Dear Washoe County School Board Trustees,

We, as a community, are asking that you immediately call for the resignation of Trustee Jeff Church due to the following:

-his deliberate spread of disinformation and lies regarding WCSD and educational funding with the goal to instigate anger and aggression from his followers.

-his racist, homophobic, and transphobic commentary directly at odds with WCSD values regarding diversity.

-the questionable ethics and possible violations of him serving as a Washoe County School Board Trustee while simultaneously threatening to sue the school district himself AND encouraging others to also sue the district in which he serves.  

Jeff Church runs two websites, ‘Watch Dog Jeff’ and ‘Reno Tax Revolt,’ that he uses as platforms to spread dangerous lies and disinformation about our schools and to accuse the WCSD Board of bogus allegations of meeting violations. Recently, images of a letter written by Trustee Church entitled “The ABCs of Saving Our Schools” was sent to those subscribed to his website and email list surfaced to be viewed by the community at large. This letter contains extremely concerning language and overt falsehoods that should not be tolerated by one holding a seat on our Board of Trustees serving our diverse student body and staff. Amongst the concerns of this letter from those signing this petition:

1)     Accuses the WCSD of imposing “Martial Law” and promoting “anti-religious indoctrination, gender identity, mandatory racist indoctrination while our schools fail.”

This commentary is a direct attack on the recently approved anti-racism policy adopted by the WCSD. Rather than celebrate this groundbreaking policy in bridging divides and promoting inclusion and acknowledgement of the diversity in our schools, Trustee Church is spreading the lie that this policy enforces the teaching of ‘critical race theory’ in our schools. This disinformation from Trustee Church was so widespread within our community that Superintendent McNeill had to address this falsehood in her Update from the Superintendent email sent on 4/19/2021. Trustee Church must also remember that in our public schools we respect and value the religious diversity of our students, families, and staff and do not favor or promote one religion over another. In addition, both our staff and student body have members belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community who deserve to be recognized, feel safe, and be respected within our public school district.

Later in this letter written by Trustee Church, he makes further dangerous commentary on gender identity that creates the impression that our trans students are a threat to other students, primarily our female students, and our community. This is hate speech that demonizes a protected class of students and promotes violence against some of our most vulnerable children within our schools—students who are most often the victims of violence, not the perpetrators. In addition, given the executive order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation signed into law by our current president, our public school district has the duty to uphold these policies and take steps to acknowledge ALL members of our diverse staff and student bodies while protecting them from discrimination and harmful subjugation.

2)     Accuses the board of “gagging” Trustee Church upon his election, not allowing a comprehensive media presence, and alleges that the board has oppressed the free speech of those disagreeing with WCSD by the temporary suspension of in-person board meetings and active public comment.

The fact that Trustee Church has accused the board of “gagging” him is simply untrue. Trustee Church himself has made statements about the hours in length the board meetings can go, and in response the board leadership team removed Board Reports from the meetings for the sake of saving time and allowing for high priority agenda items to be the focus. In addition, every trustee can share board reports and future agenda requests to Board President Taylor though email—no one is silenced.

Another lie from Trustee Church is that media is denied access. There are reporters from multiple media sites present at every board meeting and media conference from every major local news source. In addition, there is no law requiring the WCSD to invite ALL members of the media, especially if that person or ‘media group’ is not fully recognized as an established member of an actual news source.

The particular false statement mentioned in the first point above regarding “indoctrination” made by Trustee Church uses derogatory language that instigates and encourages the anger driven aggressive behavior that lead to threats of violence displayed by his supporters at the Board Meeting on Tuesday March 30, 2021 resulting in the board being forced to revert to virtual meetings, not only for their safety—but for the safety of staff and students and other attendees from the community that should also be afforded the opportunity to make public comment. It is abhorrent that a fellow trustee board member would use hateful language and lies to encourage this type of behavior from anyone within our community—and then accuse the board of open meeting violations when steps are taken to protect the physical well being of all in attendance of these meetings. Making the decision to move to virtual board meetings was prudent and necessary for the safety of our community, and the meeting itself was still made public through live stream with public comment welcomed by email and in so did not violate any open meeting laws or deny public access.

3)     Trustee Church not only in this letter, but also in an opinion article entitled “The road ahead for Washoe County School District” that he wrote and was published by This is Reno on 11/18/20, continues to spread additional lies regarding testing scores and educational funding.

While Trustee Church often discloses that the average Nevada ACT score [17.9 overall and 18.2 in Washoe] is below the national average score of 20.6—he fails to disclose that Nevada is also one of 12 states in the nation that requires ALL students to take the ACT test whether they plan on attending college or not, which ultimately effects our overall average. In addition, the average Nevada SAT score of 1017 EXCEEDS the national average of 1001. He perpetuates that our children are failing by distorting this testing score information with the goal of turning the community against the district, without offering any concrete solutions as to raising test scores within our district. This is reckless and irresponsible.

In addition, Trustee Church consistently provides false information about educational funding within our state—when increasing educational funding should be a priority for all WCSD stake holders as adequate funding for public education would benefit everyone within our schools and community. He uses scare tactics to promote the idea that our district wants to go after the average person and their tax rates, and often confuses state funding with our district funding—this is extremely problematic that he does not understand the basic state and local funding policies that effect our district and state. Washoe County does NOT have the highest sales tax in the state [with our sales tax providing minimal funding to our school district and our school district having no control of the rate of sales tax] and the allegations he has made regarding the misuse of WC-1 funds when these are specifically ear-marked for capital expenditures and are monitored and audited closely. In addition, he fails to mention that regarding per-pupil spending, that Nevada’s state funding has NOT kept pace and is one of the lowest in the nation. Again, Trustee Church picks and chooses information to scare the community in regard to higher taxes, and inflates actual state and district educational funding in the attempt to convince the community at large that educational funding is not a problem—failing to mention our state ranks 43rd overall, with the quality of education ranked 39th and educational attainment at 44th [https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075

Much of the funding misinformation spread by Trustee Church were also addressed and proven to be false in the most recent WCSD Virtual Budget Forum on 4/7/21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=4nz8LGTvlEU&fbclid=IwAR2tIHTK7BTZMzTxhyzh9LLj88RAkNdvwXw2gnSPUUBMqYS9PRBUpFLwX2E

In addition, here is a counter-opinion article written by Richard Jay also published in ‘This is Reno’ on 11/23/2020 that breaks down the common lies spread by Church on his websites, letters, and articles: https://thisisreno.com/2020/11/i-will-be-the-watch-dog-for-jeff-church-opinion/?fbclid=IwAR2EBPGHICVP-0Gtmof_kPhr1utcfi7Iu9Fg7YE8-pNIWFZizBmwSyeS-Gw

Trustee Jeff Church is not only incompetent--but his lies, hateful rhetoric, and disinformation he intentionally spreads against our schools, educators, students & families, the board, superintendent, and district as a whole make Trustee Church dangerous and unfit for the position he currently holds. We are asking you to immediately call for Mr. Church’s resignation from the WCSD School Board of Trustees.