Temecula to host Sept. 11 Remembrance at the Temecula Duck Pond

TEMECULA ─ Residents are invited to join the city of Temecula Monday, Sept. 11, to commemorate the anniversary of Sept. 11, in remembrance and honor those who were lost. The ceremony will be held at the Temecula Duck Pond at the corner of Rancho California and Ynez roads at 6 p.m. All guests are invited to leave a message in the keepsake journal and take a quiet moment of reflection followed by light refreshments. Note parking and seating are limited.

“Sept. 11 is the time to reflect on the moment when our nation came together in light of immense tragedy. It is an opportunity to honor our first responders and our time to remember the lives lost on that dark day 22 years ago,” Temecula Mayor Zak Schwank said. “As we came together as a nation over two decades ago, join us as we gather as a community to commemorate this moment in history.” entirely, or is in the process, in 25 states.

For more information on this event and all upcoming Temecula Community Services Department events, activities and programs, visit http://TemeculaCA.gov/ TCSD and follow @TemeculaParksandRec on social media for updates.

Submitted by city of Temecula.

TVUSD Board President Joseph Komrosky, Ph.D., released a personal statement saying, to his knowledge, the board had not yet been served with the suit.

“As one of three trustees who voted for the resolution and who prioritizes the interests of our students and the rights of parents and legal guardians, I do not believe that CRT or any racist ideology is a suitable educational framework for classroom instruction at the elementary and secondary level,” Komrosky said. “While I and the board will address and respond to the suit in due course through the board’s counsel and the judicial process, I will simply note for now that, in my view, this suit effectively represents an effort by those behind it to secure the ability to use CRT and its precepts of division and hate as an instructional framework in our schools.”

The lawsuit seeks to invalidate and prove unconstitutional the December 2022 resolution of the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees prohibiting the use of Critical Race Theory as a framework for classroom instruction in TVUSD schools.

Proponents of CRT examine and teach the role of institutions in racism throughout history and find institutional racism as pervasive throughout most of America, in science, math, history, systems of government, etc. One book that made the theory popular was “White Fragility,” by Robin J. DiAngelo, which described a phenomenon by which all white people are complicit in systemic racism. She made a case for why “it is incumbent upon white people to accept their individual and collective responsibility for white supremacy – and to do the difficult work of challenging it.”

A former TVUSD board member Barbra Bosch previously said that CRT was not being taught in Temecula yet; however, hundreds of students walked out of their classrooms in protest of the ban the day after the resolution was passed.

Dawn Sibby, a teacher at Temecula Valley High School said, “As a teacher, my role is to introduce my students to a broad range of viewpoints so they can learn to think critically and form their

“The ideal of public education is to open the minds and hearts of students to the experiences and insights of communities beyond their own,” Mark Rosenbaum, director of Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, sa id. “It is to build powers of exploration, imagination, critical thinking and empathy. The Temecula school board resolution that is the subject of this lawsuit seeks to subvert this ideal by stifling teachers from promoting these values and instead imposing an ideology that introduces insidious racial and gender stereotypes into the classroom. If permitted to stand, the resolution will replace education with indoctrination, open-mindedness with bigotry, truth with falsehoods.”

One Temecula parent, Michael Gregori, who has attended all the school board meetings said, “This is just flat-out untrue. At least this school board has not been imposing any ideologies, especially o nes that introduce insidious racial and gender stereotypes into the classroom trying to divide students. The new school board has been debating about what is age-appropriate in the classroom instead. That’s their job.

“Remember we had a teacher who assigned materials to students that included graphic descriptions of unprotected sex between two strangers, an adult man and boy, and the “F” word was used over a hundred times,” he said. “Do you really think parents thought this was appropriate? School boards are elected to make these decisions with parents only – not with political entities who have agendas in regard to our daughters and sons. Sometimes, of course, absolutely teachers will be told that they can’t use inappropriate language or materials. Who gave them permission to do that?! These new board members are certainly doing their job, and so I and the vast majority of the parents out there thank them for it. I think it’s horrible how other media outlets are trying to portray it in a completely false narrative. People need to read between the lines and know the truth of how it is the family that is really being attacked here, not just Mr. Kom- rosky, Jen Wiersma and Danny Gonzales.”

Graph of states that have banned CRT as of April, 2023. In addition to TVUSD and other school districts in California that have banned CRT, this graph shows entire states that have banned or are in the process of banning CRT as of April, 2023. 16 states have already banned CRT. 9 states are in the process of banning the teaching which, while it purports to be anti-racist, many consider to be racist ideology and greatly reversing the cultural advances that have been made since the Civil Rights Movement. worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/critical-race-theory-ban-states. own opinions about the world. This ban has created a climate of fear in our classrooms, and it is preventing my students from learning about the history and diversity of our nation. I’m proud to be a plaintiff, in this case, to fight for my students, who deserve an education not censored by board members’ ideological beliefs.”

Public Counsel said on its website that it is a firm “dedicated to advancing civil rights and racial and economic justice.” Law firm Ballard Spahr is working on the case as part of the firm’s Racial Justice and Equality Initiative, a pro bono plan of action dedicated to combating racial injustice and inequity through litigation.

Julie Reeder can be reached by email at jreeder@reedermedia. com.