California Parents Group Successfully Launches Recall Of Anti-Trans School Board Member

A local parents group, Recall MacDonald, has successfully collected enough signatures for a recall effort of a school board member in Woodland Joint Unified School District in California.

In Woodland, California, a determined group of local parents has achieved a significant milestone: gathering the requisite number of signatures to initiate a recall of school board trustee Emily MacDonald. MacDonald came under fire for making anti-trans comments during a previous school board session, following a vote on a Pride Month resolution. Her subsequent actions, including voting against a measure to reassert the support for all students within the Woodland Joint Unified School District, “including LGBTQI+ students,” further fueled community ire. Galvanized by her remarks, parents mobilized, filled school board meetings to capacity, and launched a campaign to solicit signatures for a recall petition. Laura Brubaker, a key figure in the movement, confirmed the petition's success in an interview with Erin In The Morning, stating that the signatures had been successfully verified and the recall will move forward.

The efforts began after a resolution to recognize Pride month within the school district. Although MacDonald voted for the resolution, she read a series of inaccurate remarks about transgender people immediately afterwards. She described transgender men as “women who live as men” and attributed transgender identities in youth to “social contagion.” Furthermore, she advocated for splitting transgender people off from LGBTQ+ people, expressing disapproval that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans have been grouped together with transgender Americans.”

These comments were met with immediate rebuke from her colleagues. Trustee Kandice Fowler openly expressed her dismay, affirming her solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community: “I’m so disappointed with the comments that were just made, and I stand with my brothers and sisters in the LGBTQIA community.” Board president Rogelio Villagrana also responded, clarifying that “the individual comments of the board members are just that, individual comments,” distancing the board from MacDonald’s views.

Two weeks later, in a packed school board meeting, Brubaker, a parent in the school district, stood and demanded MacDonald’s resignation, stating that speaker MacDonald “seems to have fallen victim to the social contagion of the anti-trans bigotry spreading to state houses and school boards across the country.”

“I am calling for Trustee MacDonald’s immediate resignation from this board. As a member of our school board, you are entrusted to serve all of Woodland students and create an environment that fosters an understanding, self-acceptance, and inclusion. Your remarks betray that trust,” she closed off, raising a folder of 20 names collected in a single evening to kick the recall petition off.

As of November 6th, the names on her list grew to 1,349, far more than the 1,078 required to initiate a recall in the district. That’s also more than the 820 total votes MacDonald received in her last election, Brubaker tells Erin In The Morning. Those names have since been certified, according to Brubaker, meaning that the recall effort will successfully move forward to a vote in March, provided that the government completes the steps necessary for the recall in time.

When asked about how her group achieved the success, Brubaker spoke about the dedication of the volunteers. “We started out with mostly me and a small handful of people canvassing, but soon we built a nice community of other organizations… unions, the Yolo Democratic Party. We had a day with 50 volunteers. One day, 35 people showed up to canvass in the rain.”

The mobilization in Woodland is unique and groundbreaking. Across the nation, Moms For Liberty factions have been active in advocating for anti-trans policies within school districts. In California, defiance of nondiscrimination laws by several school districts has led to harmful measures against transgender students, including bathroom bans and forced outing to parents. The successful recall petition drive in Woodland could signal a viable blueprint for opposing such measures across the state, and could help other groups around the country find motivation to organize as well. This effort represents a moment of pushback against the surge of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that has emerged from local school boards to state legislatures.

Brubaker affirms that the ripple effect is already in motion: "I have had other parents in other parts of the state reach out to me because they also want to do recalls." The initiative is poised to become a closely-watched model for organizations across California, providing them with a potentially effective mechanism to challenge anti-trans candidates on school boards across the state.