When extremist Orange County school board members funded by dark money interests use the vain slogans of “parental rights” and “school choice,” what they are really advocating is the diversion of taxpayer money into a specific charter school that would operate outside the accountability structure of other publicly funded schools. This is clear to anyone who has suffered through the three hour monthly promotional ad for the Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) and its spurious Hillsdale College curriculum that is otherwise known as the public session of the Orange County Board of Education (OCBE).
The two principal figures behind the OCCA are Mark Bucher and Jeff Barke. Bucher is a prominent figure in extremist politics in Orange County who also stands to benefit financially from the OCCA by a number of speculative real estate investments he has made. Jeff Barke is the spouse of Mari Barke, the president of the OCBE who is currently under investigation for various financial improprieties. Part of the lawsuit against Mari Barke likely relates to unreported income her husband obtained as the leading figure in America’s Frontline Doctors (AFD).
AFD is an institution that fully embraced the Trumpian response to COVID, which resulted in the needless deaths of at least half a million Americans, tens of millions of avoidable hospitalizations, and incalculable costs to our health care system. AFD advocated herd immunity and various remedies that echoed the Trumpian claims of the magical power of “tremendous light” and “powerful disinfectants” as cures for COVID. One of its “doctors” even blamed COVID on “demon sperm.”
The OCBE approved this ridiculous science and has used taxpayer money to sue the State of California for its COVID response, even though Governor Newsom’s response to COVID has been successful by any reasonable measure. This is part of a broader carousel of lawsuits that the OCBE has issued. Over the last five years (2018-2023), $10 million in taxpayers’ funds have been spent on partisan lawsuits funneled through its right-wing law firm. By comparison, in the previous five year period (2013-2018), before the extremist takeover, the OCBE spend a total of around $46,000 using the same law firm as the Orange County Department of Education. Of course, the taxpayers are also saddled with the burden of the defense in these frivolous suits.
One wonders who might have access to the taxpayer money needed to sue the OCBE for the role it has played in the needless deaths, hospitalizations, and medical costs incurred by its reckless promotion of quack medicine.
Orange County has one of the best public school systems in the nation. These public schools feed the best network of public universities in the nation. The OCBE and its minions who have fabricated the crises in the PYLUSD and OUSD are out to destroy this very foundation of innovation, prosperity, and well-being in our community. All five members on the current board are an embarrassment to the community and unworthy of the outstanding educators who have worked so hard to secure a prosperous and democratic future in our community.
All five current members of the OCBE advocate goofball science, dishonest history, and willful ignorance. Their tactic is to create chaos by appealing to fear, anger, and confusion in the face of the complexities of real science, history, gender identities, and sexual behaviors. They express the Trumpist takeover of what used to be a conservative movement that generally respected education and authentic inquiry. The curriculum they advocate is NOT a curriculum supported by the majority of California taxpayers; the people to whom our schools are accountable. Instead, they use such empty slogans as “local control” and “parents rights” to compel taxpayers to promote their extremist worldview.
The California curriculum and laws that protect both parent and student rights are the products of democracy as played out over many decades. The extremists do not want to go through the democratic process of convincing others who do not uphold their magachurch [sic] views to change the state curriculum and codes accordingly. What the OCBE extremists really want is for taxpayers to pay for their nonsense curriculum and uncredentialed staff. They seek to divert taxpayer money into the array of political and magachurch institutions that brought us January 6.
Let’s put an end to this assault on reason and democracy by voting for Dr. Nancy Watkins, Bea Mendoza, and David Johnson on or (preferably) before March 5.
Etiologies 