“Our schools need involved parents who understand what’s best for our children,” said then-candidate Gary Pritchard less than a year before voting to kill a parental notification policy.
“Our schools need involved parents who understand what’s best for our children.”
That quote comes from Gary Pritchard, who was at the time a candidate in the running for the Area 4 seat on Capistrano Unified School District’s Board of Trustees. Despite the fact that Pritchard had previously served on the board for nine years—from 2010 to 2019—he stressed that CUSD needed “new leadership” in a questionnaire published by the OC Register.
A mere year later, after winning his election and joining the Board, Pritchard would vote against a parental notification policy—championed by Trustee Lisa Davis—requiring CUSD school administrators to inform parents if their child was attempting to change their gender or “socially transition” at school.
Perhaps “involved parents” only goes so far.
“The five union-controlled board members who voted against parental rights are Krista Castellanos, Michael Parham, Amy Hanacek, Gila Jones, and Gary Pritchard. They can make all sorts of excuses for why they voted against parents and the protection of children, but the truth is that they voted [for] the unions’ preference,” said educator, author and founder of For Kids & Country Rebecca Friedrichs in 2024. She further opined that for that reason “they must be voted out.”
It would seem that the public largely agreed when, later that same month, they elected to defeat union-backed candidates in three of the four contested seats. Notably, that involved unseating two incumbents—Trustees Hanacek and Parham, both of whom voted against the policy—in favor of first-time challengers who ran on parental choice. Lisa Davis, who introduced the policy, was the biggest winner among them, defeating challenger Sherine Smith by nearly 20 percentage points.
Any way one slices it—whether they support or oppose parental notification policies—this was as clear a repudiation on the CUSD Board’s majority’s vote as you could imagine.
Those writing off parental choice as a flavor-of-the-week talking point or post-COVID social fad underestimate how significantly it just restructured one of the most important school districts in California. It was the leading issue that helped grassroots candidates defeat special interests and obtain majority control—for the first time ever—of the largest school district in Orange County and the seventh-largest in the nation’s most populous state; a state whose largest, most active, and best-funded special interest group is a public teachers union, the California Teachers Association (CTA).
And it’s that union to whom Pritchard has largely remained loyal, despite everything that has transpired. From successfully voting down parental notification to unsuccessfully voting to kill a resolution to protect girl’s sports from biological males, Pritchard has been in lockstep with the unions that have been backing his spot on the Board for its combined nearly decade-and-a-half duration.
Of the five Trustees that voted against the parental notification policy, two were voted off the Board and three have not yet come up for re-election. Pritchard, Castellanos, and Jones, remain on the Board but will all have to defend their seats in November.
Though it seems unlikely they’ve moved on the issue of parental choice, it should be noted that treating the matter with callousness was costly for their now-unseated comrades. In 2024, then-Trustee Parham—who had previously paid lip service to the parents’ rights crowd—was widely lampooned for his dismissive response to questioning from a constituent who asked “so we’re protecting the privacy of an 8 year old from their parents?”
“What parent in their right mind would be okay with a teacher failing to disclose to them that their 8 year old child is struggling with gender confusion or suicidal ideation?!” wrote one user on social media at the time. “Parham doesn’t seem to understand that our children do not belong to the state. It doesn’t matter what political party you affiliate with…this should be incredibly alarming to EVERY parent.”
“This is so alarming,” said another. “Get him out!”
That is, of course, what voters did when given the chance. And that’s something all Trustees, wherever they stand, should take seriously.
While Jones seems to be treading more cautiously these days—having abstained from voting on the Supporting Title XI resolution instead of voting against it—Pritchard and Castellanos seem to be moving ahead with conviction and a willingness to openly oppose the Board majority even when they know they don’t have enough votes to get it done.
If nothing else, it’s a show of loyalty to the groups that got them elected, from the CTA to LGBTQ groups with whom they have allegedly worked to “monopolize public comment time [and] to exclude general public input” when discussing parental notification.
One wonders if that will be enough to override the will of concerned parents who, as far as can be told, seemingly remain animated about political activism in public schools, unions’ efforts to combat transparency, and the wellbeing of their children.
