So where is Dr. Monárrez going?

You will of course have seen local news that she's been hired by Orange Unified School District in California. The reporting from the California end can be found here. As that says: 

Orange Unified School District serves approximately 26,000 students in the cities of Orange, Villa Park, Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, along with unincorporated areas of Orange County.

The district has 42 sites and cites its enrollment demographics as 57.7% Hispanic, 23.7% White, 9.9% Asian, 2.3% Filipino, and 1.3% Black/African-American (2022).

On a map, the school district looks like this: 

 (I know: we get used to our town lines here in Massachusetts, but I keep trying to say that we're the ones who are actually weird here.)

Thus it is a lot of the mountains, but not running to the coast (and no, not Disneyland!). In terms of where this is in relation to where Dr.  Monárrez was before, you can just see San Bernardino on the map in the upper right.

As the announcement notes, she's replacing Ernie Gonzalez, who resigned in November, having originally been appointed as interim in August of 2023. He was appointed because the then-majority of the school board--a conservative majority--fired their superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen very suddenly over winter break in January of 2023 on a vote of 4-3. Regarding that majority*:

Reflecting sharp divisions in the community, the board flipped in November when Madison Klovstad Miner, a former speech therapist with Santa Clara Unified, defeated 22-year board member Kathy Moffat, by 0.2% – 221 votes out of 61,845 votes cast. Three incumbents, board President Rick Ledesma, who led the dismissal effort, and two who backed Hansen, Kris Erickson and Andrea Yamasaki, won re-election. Ledesma and conservative candidates had run on a “parents’ rights” and complained about masks and school closures during Covid and about classroom instructions on race, critical race theory in particular, and gender.

Parents and others immediately organized a successful recall of two of the members, who lost their seats in an recall election that March. They were replaced by two members who successfully won re-election this past November; as was commented locally: 

Orange Unified recall organizer Darshan Smaaladen said interest in local races has grown since culture wars made their way into school district boardrooms. 

“We have seen greater interest in the high quality and motivation of school board candidates, which is a great thing,” Smaaladen said in a statement to EdSource. “Greater interest equals greater engagement; public schools shine brighter in the light of transparency and truth from this interest.”

In other words, they're among the districts really paying attention now! I know we tend to think of California as a blue state, but, of course, we in Massachusetts should know better. Orange County--the county goes all the way down to the coast, note, so it isn't an exact measure here--went 49.74% for Harris and 47.07% for Trump in the November 2024 election, to give you a sense. 

Clearly a district that really can use someone who is putting the good of students at the center. Luckily for them and for their students, that's just who they're getting.

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*What, you don't follow school board elections in other states? Why not?