On October 18, the Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) board meeting fluttered with mixed news: controversial and hopeful, happy and upsetting. Though the big-ticket item of the board meeting was the controversial discussion of the “No Deception” Policy, the meeting began with more kind announcements.

The meeting began with the board calling Principal Diana Yarboi to the pedestal and recognizing students who were CVUSD’s 2025 National Merit finalists: Ayala’s very own Ryan Chao (12), Ethan Kim (12), Chloe Mattison (12), and Caden Hong (12), as well as Chino High School’s Alec Enfijian (12). The National Merit Scholarship acknowledges students who’ve acquired the highest scores in the Preliminary Scholastics Aptitude Test (PSAT). According to the official National Merit website, about 7000 out of all 16,000 qualified students nationwide are given a scholarship of $2500. 

“I’m glad to see my hard work pay off so it feels great. I’m very happy because it’s a good achievement,” Ryan Chao (12) said.

The students came around to shake the hands of several board members before President of CVUSD’s Educational Board, Sonja Shaw, stood up and gave a short anecdote about her recent experience visiting Ayala. She spoke about Roy Dorsey, the playground supervisor of Ayala, and appreciated how long Dorsey has been with the CVUSD. 

“He’s like sunshine when you walk in the room and I love going there probably just because I get to see his smile,” Shaw said. “We wanted to honor him because he does this out of the goodness of his heart and he’s there for our students.”

Yarboi also expressed her appreciation for Dorsey and gifted him a box wrapped in gold paper and flowers.

“When Roy started with us he was 60 years-old, 60 plus, so I called him ’60 plus,'” Yarboi said. “I still call him ’60 plus’ today. [But] today I’m going to shame him a little, he’s actually 80 plus.”

The crowd gasped in awe and applauded for Dorsey’s long devoted history with CVUSD before the meeting continued on with the announcement of the PBIS Survey results. The survey results are as follows: 73% of students felt safe at school, 69% felt emotionally safe at school, 72% felt emotionally safe outside classroom, 84% felt physically safe, 76% felt physically safe outside classroom, and 71% felt belonging in their school. This is a 1-3% increase per category in comparison to last year’s results, with the lowest being 64% in feeling emotionally safe in classrooms. 

The board then explained their news goals of the school year. The board wanted to accomplish more development towards Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) Goal Two which aims to connect and engage students at their schools in order to ensure a student’s success. The plan involves further increasing training, coaching and evaluation. They’ve planned 30 district training sessions for staff, 99 walkthroughs for staff, 66 school-site support meetings, and 25 district training sessions.

After declaring their goals of the year, they followed up with the announcement of the state recognition awards. Almost 100% of schools in the CVUSD district were awarded with the highest honor award, Platinum, including Ayala. CVUSD was recognized as #1 in the county for most Platinum awards, and #2 in the county for the highest percentage of Platinum awards within a district.

After the board announcements, public discussion began in the non-agenda category. Forty-six attendees came to openly discuss their concerns at the podium. Though the period was dedicated to non-agenda items, people began discussing the “No Deception” policy without explicitly naming it.

The policy sparked controversy in LGBTQ+ communities as its proposed language implicates teachers to report students’ sexual orientation to parents. While the policy’s stated goals were to encourage transparency between student and parent, this transparency felt too revealing and ambiguous for some students who came to protest the policy’s language. The Chino Valley Students 4 Change (CVS4C) came to the CVUSD board meeting with LGBTQ+ flags and a picket-sign that read the group’s name. 

“[The policy] is unnecessary. I think it paints the picture that somehow teachers are conspiring to keep things from parents, which is just not the case,” CVS4C member Jeremiah Park (12) said. “The board and the policies that they promote capitalize on that concern rather than actually address it. They capitalize it for the sake of their political agendas, so I see that the ‘No Deception’ policy is overall petty because there’s already no deception in schools. It’s mostly an attempt to further capitalize on a made-up fear.”

Each attendee who applied for time on the podium was permitted one minute to speak on microphone. Students of CVS4C also discussed their concerns about the policy’s clarity and how it may affect individual students. In their opposition were the claims of how the policy aligns in favor of conservative Christian values or how the policy builds trust between student and parent.

Throughout the meeting, there were several moments of disruptive behavior: there was a woman wearing a shirt labeled “Satan” which led to several loud whispers in the crowd and a large dismissal-bringing shout that followed the banging of a mallet; there were boos and cackles from both sides; there was another woman who was kicked out for interrupting a person at the podium.

A particularly significant moment involved Shaw demanding a Spanish-speaker discontinue their speech after confiding that she would not vote for Shaw, which she deemed as campaigning. The crowd let out loud and clear disapproval of Shaw’s description of the speaker’s speech as it wasn’t campaigning, but rather mentioning her personal opinion. The meeting proceeded to have a five minute break, filling the room with disappointed chatter.

After Shaw returned, the meeting resumed its activity. After the “No Deception” policy discussion period, board members then gave their final remarks on the policy. Many of the members agreed that it would align with CVUSD’s history of transparency and trust, resulting in a favorable vote four out of five approving the policy. 

This decision remains controversial among students and parents, though it can’t be entirely concluded that the whole board meeting was chaotic with the honors and recognitions of student and staff across CVUSD.

CVUSD Board FULL Recorded Livestream of October 17, 2024 Meeting