Chino Valley Unified voters will choose two trustees for Areas 3 and 4 on the five-member school board on November 3, setting up a contest that pits conservative incumbents and allies against a slate of challengers hoping to pull the district out of years of legal and cultural combat. The board currently holds a conservative majority, and the outcome could shift that balance amid years of culture-war fights over flags, library books and transgender student policies that made Chino Valley Unified a statewide flashpoint.
Area 3, which includes central Chino Hills and Chino, pits Chris Shaw, a construction manager and husband of outgoing board president Sonja Shaw, against Frank Gerdine, an educator and Los Angeles Superior Court clerk who grew up in Chino Hills, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. In Area 4, which covers south Chino Hills west of the 71 Freeway, incumbent Shaun Smith faces Meagan Lichthart, a credentialed teacher, district substitute and mother of three children who attend Chino Valley schools, as detailed in her candidate questionnaire with the Daily Bulletin. Smith was appointed to the Area 4 seat in 2025 after Jonathan Monroe resigned from the board that August, and he is now running to keep the position as the incumbent.
Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the board in 2022, is not seeking reelection and says she plans to focus on her campaign for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction. She has said her family's effort to protect Chino Valley children would continue statewide if voters send her to Sacramento. Some Chino Valley residents allege her husband is running to preserve her board position so she could be reappointed if she loses the superintendent race, while social media posts have claimed that Chris Shaw and Smith would act as Sonja Shaw's puppets if elected, per the Daily Bulletin's reporting.
Candidates Stake Out Their Ground
Chris Shaw has said he would prioritize fairness for female athletes and clear academic and behavioral standards, and that students should be able to learn without being drawn into adult political fights. He has said he would base decisions on what is best for district children rather than pressure from outside groups or political trends, and that he is running to continue local efforts to protect children.
Frank Gerdine, also a union steward and part-time substitute teacher at Rowland Unified School District, has said board service should be devoted to serving the community rather than personal religious practice. He said he considers Chino Hills a safe community and was disheartened by reports of students feeling unsafe. Some Chino Valley students have endorsed both Gerdine and Lichthart, according to the Daily Bulletin.
Lichthart told the Daily Bulletin she decided to run after watching events unfold in the schools and feeling she could no longer just complain without acting. She cited cuts to teacher resources alongside heavy district spending on lawsuits and political fights as motivating factors. In her questionnaire responses, she said her priorities would include setting goals for the district, developing policies to meet them, overseeing the superintendent, and listening to parents, teachers and students. On classroom technology, she said AI should be used sparingly, while fair compensation, teacher input, support for new teachers and professional growth should be prioritized for retention.
Candidate responses collected by Champion Newspapers, labeled by candidate name, echoed similar themes: one response called for classroom instruction centered on reading, writing and math along with safe campuses, while another described an occupation as court clerk and substitute teacher with a bachelor's degree in psychology. A third response argued for shifting the board's focus back to students, teachers and families, stating plainly, “I want to change course and bring the focus back to students, teachers, and families.” Another added, “We need to stop fighting each other and start fighting for our students.” Smith, for his part, wrote in his own candidate questionnaire that board members should focus on policy, high-quality curriculum and listening to constituents; he did not respond to requests for comment that week, according to the Daily Bulletin.
Parents, Students and Organizers Push Back
Chino Valley parents, students and teachers have said they are fed up with board members' conduct and the string of headline-making decisions that have defined recent years. Kristi Hirst, who founded Our Schools USA Inland Valley, alleges the district spends too much on lawsuits, that teachers lack resources, that programs have been cut, and that bullying and hate speech have increased. The district has cut programs including American Sign Language and a Japanese cultural program, per the Daily Bulletin's reporting.
Students have organized too. Chino Valley Students 4 Change, which includes students from all of the district's high schools, gathered roughly 300 signatures during the current school year on a petition.
A national political group launched a website in June criticizing the school board, according to the Daily Bulletin's reporting, adding another layer of outside attention to a race already drawing scrutiny well beyond Chino Hills and Chino.
A District Defined by Legal Fights
The board instituted a ban on all non-U.S. and non-military flags in classrooms, a policy LGBTQ+ advocates have called a pride flag ban, and board members have long been involved with Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, an evangelical megachurch in Chino. The board also supported making it easier to remove library books containing sexually explicit content and opposed the Biden administration's expansion of federal Title IX protections, placing it repeatedly at odds with state officials.
Chino Valley had a parent-notification policy requiring schools to inform parents within three days if a child identified as transgender or asked about gender-affirming bathrooms. California sued to block that policy in 2023, and a judge ruled that two parts of it were unlawful while one part was constitutional. More recently, in September, a judge blocked the district's attempt to lift the injunction against enforcing the policy, according to the Los Angeles Times' coverage of a ruling on parental-rights and gender-identity disclosure. The California Public Employment Relations Board is separately challenging Chino Valley's parental-notification and flag rules, and the district has battled state Attorney General Rob Bonta over the notification policy for years.
The district's legal costs reflect that ongoing conflict: Chino Valley spent more than $1.2 million on legal costs in a recent school year, more than double its 2022 total, according to the Los Angeles Times. That spending mirrors a broader national pattern — a UCLA study found nearly 66% of surveyed public-school superintendents across 46 states reported moderate to high levels of district conflict, and estimated that public schools nationwide spent $3.2 billion during the 2023-24 school year on costs tied to disputes over COVID measures, race and LGBTQ+ issues. Chino Valley's board president at the time defended the district's approach as a matter of local control, saying, “Let us have local control. What goes in L.A. may not go here.”
This is not the first Chino Valley election framed as a referendum on the board's direction. A 2024 Times report on the district, titled “Rainbow bans, 'forced outing.' Elections could reshape school boards,” described a similar moment when three of the five board seats were open in a race that could have flipped the conservative majority. Whether this November's two open seats produce that kind of shift remains to be seen when Area 3 and Area 4 voters cast their ballots.
