Banned rainbows and 'forced outing.' Will elections reshape this relentless school board?

At Senator Ruben S.Ayala Senior High School in Chino Hills, students this semester complained of broken air conditioners and bathroom sinks, faulty Chromebooks and Wi-Fi and, in one classroom, a ceiling leak that dripped into a bucket by a teacher’s desk as rats scurried across the floor.But recently, school administrators dealt with a different in-classroom issue: the appearance of 4-by-6-inch rainbow-pattern note cards imprinted with the phrase “safe space.” Some teachers saw the cards as a way to show support to LGBTQ+ students.

But school leaders said they went against a district ban on non-American flags, including rainbow ones, a symbol of LGBTQ+ pride.The cards are now gone.

The incident reflects the ongoing tensions inside the Chino Valley Unified School District 37 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, where a conservative board has for two years faced both praise and scorn as a relentless fighter in education culture wars, including “parental notification” issues, book bans and other polices that involve LGBTQ+ students.In a politically mixed county that voted for President Biden by more than 10 points in 2020, the school board faces its own referendum on Tuesday when three of the five seats are open in election that could flip the conservative majority.

During the months leading up to the election, the school board has robustly moved forward with its agenda and politics.Last year California sued the district over the board’s approval of a parental notification rule requiring schools to alert parents if a student requested to be “identified or treated” as a gender other than their biological sex or the gender listed on their birth certificate.The district passed a revised policy that removed references to gender identity and applied to all students.

A judge later issued a permanent injunction against all of the original policy except a portion that required schools to notify parents of unofficial or official changes to student records.O...