In the 2016 election for the Conejo Valley School Board, an extreme right-wing candidate narrowly beat an incumbent. She hadn’t campaigned on wanting to ban books or fanning resentments of teachers, so many in the community hadn’t recognized the danger. But once she took office, giving the extremists a three-person majority, it was as if “the costumes came off,” says Betsy Connolly, who was a school board member at the time. The school board majority encouraged parents to file complaints against teachers and did what they could to discourage teachers from assigning a wide variety of books. “We woke up. The community woke up,” said Jon Cummings, the president of the local Indivisible group.

What happened next was a lesson in local civic action.

Betsy Connolly, Jon Cummings, and a few others they trusted got together in what they jokingly called the “smoke-filled room” to hash out a process to endorse and support highly qualified school board candidates. When one of the candidates, Mary Anne Van Zuyle, offered to drop out and donate the money she had raised in her campaign, that provided the resources to start Conejo Together, a PAC specifically organized for the local school board elections.

It did three things:

·      Created a slate. Rather than asking the school board candidates themselves to pledge allegiance to each other, they chose three candidates for the open seats and announced to the community that they were the “chosen ones.”

·      Provided campaign advice and help to the candidates. For example, recognizing that the candidates didn’t realize that very quickly would need to make decisions about web sites, fundraising letters, and mailers, they hired a photographer and held a photo shoot day complete with doors to knock on and cute kids to be photographed with. The candidates ended that day with professional photos to use with their materials.

·      Rented an empty store front at the local mall that served as a campaign headquarters. It was where volunteers wrote postcards and brainstormed who they could approach in the community to convince to support the candidates. It became a community center where activists found their “people,” as some said.

Conejo Together succeeded in electing three candidates and taking back the majority of the board in 2018. That left just one extremist on the board, and in 2020 they were successful in ousting her. In 2022, they held onto the entire board with 56 percent of the vote.

The 44 percent who voted against the Conejo Together candidates worries Betsy Connolly. She worries they may have been convinced that the schools “used to be good but no longer are,” a contention she says is “so not true.”

And so after the 2022 election, Conejo Together is putting together a report to the community on the schools and letting residents know the good things that are going on.

To hear from Betsy Connolly, Jon Cummings, and Mary Anne Van Zuyle and others from the Conejo Valley, listen to “Standing Up to Extremists in Conejo Valley.”

Additional information:

·      Conejo Together’s website has a great deal of information about the schools and school board candidates.

·      The local newspaper, Thousand Oaks Acorn, covers school politics fairly closely. Below are some links to articles documenting some of the history of the extremist board and the subsequent success of a non-extremist board. (Note: after three free articles Acorn requires a subscription.)

o  Trustee email ignites debate over separation of church and state

o  Trustee takes on book policy

o  If anything needs a warning label it's this school board

o  Faced with sharp criticism CVUSD trustee threatens bogger's employer

o  Dunn opts out of volatile meeting

o  School board ends practice of flagging mature books

o  Church conference generates dueling censure requests

o  https://www.toacorn.com/articles/supe-calls-out-trustee-for-false-allegations/

o  Conejo Together a Success Story

o  Groups call for CVUSD to diversify its reading list