Conservatives and commonsense residents in the Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) have a majority on the governing board! Shout out and thanks to Jeff Tobey and Janelle Bowles for stepping up to lead the community.
Since Peoria finally elected a slate (the RINOs got Rebecca Proudfit; conservatives got Tobey and Bowles), you’d think the powers that be would stop trying to manipulate and control the district. Nope. Before the election results were finalized—and it appeared Proudfit and former leftist board member David Sandoval were no longer in power—I heard rumblings of local leaders attempting to undermine the majority vote.
I initially exposed these shenanigans on my Substack entitled “Beware of Tainted Golden Tickets.” The post details how LD27 Chair Carol Ayotte and former LD28 Chair Lori Bango—along with their proxy minions—led their PCs to endorse a liberal (Proudfit). It’s come to my attention that certain community leaders are involved in another shadow campaign to appoint a board president who will work in opposition to current board member Heather Rooks.
No one on the PUSD school board has worked harder than Rooks to support students, families, and teachers. Rooks has not compromised her position on transparency, parental involvement, and quality education. She has also taken the most hits for boldly exercising her First Amendment rights. Understandably, this is a threat and an offense to those who don’t believe in God or the U.S. Constitution.
So, it appears her fatal flaw—from a Democrat and fake Republican perspective—is that she cannot be controlled.
What exactly is going through the minds of “Republicans” who want to silence one of Arizona’s strongest school board candidates? Why do they want true conservatives to care about Democrats/liberals feelings? When did it become our responsibility to “be nice” and avoid offending those who call us “racist” and “transphobic”? This whole scenario reminds me of a cinematic idiom that asks:
“Why worry about snakes in the garden when you’ve got spiders in your bed?”
That may sound like a rhetorical question. But the main issue plaguing true conservatives today is not leftists/Democrats—it’s all the morally compromised, bad actors with an “R” behind their name looking to capitalize on personal gains and party interests. As for me, I will remain a Rooks supporter. I offer no apologies for standing with her and with legitimate conservative values.
If the truth is offensive, then I say: let the truth offend. Truth has the power to set people free.
When Rooks was elected to the PUSD school board in 2022, her bid for the presidency was voted down in favor of her taking the clerk position. Surprisingly, it was leftist Peoria Education Association President Trina Berg who said:
“Having been a president of an organization before—having to have some type of background knowledge, how things work, that in depth knowledge—it’s really difficult to be elected and then immediately go right into a leadership position like that…I actually fully support Rooks [for the clerk position]. I think you should be in a leadership position.”
Nevertheless, when Proudfit was newly appointed by the corrupt former Maricopa County Superintendent Steve Watson, she was immediately nominated for board president by Sandoval. This hypocrisy led PUSD further in the wrong direction for an entire year. Thus, Berg’s words ring true.
If you go back and listen to public comments during the January 12, 2023, and January 11, 2024, school board meetings, you will hear the majority of PUSD community members speaking in favor of Rooks for president. You will witness the same on January 9, 2025, with the exception of those who want her and the district to fail. Only those with an ulterior motive are working to undermine the last two years of Rooks’ community service.
While RINOs are catering to their morally inept counterparts, PUSD’s current policies, curriculum, and predators on the payroll are corrupting the next generation. There’s serious business that needs to be taken care of in this district. Parents and taxpayers don’t have time for hidden agendas and backstabbing community leaders. So, I’ll state it more matter-of-factly:
We the People of Peoria Unified School District challenged authority, investigated, and asked questions. We rejected that gaslighting proposition from LD27 and LD28 executive members. And we will do it again in 2026. Duly elected officials are not beholden to sleazy factions that infiltrate the true grassroots movement. Political activists attempting to thwart the will of Peoria voters should reconsider their position before they’re exposed (again).
Listen as Rooks explains why she’s the right person to lead PUSD’s governing board:
“I’ve been pretty clear that I’m all in for the parents and their children in the Peoria Unified School District. I have built relationships…with teachers, with different staff members, [and] they have entrusted me with the daily concerns that they see. My focus for Peoria Unified is on the students’ academic needs…advocating for their safety, communicating with our parents…and being a voice for the community. “I have never wavered from who I am and what my values are and what I ran on. And I’m not going to step away from those values because that’s what I ran on when people elected me into this seat.”
—PUSD Board Member Heather Rooks
Let’s all look forward to throwing our full support behind Heather Rooks for PUSD board president on January 9, 2025.
The Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) is facing a lawsuit from one of its own board members after prohibiting her from quoting Scripture during meetings.
The First Liberty Institute filed the lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of board member Heather Rooks.
The lawsuit noted that public officials have a storied history of quoting Scripture and using religious references to solemnize public occasions, opening with President Joe Biden’s citation of the Book of Isaiah in his 2021 address to the nation following his withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Accordingly, Rooks defended her Scripture citations as a continuation of a longstanding American tradition.
“Heather Rooks isn’t a famous historical figure or a household name, but she too wants to be part of the longstanding tradition of government officials solemnizing public occasions in this way,” stated the lawsuit. “To vindicate her statutory and constitutional rights as a Board member and citizen, Rooks respectfully brings this action to declare those rights — and to dispel the confusion that has regrettably clouded a practice as old as the Republic itself.”
Rooks joined the board in January. From her first board meeting until the district ordered her to stop in July, Rooks made it a regular practice of hers to cite Scripture as part of her comments to the public.
The lawsuit noted that after PUSD received a complaint from Secular Communities for Arizona about Rooks’ recitation of Scripture in February, the board’s legal counsel advised board members in an email that they couldn’t pray or recite Scripture during meetings because it allegedly violated the Establishment Clause.
Rooks was one of two board members chastised by district counsel for quoting the Bible during board meetings. The other board member, Rebecca Hill, resigned last month.
Prior to Hill’s resignation, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) threatened to sue PUSD in May if Hill and Rooks didn’t cease their religious speech.
“While board members are free to promote their personal religious beliefs however they wish in their personal capacities outside of the school board, as government officials they cannot be allowed to commandeer the board in order to impose their personal religious beliefs on district students, parents, and employees,” stated FFRF.
Around the time of the lawsuit threat, PUSD held a public presentation warning against Scripture readings. The presentation was reportedly shared later with staff and parents.
Andy Gould, senior counsel at First Liberty, said in a press release that Rooks’ use of the Bible was part of a historical American tradition.
“Heather takes her responsibilities serving the parents and students in her community seriously, and quotes Bible verses as a source of courage and strength in performing those duties,” said Gould. “Like so many dedicated public leaders throughout our history, Heather most certainly can use inspirational quotes from religious, historical, and philosophical sources and figures as a source of personal inspiration, as well as encouragement to the community at-large.”
Rooks stated in the press release that she was grateful for her membership on the PUSD board, and that Scripture serves as a source of encouragement.
“As a member of the school board, I understand the weight and significance of all of our decisions, and simply find quoting scripture out loud to be encouraging to myself and to many in attendance,” said Rooks.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) is allowing males into girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, overlooking evidence of females harmed by policies allowing gender identity to dictate bathroom usage. Legal counsel for the members advised a need to align with the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, based on recent legal rulings in the Ninth Circuit.
Board members Melissa Ewing, David Sandoval, and Bill Sorensen supported allowing students to use the bathrooms or locker rooms based on their gender identity. Board members Heather Rooks and Rebecca Hill opposed it.
The Biden administration announced in 2021 that it intended to expand Title IX sex-based protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The Education Department proposed the change to the policy last year; in May, the Biden administration announced that it would publish the final Title IX rule in October.
The rule change received over 390,000 public comments.
The Biden administration’s updated version of Title IX would not only allow gender identity to determine locker room and bathroom access — it would also impact sports team admissions.
In an April meeting, PUSD member Ewing claimed that no problem existed against preventing boys from entering girls’ spaces because no similar crimes have been reported in PUSD schools. Ewing further claimed that national data doesn’t support the belief that female-identifying males present a danger in private female spaces.
“If you look at our incident reports, and the narrative about assaults in the bathroom, it has not come as the result of a transgender-identified student. There is not a single incident that has happened,” said Ewing. “And if you look at the nationwide data, that does not show it as well. As board members, we need to be making sure that we are making data-driven decisions.”
Last month, Ewing shared a legal opinion from an LGBTQ+ advocacy site which argued that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title IX protections.
Most recent legislative update – The Ninth Circuit Court. How federal and state law can be applied to schools practices. https://t.co/GYfSRkB48U
Although Ewing claimed no bathroom assault cases exist due to transgender individuals, there were several high-profile cases over the last few years. Their existence was brought up in a viral video pulled from a recent meeting.
Ben Larrabee, project manager for conservative activist organization Turning Point USA, cited multiple cases in which males identifying as females were alleged to have flashed, sexually assaulted, or raped girls or women after entering female bathrooms or locker rooms.
This included the two teenaged girls sexually assaulted by the same gender-fluid teenage boy at two different schools in Loudoun County, Virginia; the sexual assault of a five-year-old girl by a gender-fluid boy in Decatur, Georgia; and the assault of a teenage girl by a teenage boy identifying as a female.
“Before you say that these are anecdotal evidence, just note that in a survey of trans inmates in federal prisons, half were convicted of sexual assault and 90 percent were convicted of violent crimes: well above the general prison population,” said Larrabee.
Hey everyone, since this going viral now, I want to make a few corrections to my speech (THREAD) https://t.co/3YLyGS5IEQ
— Ben "USA Dudebro" Larrabee (@Ben_Larrabee) July 1, 2023
Larrabee noted that the perpetrators in the study he cited had all received some form of transgender care or gender identity accommodations.
“You do not affirm that people with anorexia can be healthy in any way, you do not affirm that somebody with schizophrenia is hearing voices, and you do not affirm that somebody in a manic episode is having great ideas,” said Larrabee. “When you leave someone to languish in their false mental state — i.e. men who think they’re women — they will inevitably lash out and harm themselves and those around them. Hurt people hurt other people.”
Board members Rooks and Hill attempted to enact a policy preventing males from entering female bathrooms and locker rooms in April. Ewing, Sandoval, and Sorensen blocked that policy.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) Board President David Sandoval and Board Members Bill Sorensen and Melissa Ewing have effectively silenced all women and girls on school grounds.
Despite hearing concerns from countless community members, the trio remains calloused and uninterested in resolving the bathroom crisis. Discussions and actions taken during board meetings tell the story of an agenda-driven district that couldn’t care less about the well-being of its students.
On April 27, 2023, the pro-transgender board members rejected a bathroom policy proposed by Board Clerk Heather Rooks and Board Member Rebecca Hill. This is the same facility usage privacy policy Rooks advocated for at the April 13 board meeting. Essentially, the policy is intended to “ensure student safety and maintain school discipline” by providing administrative guidelines for accessing restrooms, locker rooms, and showers.
Of course, district leadership was always aware that a cross-dressing male student at Liberty High School regularly used girls’ bathrooms for social media photo-ops. By siding with the disturbed teenager, Sandoval, Sorensen, and Ewing lost all sense of moral decency and respect for half of PUSD’s student population.
No one knows exactly when the district started allowing biological males into female spaces. Formal communication was never provided to the public. Thus, parents were forced to wade through rumors and speculation while relying on reports from their children. It’s possible the district concealed this dangerous practice for nefarious purposes.
In December 2022, Executive Director of Education, Christina Lopezlira, received advice from the district’s attorney to inform administrators about “emerging practices for supporting transgender students.” If parents or students object to the new guidelines, Lopezlira wrote that PUSD must “amicably address the competing interests and rights.” By February 2023, Director of Information Systems, Jill Thompson, relayed that the Synergy upgrade included an option to record students’ preferred pronouns.
PUSD’s willingness to hide this information reveals a blatant disregard for the law and a particular disdain for familial bonds. There’s no length the administration won’t go to overthrow parental rights under Arizona’s Revised Statutes. It’s conceivable the district will soon pursue policy guidance on gender transitioning and clinical referrals without parental knowledge or consent.
Before casting her vote on April 27, Hill stated: “I understand we’ve had multiple instances at Liberty High School where a young man has been allowed to enter the girls’ bathrooms based on his claim that he identifies as a female. The fact that the district has allowed these actions to continue unabated—without establishing an accommodation or implementing appropriate consequences—is both irresponsible and unfathomable…”
Rooks followed suit stating that she had listened to multiple concerns from parents and students while district leaders remained silent on the issue. “It’s very disappointing that this has been going on [and] parents were not made aware of it. I think every parent in this district has a right to know what we are doing with their kids…and I think we need to move forward with this policy,” Rooks said.
Ewing justified her opposition, “If you look at our incident reports in [PUSD], and the narrative about assaults in the bathroom, it has not come as the result of a transgender-identified student. There is not a single incident that has happened. And if you look at the nationwide data, that does not show it as well. As board members, we need to be making sure that we are making data-driven decisions.”
It’s unclear whether Ewing was truly unaware or willfully ignorant of the landmark case in Loudoun County, Virginia. In 2021, a male student—who identified as gender fluid and frequently utilized girls’ facilities—sexually assaulted two female students. A grand jury later found district administrators “failed at every juncture” to properly report the violent crimes, and school board members were “deliberately deprived of information” until the second incident occurred.
Sandoval and Ewing maintained that their votes align with Title IX while Sorensen flat out refused to explain his position. During the June 22 board meeting, one parent’s criticisms finally compelled Sorensen to respond, “What I can tell you is that I was convinced that people don’t really want to listen…the end vote is ultimately what mattered.”
Although Sorenson agreed he could have been more transparent during the voting process, he figured that inclusive isn’t a “bad word” and the policy proposed by Rooks and Hill was “too restrictive.”
PUSD is increasingly becoming a dangerous place for children. If the administration can secretly change a student’s pronouns while advocating for shared private spaces, what’s next? Where are the boundaries?
How much control will the majority of the board take from parents and give to the public education system?
For nearly two decades, Tiffany Benson’s creative writing pursuits have surpassed all other interests. When she’s not investigating Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theories, she enjoys journaling and contributing to her blogBigviewsmallwindow.com. Follow her on Twitter andTruth Social @WritingWoman84.
A west valley school district governing board declined to take proactive measures against males or females using bathrooms of the opposite sex, and many parents are outraged.
Last week, the Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) Governing Board voted to reject a “motion to direct administration to prepare the first draft of a facility use policy for PUSD student bathrooms and locker rooms.” That motion was offered by board member Rebecca Hill and seconded by Heather Rooks. Board members David Sandoval, Bill Sorensen, and Melissa Ewing voted to sink the motion.
According to PUSD, “the District does not currently have a Governing Board policy regarding bathroom or locker room use, and the purpose of this agenda item was to determine whether or not the Governing Board should adopt a formal policy that limits the use of bathrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex.”
Rebecca Hill, the PUSD member who brought the motion, told her colleagues and the attendees in the crowded meeting space that during her tenure on the Peoria Unified School Board, “there has never been an issue more important to me than the one at hand tonight.” She appealed to the other board members, saying, “as leaders of this district, it is incumbent upon us to implement a policy that upholds common decency and respects the right to privacy that both our girls and boys are entitled to when using campus restrooms, locker rooms and any other private facility at our schools.”
Hill informed the audience she was of the understanding that there were multiple instances at Liberty High School in Peoria, where a young man has been allowed to enter the girls’ bathrooms based on his claim that he identifies as a female. She argued, “the fact that the district has allowed these actions to continue unabated without establishing an accommodation or implementing appropriate consequences is both irresponsible and unfathomable.”
Heather Rooks, Hill’s ally in this issue before the board, agreed with her colleague, stating that she had been dealing with this for months and hearing from parents and girls in the district. Rooks charged that parents were not made aware of the situations of boys in girls’ restrooms, adding, “Every parent in our district has a right to know what we are doing with their kids each day.” She also spoke in defense of the girls who had raised concerns over these alleged instances of boys in their restrooms, making the case that it is not wrong of girls to feel uncomfortable or to use their natural instincts when seeing biological males in women’s restrooms.
A West Valley lawmaker, State Senator Anthony Kern, attended the meeting and shared his thoughts on Twitter following the board’s lack of action to initiate the policy, writing, “Three Democrats on the Peoria Unified board meeting last night voted down protecting girls from predators in girls’ bathrooms.” He included the hashtags “Vote the Democrats Out” and “Home School” as his solutions to this decision from the board.
Three Democrats on the @PeoriaUnified11 board meeting last night voted down protecting girls from predators in girls' bathrooms; voted in favor of ZERO School Resource Officers (Police); and 23 additional marxist social workers for the schools. #VoteTheDemocratsOut#HomeSchoolpic.twitter.com/HMLwNjzPF6
Republican Tom Horne, Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, was closely following this contentious meeting and subsequent outcome, telling AZ Free News his “prediction is that many parents will not want their daughters to attend a school where biological males can come into the girls’ restrooms.” He said he had “received many texts and emails from parents who say their daughters were very upset when this happened.”
After seeing her motion end up on the losing side, Rebecca Hill wasn’t willing to accept defeat on behalf of the girls in her district who may have been – and still may be – faced with encounters with biological males in their restrooms and locker rooms. Hill stated, “I would advise parents to use their vouchers elsewhere. I don’t endorse PUSD anymore. I can’t. I would advise that parents take the ability at this time to take their vouchers, which have been given to them, and use them in private schools, use them on online, home school your kid. Choose the curriculum. Choose what happens with their livelihood, with what is going to happen with them in the future. Public education isn’t going in the right direction. This is not what I want to see for our district.”
Hill’s comments referred to the universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA), which were expanded by the Arizona Legislature in 2022 and signed into law by then-Governor Doug Ducey. The program is run under the watchful eyes of Horne at the Arizona Department of Education, and it is rapidly increasing in popularity among Arizonans. In an email communication this past Friday, an ESA Account Holder Liaison wrote that there were now 53,704 Arizona students in this program. That number will continue to grow in the weeks ahead as more parents hear about this program and the opportunities to choose the educational direction for their children.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
