In race for California's top schools job, a longtime San Diego school board leader faces a conservative counterpart

SAN DIEGO - The November race for California's highest-profile K-12 education job is coming down to the leaders of two school boards - San Diego and Chino Valley - who are essentially political opposites.

San Diego Unified School Board President Richard Barrera, an 18-year veteran of the board that governs the state's second-largest school district, appears set to face off with Chino Valley Unified Board President Sonja Shaw, who made a name for herself and her Inland Empire district by passing anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

In the race for superintendent of public instruction, Shaw was leading comfortably in early primary results, followed by Barrera, who was leading his closest trailing competitor by 10 percentage points in partial election results as of Friday evening. The two are expected to advance to the November general election.

Barrera is a Democrat who leads the board of a school district known for its massive facilities bond program, its friendliness with its teachers union and an ambitious strategy of building homes on district-owned property in order to house its workforce. He's currently the longest-serving member on the board.

Shaw, who is endorsed by the state Republican party, criticizes teachers unions and has drawn statewide attention and legal challenges for her board's policies on transgender students, LGBTQ+ pride flags and library books.

This year's race for California's top education job flew largely under the radar in a primary election dominated by talk of the governor race. In April, preelection polling by the Public Policy Institute of California showed no clear frontrunners in the superintendent race, and a third of voters were undecided.

The primary didn't seem to have any high-profile debates about education policy reform, said University of Southern California education professor Morgan Polikoff. He said he had no idea what most of the 10 candidates stood for, except for Shaw.

Two key factions in California K-12 public education are traditional district schoolsand charter schools, and the two have endorsed different candidates and butted heads in past races. But this year, in a rare case, they agreed on the same candidate - Barrera.

Barrera, who is also an aide to the current state schools superintendent, said he was pleased to see the results were in his favor, considering there was a large field of "experienced, qualified" candidates. Others in the running included current and former state legislators Al Muratsuchi, Josh Newman and Anthony Rendon.

He benefited from having the endorsement and financial support of the powerful California Teachers Association. More than $5.1 million in independent expenditures were made for his campaign, virtually all of it from that union.

Shaw accused the teachers union of trying to buy a win for Barrera and said her lead "shows that voters want change and special interest groups can't buy these seats."

Meanwhile, Barrera said Shaw had the benefit of being one of just two conservatives in a race that had three times as many Democrats.

"It's pretty clear that Republicans voted for her," Barrera said. "But in a general election, that's not going to be a big group of voters."

Barrera, a longtime union ally who has consistently enjoyed labor support in his school board campaigns, has branded himself as the candidate aligned with teachers.

He plans to use the position of the state superintendent to advocate for more public school funding overall. That includes, for instance, advocating for a system that allocates school funding based on enrollment, rather than attendance.

"Our campaign was really driven by classroom teachers, along with parents, students. And what people want, and what people are willing to fight for, is a positive vision for public schools in California that are fully funded, and that are environments that support all of our students," Barrera said.

Shaw, who has a daughter who attends school in her district, has branded herself as a change candidate who advocates for what she calls parents' rights, including to be told if their child begins using new names or pronouns at school.

Her platform is focused on barring transgender girls from playing school sports and sharing locker rooms with cisgender girls, in line with the Trump administration's recent rollback of Title IX enforcement to exclude gender identity protections.

Shaw said her lead shows voters share her dissatisfaction with what she says is inadequate academic performance.

"It's loud and clear that people are showing up, and they don't want status quo," she said.

The state superintendent is technically a nonpartisan post, but the race between Barrera and Shaw is already shaping up to be one focused on partisan politics - not unlike what happened with many local school board races in the years following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's not hard to imagine there will be a million ads on television about trans kids," Polikoff said. "This useless culture war stuff that I think is really obviously a distraction from the purpose of the position - which is improving education through better policy in the state."

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This story was originally published June 7, 2026 at 2:09 AM.