The Cajon Valley Culture War Comes to a Head

In a draft of an August letter to staff, Cajon Valley Union Elementary School District Superintendent David Miyashiro wrote frankly.  

“Our district culture and finances are at risk,” he wrote.  

“If you’ve been attending or tuning into our regular board meetings, you’ve likely seen me and our board majority targeted by false accusations and malicious remarks by Trustee (Anthony) Carnevale and a small group of followers who parrot his sentiments during public comments,” Miyashiro wrote. 

Miyashiro ultimately did not send the letter. 

However, his time as a well-known educational innovator and district leader may be nearing an end. Depending on how the coming election plays out, tensions with Carnevale could lead to his ouster.  

To his opponents, Carnevale is a right-wing extremist whose behavior has eroded trust among staff, destroyed relationships with once friendly organizations and put LGBTQ+ students at risk. To his supporters, Carnevale’s a political crusader taking the fight to the creeping and malicious influence of “groomer” teachers and organizations. 

Either way, the Carnevale-era has ushered in new conflicts – or added fuel to old ones – that have split the district along culture war lines.  

The Board Member 

Since taking office, Carnevale has used his seat on the board to crusade against organizations and district officials he feels are part of what he calls the “groomer cartel.” But despite that language mirroring that of the anti-LGBTQ moral panic that’s swept the nation in recent years, Carnevale claims he does not think the organizations he’s targeted are grooming kids into being gay or transgender. 

Instead, he’s concerned that the organizations are “soliciting deeply personal information from kids.” He shared a portion of Merriam-Webster’s definition of grooming, which reads “to build a trusting relationship with (a minor) in order to exploit them,” to bolster his argument. He was less clear about how he thinks the supposed “grooming cartel,” means to exploit kids with the information he feels they inappropriately gather. 

Carnevale said he first got interested in running for the board when he was just a concerned parent. 

“I wanted to bring parents back to the table, especially when the policies and conversations impacted their kids and to bring the focus back on academics,” he said. 

So, he ran in 2022 and handily upset an incumbent. Early in his tenure, he set his sights on a group of nonprofit organizations he claims constitute the “groomer cartel.” There was GLSEN, a national organization that aims to support LGBTQ+ students, San Diego Youth Services, which provides behavioral health care and housing resources for young people and even the YMCA, which he claimed had been “absolutely captured by radical ideologies.” 

In winding monologues from the dais, Carnevale guides board members through thick packets of screenshots down chains of links, highlighting things he finds objectionable.  

Carnevale couches his concerns in detail, pointing to individual posts on social media accounts that he feels betray organizations’ true intentions. One example he frequently cites is a post calling 12- to 21-year-olds to secret shop doctors offering trans care in exchange for a $20 gift card. Another is a sign-up sheet for an LGBTQ+ leadership program that asks people of the same age group their sexual orientation and identity.  

These examples, Carnevale asserts, show organizations gathering inappropriate information about children or stepping in between the parent-child relationship in a secretive way.  

“I think their activities within our schools, our high school district and our elementary school district, that’s the definition of groomer at that point,” Carnevale said. 

“When we are facilitating bringing these adults from these organizations into our K through 8 schools, we have to ask those questions. Is there informed consent from the parents? Do the parents know about this?” 

His allegations have found some purchase in the community. His “coffee chats” that he livestreams on Facebook with his wife routinely receive more than 1,000 views and dozens of comments. His colleagues also often embrace his positions at meetings, which tend to draw a handful of likeminded public commenters.  

The Superintendent 

Cajon Valley was never a liberal district. El Cajon, the East County which it serves, has always leaned conservative and so has the district’s board. But Miyashiro has been able to maintain peace. Even relationships with the district’s union were rosy. 

“We worked together to collaborate and make this environment a great place to work,” Mark Reagles, head of the district’s classified union said.  

The district’s innovation during Miyashiro’s 12-year tenure has also been lauded. Voice of San Diego covered the district’s early opening during Covid, which was picked up by the New York Times. Its homemade curriculum that emphasizes preparing students for the working world has been glowingly reviewed and its tech-forward approach, like the decision to give every child a laptop nearly a decade ago, paved the way for other districts to do the same. 

Miyashiro said he’s been a “boy scout,” as superintendent, but he has recently come under fire for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on his district-issued credit card. His explanation for the high spending is that the district puts a number of costs – from staff lunches to travel costs – on his card.  

He also waves these expenses away as being necessary to build relationships that have brought grants, philanthropic money and new revenue streams to the district. Besides, he said, Cajon Valley has a balanced budget with healthy reserves, unlike some other high-profile districts in the region.  

“Most superintendents don’t run districts like businesses. They just see the budget as a zero-sum game. I don’t, I’m entrepreneurial,” Miyashiro said. 

The Skirmishes 

Carnevale’s “groomer cartel,” rhetoric has been so toxic it’s ruptured the district’s relationships with multiple organizations with which they’d worked with. 

The YMCA of San Diego County, for example, chose to no longer offer the district a contract for sixth-grade camp, writing in an email to district officials that “current contention related to the school board has resulted in repeated, unsubstantiated, and/or mischaracterized claims that have sacrificed the well-being of our staff.”  

Shelly McTighe-Rippengale, executive vice president at YMCA of San Diego County, rebuffed the allegations, saying “Child safety and protection is our highest priority.” 

Carnevale’s concerns about San Diego Youth Services led Cajon Valley’s board to cut ties with the organization, which provided suicide prevention and counseling services to district students paid for by a grant. Carnevale even brought his talking points to the Grossmont Union High School District’s board, which ultimately followed Cajon Valley’s lead in terminating their contract with the nonprofit.  

Carnevale specifically singled out San Diego Youth Services’ Our Safe Place program, which is meant to offer a supportive place for young people who identify ad LGBTQ+. That program, which is available to young people throughout San Diego County, was totally separate from what the nonprofit offered at Cajon Valley schools.   

“There’s a lot of misrepresentation about what we actually do,” said Walter Philips, the CEO of San Diego Youth Services. “Our Safe Place … allows them to have a place for them where they can feel safe, to get to be able to not only feel safe but get support for what might be a difficult time for them.” 

Carnevale’s crusade against GLSEN, one of his primary targets, even creeped into the classroom. On multiple occasions he showed up to schools unannounced and decried the presence of posters distributed by GLSEN that labeled classrooms a safe space and listed the organization’s website. Some staff on the receiving end of his visits felt shaken. 

David Olsen-Vazquez, a board member at GLSEN and a former Cajon Valley teacher, said Carnevale’s allegations are propaganda. 

“He’s a right-wing Christian nationalist extremist and he is using his position to start a political career at the cost of the safety of LGBTQIA+ youth,” Olsen-Vazquez said. 

But frayed relationships with nonprofits are far from the only impact Carnevale’s critics say he’s had.  

Earlier this year, a state investigation concluded that the district’s recently adopted sexual health curriculum did not mention LGBTQ+ identities, running afoul of a law requiring inclusion of such content. The curriculum did feature the required content, but last-minute revisions removed the material. According to an email from the consultant who helped the district craft the curriculum, the revisions were “significantly influenced by board member Carnevale’s input.”  

“The curriculum was modified to exclude content and student exercises related to gender identity and expression. As a result, the revised curriculum retained only limited definitions of gender, gender identity, and gender expression,” he wrote. 

Most recently, the board adopted a so-called parent’s bill of rights which, in part, requires district employees to notify parents or guardians of students under 12 years old if their child requests to be identified by new pronouns. State law allows communication but prohibits districts from requiring it. Carnevale played a key role in the adoption of the policy, which he feels doesn’t go far enough. 

Coincidentally, officials estimate the district’s legal costs have increased by about 600 percent since Carnevale joined the board, in part because of the need to perform legal reviews on district policies like the bill of rights. Those costs total more than $250,000 in additional spending. 

These skirmishes, according to Reagles and Steve Davidson, the head of the district’s teachers union, have led to fear among staff. Many fear Carnevale or other related activists singling them out or labeling a groomer.  

Even Davidson has experienced blowback from his opposition to the board’s rightward shift. Local activists have verbally harassed him twice, once while shopping with his son and again at a Fourth of July gathering at a friend’s house. For Davidson, whose dad was a Teamsters president and grew up enduring death threats, the experiences haven’t done much. 

“But when educators are being called out on his coffee chats or called out by all his people on their social media, that is intimidating. They just want to teach, keep the kids safe and do their job and they don’t want to be slandered on social media,” Davidson said. 

The Coming Election 

Though Carnevale is not on the ballot this year, the election could have significant impacts for the district: chiefly who’s leading it next year. Carnevale has frequently sparred with Miyashiro about World of Work – a district-created curriculum that Miyashiro markets to other educational agencies – spending on his district-issued card and travel expenses and the cultural issues he’s championed. 

“They absolutely want to fire (Miyashiro),” Reagles said. “The whole purpose of this right-wing takeover is to fire the attorneys, fire the superintendent and anyone else who disagrees with them.” 

Thus far, that hasn’t been possible. But with board president Jim Miller on the ballot, a conservative with whom Carnevale has also feuded, that may change. He and Miller have tangled over financing questions regarding World of Work. Carnevale has characterized World of Work as a “money-hungry,” entity that, despite the district having loaned money to, doesn’t necessarily serve the best interest of students. 

“Every dollar we spend should be viewed through the lens of, how does it help the students educationally or their safety?” Carnevale said. “So, to reach outside and start spending public money on a risk venture was totally unacceptable and contrary to our responsibility as elected officials.” 

The tension surrounding World of Work ultimately led Carnevale to support Miller’s opponent, Alex Welling, in the upcoming election. Should Welling win, Carnevale has said he aims to usher in “accountability and a true evaluation” of Miyashiro based on how the district’s students are doing. Like with many districts, post-pandemic, student performance at Cajon Valley has dipped. 

“I would imagine when you are dealing with tough realities like that, you’re going to have … what would appear to be critical conversations, but that’s our responsibility to the people who put us there,” Carnevale said. “We’ve not been able to do that with the current … majority board leadership.” 

Clarification: This post has been updated to clarify Anthony Carnevale’s concerns about the supposed “groomer cartel.”