Westminster School Board race: good news

Here's one small election where sanity won.

The Westminster School District board majority that fought the state over how to define “gender” in school policy was defeated Tuesday night after incumbent Helena Rutkowski lost her bid for re-election.

Rutkowski lost to Sergio Contreras, a hotel and restaurant union organizer who has said he won’t support challenging the state Department of Education over an anti-discrimination policy that bitterly divided the small Orange County district for nearly nine months.

Contreras, 30, will join incumbents Jo-Ann Purcell, who won re-election Tuesday, and James Reed to make up a new board majority. Contreras will replace Rutkowski at the Dec. 16 school board meeting.

Rutkowski, along with Judy Ahrens and Blossie Marquez, whose terms end in 2006, made up the board majority that repeatedly voted against adopting the state-mandated policy that included a definition for gender as “a person’s actual or perceived sex.”

The women said the state definition was immoral and could promote transsexual behavior in schools. The three eventually adopted an anti-discrimination policy with the attached state penal code definition for gender as only “a person’s biological sex.”

You betcha these guys will be back again in the next local election. However, I think the community is now better informed about the consequences of electing someone without rigorous background checking.

There is a larger picture to this whole thing, which is my interest in this school district. Taking over school boards, one at a time, is just one tiny part of the covert, well-funded and well-organized Christian Reconstructionist agenda in public education.

I've discussed this in the past.

Btw, the mystery person elected to the Orange School board has not revealed his agenda or identity. I don't know if whether he's connected to Dominionists.

Nonetheless, this should be a warning to the larger community about the perils of school board elections. This should not be an 'under the radar' type of deal for such an important position involving the quality of life of the kids, their education, and the bucks which fund their education.