Quick Take
Pajaro Valley Unified School District board members will decide at Wednesday night's meeting whether to restrict fellow trustee Gabe Medina from the Pajaro Valley High School campus after he had an argument with the principal late last month.
Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board members will decide at Wednesday night’s meeting whether to restrict fellow board member Gabe Medina from the Pajaro Valley High School campus after he had an argument with the principal late last month.
The agenda item comes after an incident during the Jan. 30 walkouts, when high school students across Santa Cruz County — including at Pajaro Valley High — organized to protest immigration enforcement. Shortly after the students marched for an end to violent deportation tactics, Medina said on social media that he confronted Pajaro Valley High School Principal Todd Wilson.
It’s an escalation of the longstanding tension between Medina, an unapologetic activist who has for months berated PVUSD staff in the name of students of color at school board meetings, and his fellow trustees on the seven-member governing board, now joined by high school staff and teachers who shot back at Medina with a public letter calling out Medina and the Brown Berets for interfering with a student-led protest.
Amid the political demonstration, one group of Pajaro Valley High students walked off campus with two members of the Brown Berets to the Watsonville City Plaza. After Medina attended the action downtown, he went to the school to confront Wilson.
In an Instagram post, Medina said students told him that Wilson said he would discipline them for participating in the walkout. California law protects students’ right to demonstrate in the state’s education code. To get an excused absence for civic engagement, they have to notify the school beforehand.
Medina said he called Wilson a “white supremacist” and “racist,” and Wilson called him an “a–hole,” before Wilson’s administrative staffers stood up to support Wilson and shuffled Medina out of the office.
The school district’s spokesperson, Medina and Wilson didn’t respond to Lookout’s requests for comment for this story.
A group of Pajaro Valley High staff and teachers wrote a public letter to say that students’ plans that day were overshadowed by the Brown Berets (not named in the letter), who came onto the campus with a megaphone. The letter said that, as educators, they must stop short of encouraging students to leave campus, but defended the way teachers and staff supported the rally in the school’s quad and the students’ agency.
“This was taken from them when others came onto our campus with a megaphone, telling students to leave,” the letter reads. “Some of our students left with them, but some thought twice.”
Brown Beret Omar Dieguez told Lookout that students told him they were being prevented from walking out, so he and another Brown Beret went to support them: “We follow the rules. I’m not going to question it if students want support, we’re going to support them in any way we can.”
In Medina’s Instagram video, he accused Wilson of threatening to discipline students and tow their vehicles if they left campus with the Brown Berets, and said he felt compelled to confront the principal. During the video, Medina encourages parents to call for Wilson’s removal from his job.
“He should not be a principal, y’all, right?” he said. “We don’t need saviors. We need people that look like us in these positions, who understand us and the community.”
The staff letter, however, said Medina’s statements and comments don’t accurately portray the school, and that students, staff and administration worked together to respect the students’ need to speak out about immigration.
“We are NOT what Trustee Medina represented of us on his public platforms,” they wrote. “We are an institution with caring adults and passionate students.”
In an Instagram post about the school board’s stay-away letter, Medina said, “The more they come for me, the less credibility they have.”
He also claimed that Superintendent Heather Contreras “ignored the full agenda-setting committee and forced this item onto the agenda by weaponizing our legal team.”
District spokesperson Alejandro Chavez didn’t respond to Lookout’s questions, including who proposed a stay-away letter and why, how long it would be in place if approved, and how it would be enforced.
In the staff letter, Pajaro Valley High teachers and staff said their “community stands together in support of our administration, our students, and their families in an era of gross division and ‘us vs. them’ thinking.”
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