Scott Shafer: Yeah, exactly. And Marisa, I want to start, I think with the prison part of that Governor Newsom’s plan to transform San Quentin Prison into what he likes to call the California model. It’s rehabilitation for prisoners who will eventually be released, which is, you know, the vast majority of inmates. They will be paroled at some point. And I took a tour of the prison yesterday to learn more about the governor’s plan, which is really inspired by how Norway and other Scandinavian countries manage crime and punishment, less emphasis on punishments, more attention to preparing prisoners for life on the outside.
Marisa Lagos: Yeah. And I mean, since he rolled that out, Scott, there’s been some criticism about the lack of details in the plan. But at this tour, you were with the warden and Sacramento mayor, Darrell Steinberg, who’s actually advising the governor on all of this. What did you hear from them? What did you see?
Scott Shafer: Yeah, well, obviously, the both the warden and Steinberg are embracing this in a big way. And, you know, let’s face it, San Quentin has already been doing they’re really an outlier in the corrections system. They’ve been doing a lot of programing there for many, many years. But this is really an expansion of that. And yeah, you’re right, there is some criticism on the lack of details. But, you know, Steinberg says really what we’re talking about here is pretty basic, a fundamental change in the way that personnel, starting with correctional officers, are trained and how they are recruited and retained. And, you know, that is that is a big issue, Marisa. You know, obviously, the the corrections officers don’t all think about sitting down and having coffee with prisoners, which is exactly what they’re envisioning. You know, they’re talking about having more interaction, shaking hands, playing pickleball with the with these with these men, which is kind of what they do in Norway and some of these Scandinavian countries.
Marisa Lagos: I mean, honestly, like you and I have both covered a lot of prisons and criminal justice over the years. We’ve covered a lot of the reforms that have happened on the outside of prisons. And I actually kind of think we’ll get into the, you know, money they need to spend on infrastructure and all of that and programs. But to me, the culture change here seems like really the nub of this. And probably the most challenging part. I mean, we’ve seen this on the outside with the way a lot of police departments have really pushed back against reforms that voters have passed and kind of refused to enact them in some ways. Right. In terms of like when we talk about Prop 47 and this feeling of like, oh, well, you know, it’s a misdemeanor, I don’t even want to arrest someone. And I’ve been doing a lot of reporting, you know, Scott, around juvenile justice and the problems that plagued those state facilities. You know, a lot of those officers are now being hired by this, the adult system.
Scott Shafer: Do you think that’s a good thing? I mean, based on the way they have, you know, been in their jobs, is that are they going to be down with this new approach?
Marisa Lagos: I mean, you would think it would actually make sense because our juvenile system has been, at least on paper, more based towards rehabilitation than punishment. But the story that we’ve been hearing in recent months about the drug use, the drug furnishing by officers, you know, a lot of these problems, I think, is it it just speaks to the challenges there. And so that’s something I’ll be watching. But as we noted, there’s also been criticisms about sort of the like mechanics of doing this. What have you heard from lawmakers?
Scott Shafer: Of course, the governor’s been pushing this and he’s got a pretty tight timeline. And he got the legislature to approve $360 million. And this is the first phase of what they’re going to do. They’re going to knock down an old furniture factory that inmates used to work in at San Quentin, replace it with what they’re describing as a campus kind of a situation for more classrooms. The culture change. It applies not only to the corrections officers but also to the the men who are they’re incarcerated. And I talked to one of those guys, Juan Haines, who’s been incarcerated for 27 years. He’s actually one of the editors for the San Quentin News, which is an award winning newspaper that I went into the newsroom, talked with him and some of the other guys. And, you know, here’s you know, I asked him to put on his journalist’s hat and, you know, what is he skeptical about when he hears this plan?
Juan Haines: I’m skeptical about the people that are actually going to be pushing the buttons. I’m skeptical about California’s overcrowded prisons and I’m skeptical over buy in from both sides. I’ve talked to a lot of correctional officers that really love this idea. And then there’s some that don’t.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, one of the things that Steinberg talked about is that corrections often this is a hard job for corrections officers, you know, and the idea of transforming the job into not only social work, but more and more human, more humane is something that he thinks that the guards, the peace officers there will. The corrections officers will embrace because they’ll feel better about what they do.
Marisa Lagos: Yeah, I mean, that was an argument Jerry Brown made in changing some of the way that we program in prisons, giving more opportunities for rehabilitation. I mean, but also interestingly, one, Haynes mentioned both sides, and I think this is also going to require buy in from prisoners, folks who, you know, are like it takes all sides. And I think if you don’t have that and I think that’ll require, again, the trust building that trust with folks. But beyond all this, Scott, I mean, we got to talk about the politics, this political breakdown. You know, the governor seems to maybe have his eyes on higher office outside of California, as you may have heard on this show and elsewhere.
Scott Shafer: He has sub-zero interest in that, come on Marisa.
Marisa Lagos: Subzero in the White House. But truthfully, I mean, if this were successful, it would certainly be something you could run on on a national platform. What do you think he’s looking at? Like, what are the politics here, both immediate but more long term for the governor?
Scott Shafer: Well, he has set this timeline of 2025. And it was you know, we were asking Steinberg like, okay, what does that mean? January 20, 25, December 2025, You know, it was you know, Steinberg knows that this is really squishy. He said August 4th, you know, and just pulling a number. And I said, oh, is the ribbon cutting going to be in Iowa? You know, because clearly this is the kind of big idea that Newsom loves to talk about and run on. I mean, criminal justice and crime are things that, you know, Democrats at the moment are a little bit on their their back heels on their a little bit on the defensive. And I think he sees this as the kind of thing that will appeal to that maybe broad middle of voters who want to see rules. They want to see public safety and sell this as good for public safety, because as these folks get out of prison and go into the community, if they’re not prepared to take jobs, what are they going to do? They’re going to turn to crime again because they won’t have many alternatives.
Marisa Lagos: Absolutely. And I mean, we like I said, we’ve done a lot of work to try, you know, to make that reentry smoother. But I think anything you do on the front end when folks are behind bars is going to help greatly.
Scott Shafer: Well, and I would say the front end is really high school. Well, you know, yeah, you know, there are there are legislators, of course, like Reggie Jones Sawyer, who wants to take some of these elusive savings from closing prisons and plow it into the front end, the real front end, which is before they get in trouble. But, you know, job programs, violence prevention, that kind of thing.
Marisa Lagos: Yeah and I think we should say I mean, I do think there’s been a lot of concern, both driven by both politics and just like what people are actually experiencing around crime. But if you look at overall crime rates compared to 30 years ago, they are still so low. We’ve seen the state shutter already, a couple of prisons more in the pipeline to shut down. They have ended a lot of contracts with private prison operators. And so I think, all told, you know, this is part of a trend we’ve seen in California. You know, I think there’s an open question as to whether reimagining a 150 year old prison is the best way. Should we just be starting from scratch?
Scott Shafer: Well, exactly. And if you look at death row, those there’s still 550 or so condemned inmates there. They’re gradually moving them out to other maximum security prisons. And you know what? They’re not going to just knock that down. I mean, maybe that would be the best thing to do. But they’re not. They’re going to make some revisions to it. But certainly housing and space in general is an opportunity, but also a huge challenge, not just at San Quentin, but, you know, across the system. And so there are those who say, well, geez, maybe there’s something better to to use this money in different ways, spread it out across different institutions. You know, just about 5% of all the people who are incarcerated in California are at San Quentin. And I think what we’re going to see is sort of a quote unquote, cream of the crop come to San Quentin, those who really are motivated to change, to learn skills and so on. And those who aren’t are going to go to some of these other prisons that don’t have these programs, or at least not in the numbers that they’ve had them at Quentin for so long.
Marisa Lagos: Yeah. All right. Well, we will keep watching that. I know you will and I will as well.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, absolutely. All right. We’re going to take a short break. And when we return, we’re going to be joined by L.A. Times reporter Mackenzie Mays. She’s been covering the politics around LGBTQ issues and other cultural issues that are roiling local school districts in California. You’re listening to Political Breakdown from KQED Public Radio.
Scott Shafer: Welcome back to Political Breakdown. I’m Scott Shafer here with Marisa Lagos. And we’re going to turn to the fights over curriculum and how to treat students who identify as transgender that have roiled local school districts and captured the attention of state officials like Governor Gavin Newsom and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond. Los Angeles Times, state government and politics reporter Mackenzie Mays has been covering these dustups and she joins us now from Sacramento. Hey, Mackenzie.
Mackenzie Mays: Hey, how are you?
Scott Shafer: Doing well. So, you know, we’ve been hearing about these kinds of issues really for almost years, but it’s mostly been in red states like Florida and Texas, you know, limiting what teachers can say, that kind of thing. Parental rights fights. It seems like this is relatively new to California. Is that is that your take?
Mackenzie Mays: I would say that it feels new in California because it’s one of the only pathways to sort of power over policy that Republicans have. Right. They can’t get policy change in either house of the state legislature. As you know, we have a governor who’s a Democrat. So we had foreseen that, you know, Republicans were trying to stack local school boards. And so depending on what city and what school they represent, that is a way that they can have some power over policy. So I think that’s why it feels so different in California.
Marisa Lagos: Do you feel like any of this came out of the kind of parent anger we saw around COVID closures? Because it seems and mask mandates and all that because while this has become more of a right left issue, I mean, that did galvanize a lot of parents kind of across the political spectrum.
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, Yeah, definitely. I mean, I sort of wrote about this last year where we knew that, you know, they they were promising a quote unquote, red wave for school boards in California. We didn’t see that, you know, but in the communities where it did happen, it’s, you know, playing out in the ways that we’re seeing now in Temecula and Chino. And that parental rights slogan is something that’s not happening in California but is like a right talking point across the nation. And I think it sprung out of out of COVID frustrations and school frustrations.
Scott Shafer: And to what extent do you think this is being driven by religion? You know, conservative churches that have supported harsher policies around things like LGBTQ rights? Are they weighing in in this way with school districts as well?
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, actually, I you know, I’ve covered a lot of school board meetings in my in my day. I’ve covered them in Fresno and in the South. And even for me, watching the meeting in Temecula was really something. You know, I had said there was lots of God and lots of gabble. You know, there were Bible scriptures quoted there. You know, God came up a lot like it’s not really something that anyone’s trying to hide. Now, whether or not they’re they’re doing that in schools. Like, I think they understand the rules about church and state and all of that. But this is a board meeting where they can say other things. And I actually watched a sermon in a conservative church in Temecula afterward, and they invited some of the school board members to, you know, the sermon. And, you know, it is a church and only two of the three could come, otherwise they would violate —
Marisa Lagos: The Brown Act! That’s so interesting.
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah. It’s getting it’s getting pretty you know, it’s just. Yeah, that that’s safe to say for sure.
Marisa Lagos: So let’s let’s talk about Temecula. You were down there. This is a school board. We should mention that I believe three the three majority members that are kind of proposing and supporting a lot of these controversial things were, I think, recruited by a local pastor to run. And they started off in the spring by banning critical race theory. Was that did that even get on your radar or was that kind of more of a local conversation?
Mackenzie Mays: I mean, the CRT thing has been on my radar for a while and it gets really confusing because often what some opponents say is CRT isn’t even actually that right. So it gets really tricky about what sort of history lessons they want to teach and what they don’t. But it’s pretty own brand we see, you know, it didn’t take long for us to go from textbooks to in another city. It was about transgender and youth rights. And CRT sort of falls right in there with those topics.
Scott Shafer: Another big skirmish down in Temecula, of course, was over gay rights hero Harvey Milk in school lessons and Governor Newsom’s reaction to that. The school district was calling milk a pedophile, which is ridiculous. And the governor reacted strongly, said he’s going to send textbooks down there. Talk about how that played out, how the governor responded and where things are now.
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, I think, you know, it’s pretty rare in California for a governor to insert himself, I guess, in a local school board. If you we if you talk to school board officials across the state and teachers, all you hear about is local control because California is so big. So California sets the laws and the standards and everybody’s pretty up front about how hard it is to actually regulate and enforce those. So to see a governor say, “You can’t do this, and if you do this, I’m going to make sure that I fine you” was really interesting.
And he had a lot of supporters saying, yes, like you need to step in because they’re not doing the right thing. But he also had a lot of critics saying, we don’t know if you’re doing this because it’s sound policy or if it’s better for your political profile because, you know, that’s the side you want to be on in the culture wars, if you’re Newsom, right? and so I think, you know, we’re all waiting to see how it will play out. There’s a lot of questions about like, okay, what happens when this happens again? You know, will we see that same sort of attention that some people thought was outsized in this situation?
Marisa Lagos: What I mean, we’re reading about this from here. We talked about this last week on the show, but we should explain to folks that essentially the school board tried to reject a state approved curriculum that included some supplemental materials, mentioning Harvey Milk. They sort of since backed off. What is your sense, though? Like is this is this splitting the community down there that is a relatively purple district, I believe, or is it are people there supportive of it?
Mackenzie Mays: Well, I mean, we know there were enough people there to vote the board members and that support it, and that’s a majority of the board. So we know that. But I also talk to parents, you know, this this meeting went on for like 9 hours and went past midnight. And there were parents who opposed it, too, and teachers, too. And some of the folks that oppose the conservative majority and support the Harvey Milk text say that a lot of the drama that they’re seeing at school board meetings is like outside agitators, they call them. They’re like, they’re not parents, they’re not even voters. They’re just sort of glomming on to this big sort of conservative issue without really having a stake in the school board, which is really interesting and all sorts of things that have like little to do with schools kept coming up at the school board meeting.
I thought it was really interesting. Like there’s a like sex trafficking would come up a few times in that movie that’s a big on like right wing talking point right now. You know, the just certain things that usually, you know, the one of the —
Marisa Lagos: There’s a media bubble that a lot of people live in that not everybody understands what they’re talking about.
Scott Shafer: Which silo were you in?
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, one of the one of the parents who is actually hoping to work on a recall effort to recall the majority conservative majority on the board, said that their slogan is make school board, make school board meetings boring again. Okay. They used to be really boring about budgets and stuff, and now they’ve become something else.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, well, you know, of course, Governor Newsom, before all this happened, has been very critical of states like Florida and especially Governor Ron DeSantis with the, you know, don’t say gay bill and some of the other things he’s doing down there around transgender rights. And, you know, now we’re hearing from Temecula and Chino that, hey, this is, you know, the governor interfering with local control. So how is what Newsom is doing different from what DeSantis is doing and got criticized for by Newsom?
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, I actually I talked to an attorney who compared the two, and I’m sure Newsom does not like ever being compared to DeSantis. As we know, they’re sort of like arch nemeses and just constant rivals. But to Newsom’s point, he would say, you know, the school board’s breaking the law. We have laws that say you must teach LGBT history. We have laws about comprehensive sex ed, laws about ethnic studies. I mean, California has all of the laws already when it comes to textbooks.
And so he could say, you know, this isn’t the same because what DeSantis is doing is sort of the opposite and some would argue is illegal over that way, too, because, you know, depending on what you’re allowing a teacher to teach or a school board official to push, so and I talked to his office and they said, you know, just because we believe in local control and deferring to communities about what’s best for them doesn’t mean you can break the law. You know, those are two different things, is what they say.
Marisa Lagos: Do you think, though, that like there are potential pitfalls for Democrats for pushing back because like we’re talking about local control? I mean, that is something that has been championed to some extent by both kind of wings of of the political system here in California as being important. Right. That you want people to have that buy-in. So do you feel like there’s either political or practical kind of pitfalls when the state tries to come in and push these things?
Mackenzie Mays: I think the potential pitfall and it’s something that’s come up in conversations a lot is what happens when the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak. So like there are liberal school boards who have said, we don’t want to teach these texts. And it may be because they use a racial slur or something like that, but the texts are like, you know, otherwise literary, like, you know, all of us read them. And so I guess the pitfall could be, you know, will you be treating a district with different political views the same way? I mean, I don’t know if that would be violating. You know, they could pick a different book and still stay in the standards. They just might not want one book. And that’s ultimately actually what Temecula ended up doing. You know, they are following the law now. They just didn’t choose the Harvey Milk book after all.
Scott Shafer: Well, another issue in the culture wars bubbled up in Chino Valley School Board. That’s another school district in the Inland Empire, this one in San Bernardino County. And the issue is not books, but transgender kids. Tell us about that, how it played out and you know why Tony Thurmond, the school superintendent, you know, decided to go down there and address them.
Marisa Lagos: He won’t talk to any of us!
Mackenzie Mays: When you see something like that happen, only a couple of days after something like this happened, you do start to think, wait a second, is there a pattern happening? But there the school board voted for like what they call a parental notification system. So if a kid is transgender or identifies in a way that they say is not on their birth certificate as far as the pronouns that they want to use a bathroom, that’s different from what they used to be using, they’re going to notify their parents. So the conservative majority on that school board and the parents that support it say parents should know everything about their kids. That’s their right. And then gay rights advocates say this is really dangerous because the very kids that may not tell their parents might not feel safe and not be in homes where they feel safe to do that.
And so you’re taking away from them this like sort of safe haven that they think a school should be by what they say would be outing them against their will. And so another potential pitfalls. Like everybody’s like, where’s Gavin on this? You know, it’s kind of hard for the governor to choose to be involved in one and not in this one. And we do know that that state lawmakers have already said, hey, we’re going to we’re going to work on something, write up a bill to to make sure that this doesn’t happen, because right now that that policy is approved and it’s, you know, that’s in play there.
Marisa Lagos: Before we talk, I do want to talk about Tony Thurmond, but you mention Newsom. And I do think that I mean, this feels like a stickier issue for him. I think it was very easy for him to come out swinging when Harvey Milk was accused of being a pedophile. But parental notification is not quite as clean of a line for for liberals, I would imagine.
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah. I mean, it’s all about the language, too. Parental notification, parental rights know, that’s sort of a cultural term that’s really hard for anybody to disagree with. It’s more one of those things that you need to drill down and understand what somebody means when they say that because it’s such an umbrella term, it’s like who would be anti-parent, you know, But you have to sort of get to what really what they mean behind that, I guess.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, Well, we have seen the legislature obviously getting activated on this. And, you know, the school board association actually seemed to take Temecula side on that school book issue. We’ve got others, you know, warning about state overreach. Corey Jackson, a freshman legislator from down that way, has got a bill coming up around all this. Like where how do you see this shaking out in the legislature? And do we see more of those same fault lines that Marisa and you just talked about regarding like books versus parental notification?
Mackenzie Mays: No. I mean, everyone I’ve talked to about the textbook law, at least, is like that. That bill is good as gold. So that bill before was a flop. I had talked to Jackson about it. It didn’t have support from important people like CTA or CCPA because it was became a local control issue. But the governors sort of swooped in and has made it his bill in a way, and immediately had tacked on support from leadership in the legislature. So everyone’s like, Yeah, that’s going to happen. There’s not really going to be a I don’t think there’s going to be a big divide there. And as you know, we have, you know, supermajorities of Democrats in the legislature. We’ll have to wait to see what the other issue, what the other bill looks like and if the old, you know, stand up against some, I guess, tougher criticism than this textbook bill.
Marisa Lagos: Yeah, I know we just have you for a few more minutes, Mackenzie. I do want to ask the state superintendent, Tony Thurmond kind of shouted down out of that Chino Valley School board meeting. He says he was kicked out. It looked like he was kind of asked to leave maybe after his public comment. But I made a joke about Thurmond. I mean, he has not been super accessible, I think, to the press or the public in a lot of ways. Do you think he’s trying to kind of burnishes his credentials politically with all of this and and what role does he actually have a superintendent?
Mackenzie Mays: I mean, people in Sacramento definitely viewed it that way. He’s running for governor. Well, he had just announced that he, you know, is considering a run for governor and that he had opened a committee. So to see him, you know, stand up and talk in public. You know, he signed up as just like sort of like a layman, like a normal member of the public. It’s really kind of wild to see the state superintendent of all the schools in California just sort of show up there instead of like have you know, it kind of tells me that they weren’t working together, something on that issue. He was quick to tweet about it afterward and is angry with that district. And he did say he was ejected. And I watched the tape and I saw that police were talking to him at the podium afterward. But I also just saw just a few minutes ago that the school district put out a statement saying that that he wasn’t ejected. And now they’re angry with him for saying that he was.
Scott Shafer: ‘We wish he’d kept talking.’
Mackenzie Mays: Yeah, it’s hard to it’s hard not to see, you know, it through a political lens.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, of course. And of course, all this, you know, if you look at the broader politics, it’s playing out at a time that the legislature is trying to repeal the Prop eight, which passed in 2008 banning same sex marriage, Of course, that’s already been resolved through the courts. So it’s kind of symbolic. But, you know, we also have, you know, talk about repealing the travel ban to states which have anti LGBTQ politics and laws. So what do you make of the fact that all of this is coming up right now? I mean, is this just part is this in some way tied to 2024, do you think?
Mackenzie Mays: I think that it’s that local piece again, I think because, I mean, California has the strongest LGBT rights and protections, like you just mentioned as a state, right. But I think to see this, it’s because it’s kind of the only way we can see them wedge through. Like maybe you might see this on a city council in a certain city or a board, a supes or something. But usually, you know, this is kind of as hyperlocal as it gets. And so I think that’s where we’re that’s sort of the only way it pokes through in California.
Marisa Lagos: Final question before we let you go. I mean, the president has even been talking about this. We’ve seen him kind of linking the abortion SCOTUS decision and MAGA extremists to book bans. I know there’s a civil rights investigation by the Department of Education into whether Texas school district’s sweeping removal of LGBT themed books constitutes discrimination. We always talk about California leading the nation, are we are we going to be leaders here Mackenzie? What do we what do we expect in the coming months and in the next year on all of this?
Mackenzie Mays: On the textbook situation, I mean, we we sort of already are in a lot of ways. I think that’s part of the criticism too, is we already have the most stringent education standards for schools as far as diversity and inclusion goes. So I guess, you know, the governor has to follow through on this law, obviously, and it’ll probably be the strictest sort of form of regulation we’ve seen. And again, it will put California as sort of the antithesis of these red states, which is something we see Newsom do a lot.
Scott Shafer: And, of course, all this is happening in during summer break. Right? Right. So the kids aren’t even in school and they’re all arguing about the kids. All right. Mackenzie Mays from the Los Angeles Times, thank you so much for joining us.
