TEMECULA, CA — During next week’s Temecula Valley Unified School District governing board meeting, trustees will decide whether to pay a lawyer to deliver Critical Race Theory learning sessions to TVUSD teachers — despite his opposition to CRT.
During Tuesday’s board meeting, trustees will discuss a proposed consulting agreement from Attorney Christopher Arend of Paso Robles to provide lectures, Q&As and discussions on CRT to district personnel.
A self-proclaimed CRT expert, Arend doesn’t hold a teaching credential, but he did serve on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District board from 2018 to 2022, during which time a resolution was passed to ban CRT on all PRJUSD campuses.
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Temecula’s CRT ban, which the TVUSD governing board passed 3-2 in December, is modeled off the Paso Robles version, according to Arend.
Speaking by phone Friday afternoon, the 71-year-old attorney said he is qualified to lecture on CRT because he has studied it over many years through books, law reviews and other literature on the subject.
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“CRT is very complex and most people don’t understand it,” he said, noting that the purpose of the learning sessions is to “educate people.”
“I know what CRT is,” he said. “I know what I’m talking about.”
Arend said his lecture “describes the substance of CRT primarily by using quotes from CRT authors, such as Delgado/Stefancic (authors of Critical Race Theory – An Introduction),” which he describes as “the main textbook.” His lecture also includes passages from Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility), and Ibram C. Kendi (How to be an Anti-racist), he said.
Arend argued that CRT is not open to different interpretations. An opinion piece he penned titled “The myth of “systemic racism,” which was published at calcoastnews.com in September 2020, is where he stands on the subject, he said. In the piece, he concludes that systemic racism does not exist, has “no rational basis and leads to absurd results.”
“The doctrine of ‘systemic racism’ is …, in essence, nothing more than intellectual contortion intended to sow division in the United States of America while causing immeasurable harm specifically to the people who the political left supposedly wants to help,” he wrote.
Arend admits CRT courses were never taught in the TVUSD — or on any California public K-12 school campus — but he alleges the “ideology is creeping into” some districts.
Arend has practiced law in the United States and Germany, mostly serving corporate and finance clients, and currently works as an independent legal translator for English and German, according to his resume. Of late, he has become so immersed in CRT that he has written a manuscript on the topic.
“I’m looking to get it published,” he said.
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Arend’s TVUSD proposal includes offering up to six two-hour CRT sessions over two days either via Zoom or in person to district teachers and some staff.
TVUSD’s cost would be $400 per hour for Zoom sessions and $1,000 for each in-person two-hour session (not including travel and any overnight expenses), according to the proposal.
The sessions would consist of a lecture and subsequent Q&A. The district would decide the participants for each session, according to the proposal.
Additionally, Arend offered to be a panelist for a district-hosted CRT public forum, for which he would charge $1,000 or an hourly rate of $500, according to the proposal. It’s unclear who the other panelists would be and whether their viewpoints might differ from Arend’s.
The district would also have the option of contracting Arend for additional sessions or meetings with student groups, according to the proposal.
One Temecula Valley, a political action committee working to “support and foster a stable and common sense approach to governance for Southwest Riverside County,” calls the proposed consulting agreement “partisan politics” and part of “misinformation being spewed by the new board majority and their proposed speaker.”
New board members Dr. Joseph Wayne Komrosky (Trustee Area 4), Jennifer Wiersma (Trustee Area 3) and Danny Gonzalez (Trustee Area 2) voted in favor of the TVUSD’s CRT ban.
According to Tuesday’s meeting agenda, Trustee Gonzalez and Superintendent Jodi McClay submitted the consultant agreement item.
To read the full TVUSD governing board meeting agenda, click here. The open session of Tuesday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. at Temecula Valley Unified School District Conference Center, Rooms A-C, 31350 Rancho Vista Road.
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