TVUSD Board President Joseph Komrosky Will Face Recall Election

Voters in Temecula Valley Unified School District Trustee Area 4 will soon be asked whether or not they want to recall Board President Joseph Komrosky.

“I’m so excited to share this news with everyone, because this community wants good stable governance,” Julie Geary, outreach coordinator for One Temecula Valley PAC, which launched the effort last summer, said. “This community supports public education, supports teachers, supports students and supports parents that support quality public education for everyone.”

According to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office (ROV), there were 5,273 signatures submitted last month to recall Komrosky. Of those signatures, 4,884 were deemed sufficient by the office. Of the 389 insufficient signatures, Public Information Officer Elizabeth Florer said 90 were duplicates and the remainder were not registered voters.

“We’re happy and relieved that we were able to get at least one of them on the recall ballot,” Jeff Pack, co-founder of One Temecula Valley PAC, said. “We think it shows that this community pretty quickly recognized that there’s a problem at the school board level and it needs to get fixed.”

The TVUSD board now has 14 days to call for a recall election. If they do not, the ROV will take control of setting the date and will call for the election, which will only ask voters whether or not they want to recall Komrosky from his seat on the board, within five days.

Once a date for the election is set, Geary said the PAC will again mobilize its hundreds of volunteers to get out the vote in an effort to recall Komrosky and remove him from office. Hours after the announcement that the petition effort was successful, the PAC had in place a new website to share information about the election.

In a statement to The Record, Komrosky called the effort “asinine,” and said he would be urging voters in his trustee area to vote “no.”

“I have fulfilled my campaign promises to my constituents and have done exactly what I was elected to do,” he said. “I’ve represented the voices in my community by fighting for traditional family values, such as parental rights. 

“As TVUSD board president, I will continue to fight for you and your children’s educational rights,” he continued. “Moreover, I will rigorously seek out and stand against any evil such as pervasive obscenity, vulgarity, pornography, and erotica here at TVUSD. I will continue to resist these harmful things with every ounce of my being.”

Also supporting Komrosky was Board Clerk Jen Wiersma who said in a statement to The Record that he has “made promises that he has kept.”

“He’s led us to a strong, new superintendent, advocated for parental rights, banned the lens of critical race theory and sexually explicit material in the classroom while prioritizing the American flag on our campuses,” she said. “I’m confident the community will support him when they hear the rest of the story.”

If voters decide to recall Komrosky, the board will have the option to appoint another member to the board until the November general election in which the voters will decide who they want to fill the remainder of the seat’s term.

“I think, in the end, our community is going to be better for this,” Geary said. “We’re going to be more informed voters, and we’re going to really make sure that we put in positions of power, that are doing it for the right reasons — for students.”

The news comes a little more than a month after Board Member Danny Gonzalez resigned from the board. The board has stated it intends to appoint someone to fill that seat until November, when voters will decide who will fill the seat for the remainder of Gonzalez’s term.

“The people of Temecula have spoken,” Board Member Steven Schwartz said. “The people of Temecula have made a decision that they don’t want Mr. Komrosky on the school board anymore, so I guess it’s going to go to a recall election.”

Schwartz said the board had not yet received any information about its role in the election, but said he expected that guidance to come in the next week.