1. The targeted campaign against AB Hernandez by Trustees Blades and Sonja Shaw is one of the most appalling attacks on a minor imaginable.  Fortunately, the PYLUSD did not adopt Blades’ resolution that inferentially targeted Hernandez in May.  This provides evidence that the district does not associate itself with the behaviors of one of its trustees in relation to any civil litigation that Ms. Hernandez might pursue in relation to the abuse she suffered.
2. The district should censure Trustee Blades for violating the confidentiality of the Town Halls that have been called to survey public opinion in the search for a new superintendent.  The COSCA firm assured the public that statements made at these meetings would remain anonymous and confidential.  COSCA publicly assured the board and stakeholders that this confidentiality is an essential foundation for an effective search.  Trustee Blades violated that confidentiality when she posted a grotesque misrepresentation of what I said at the Town Hall.
3. The statements made about me by Trustee Blades are defamatory.  It is important that the district separate itself from these statements immediately.  Failure to do so may be seen as affirmation of these statements.  It should be noted as well that Trustee Blades has made similar anonymously sourced allegations against my former principal, Jim Bell.  He, too, may want to seek redress from the false and defamatory statements made by Trustee Blades against him.

Projection, projection, projection.

Leandra Blades and her supporters are ignorant and bigoted people who have come to deem themselves above the law and common decency.  They are perfect exemplars of the current political culture in our country where there are no standards of truth and civility.  It is something of an honor to have my moral character assaulted by people who voted for this man:

Who used to be best friends with this man:

And who thought that the chief law enforcement officer in the nation should be this man:

LGBTQIA identities have been present throughout history and permeate the natural order of humans and animals.  Denying the existence of LGBTQIA individuals is to deny the creator.  Claiming that LGBTQIA individuals exist in violation of the divine order is to take the name of the Lord in vain.