Earlier this year, Gavin Newsom talked about a “break the glass” plan to protect Democrats if things didn’t go their way in the California election.

He didn’t have to wait long.

King Gavin rushed into action when I finished first in the primary for state superintendent of instruction, becoming the only Republican running for California statewide office to do so.

Newsom and his allies had a plan in place: In case of emergency, strip power from the very office I was running to lead –– an office written into the California Constitution.

Not through the normal legislative process. Not after months of hearings and public debate.

Not by asking California voters.

Instead, Newsom & Co. slipped it into a budget trailer bill, Sacramento’s favorite back-door maneuver, avoiding the normal legislative process and meaningful public scrutiny.

That wasn’t education reform.

It was political self-interest.

Come January, day-to-day control of the California Department of Education, its budget, its curriculum frameworks, and its enforcement of state policy will shift from the independently elected superintendent to an unaccountable bureaucrat appointed by the governor.

The shift comes even after California voters rejected the idea. Four separate times, voters were asked whether the state superintendent should lose independence and answer more directly to the governor. Four separate times, voters said no.

Newsom couldn’t convince voters, so he found another way.

The timing wasn’t subtle. Just weeks after parents delivered a political shock by putting me at the top of the primary results, Sacramento moved to weaken the office before the general-election campaign had even begun.

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If that’s not an abuse of power, what is?

This happened because parents have finally had enough.

California spends roughly $149 billion each year on K-12 education, among the highest levels of spending in America. Yet more than half of our students can’t read, write or do math at grade level.

Colleges are forced to offer remedial courses because too many graduates aren’t prepared for higher education. Families see more bureaucracy, more politics and fewer results.

The pandemic exposed how badly the system was failing. 

Secretive gender policies, political activism in classrooms, and collapsing academic performance convinced countless moms and dads that if Sacramento wouldn’t fix our schools, we’d have to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves.

Parents started showing up at school board meetings. Parents like me started winning elections.

Parents started demanding schools get back to reading, writing and math.

That’s what frightened the political establishment.

Instead of listening, Newsom doubled down on centralizing power.

Instead of respecting the office Californians created, he made it another extension of the governor’s office.

This isn’t about making government work better. It’s about control. It’s about protecting the status quo and a curriculum that increasingly prioritizes political ideology over academic excellence.

It’s about preserving policies that allow schools to facilitate gender transitions behind parents’ backs. And it’s about continuing to put biological males in girls’ sports, locker rooms and bathrooms while telling our daughters their privacy, dignity and fairness don’t matter.

Parents didn’t rise up because Sacramento was producing great results. They rose up because they saw an education system that too often shut them out while putting ideology ahead of their children’s well-being.

I’m running because California’s education system should answer to parents and taxpayers, not political insiders.

Even after Newsom’s maneuver, the superintendent’s office is left with a microphone, the power to investigate, and the ability to convene the public. That is not nothing.

If voters put me in this seat, I will use every remaining tool to shine a light on what Sacramento is doing to our children, demand transparency on academic failure, and keep fighting for the parents who have been shut out and the girls whose privacy has been violated.

We will also challenge this unconstitutional power grab through every legal means available. I have faced Newsom and his allies in court before. It has not ended well for them.

Newsom’s actions have revealed something important.

The moment parents started winning, he changed the rules.

He didn’t trust the voters.

He broke the glass.

California families deserve better than politicians who move the goal posts whenever they’re afraid they’ll lose. They deserve transparent government, accountable leadership and schools that prepare children to succeed instead of protecting the politicians who oversee failure.

And they deserve leaders who don’t use backroom budget deals to accomplish what California voters have rejected four separate times at the ballot box.

Sonja Shaw is president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education and a candidate for California state superintendent of public instruction.