An Open Letter to Candidate Sonja Shaw, Educational Reformer

By Christy Lozano

(Editor’s note: Sonya Shaw is an educational reformer and the frontrunner running to become the Superintendent of Instruction of California. She will be speaking Friday and Saturday in Santa Barbara County: see flyers below for more information.)

Dear Sonja,

I’m Christy Lozano — a 19-year classroom teacher in Santa Barbara Unified School District, Air Force veteran, mother, and two-time candidate for County Superintendent of Schools. In 2022 I qualified for the ballot and won a court fight to stay on it. This year, the same county registrar – Joseph Holland – who accepted my paperwork four years ago refused it outright, citing an “invalid” administrative-services credential that a judge had already ruled valid.

That single decision demonstrates a powerful barrier in California public education that you will face, should you win in the November general election: a self-protecting wall purpose-built to keep reformers out and insiders safely inside.

You already have an admirable platform. You want to cut wasteful bureaucracy, restore high academic standards in reading, writing, and math, protect Title IX and girls’ sports and privacy, give parents a real seat at the table, and support excellent teachers instead of shielding the insiders who fail them. Bravo. Failed government education throughout the county of Santa Barbara demonstrates why those policies are urgent.

Some of the bricks in this wall of obstruction include taxpayer-funded political consultants, a radicalized teachers union, and taxpayer funding of progressive non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Each one builds on and reinforces the other to negate any real academic progress.

The Political-Consulting Racket

For more than a decade the Santa Barbara County Office of Education – led by Superintendent Susan Salcido – has paid former State Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s firm, Capitol Advisors LLC, $3,000 a month — nearly half a million taxpayer dollars since 2013 — for “political consultation.” That kind of money does not help kids learn. It helps incumbents stay in power courtesy of taxpayer funds deposited in former politicians’ pockets.

Radicalized Teachers’ Union

The Santa Barbara Teachers Association and its selective protection collected more than $18,000 in dues from me over 18 years. Yet it protected teachers later fired in million-dollar sexual-abuse settlements and stayed silent when I faced retaliation for speaking out to protect children. The same union did nothing while administrators oversaw repeated sexual-abuse cases from 2014 to 2023. Many of those administrators resigned just before multimillion dollar taxpayer-funded lawsuits were brought, and then quietly resurfaced on other districts or, surprise, on this county’s own payroll.

“Progressive” NGOs

Laura Capps — SBUSD board member, County Supervisor, and board member of Planned Parenthood and the Community Environmental Council — has spent years spewing forth public-relations efforts for national progressive causes, including for Soros-backed groups. Once on the school board and now as a County Supervisor, Capps bends over backwards to fund all things progressive. Logic and outcomes be damned. Former SBUSD Superintendent Dave Cash partnered with Just Communities Central Coast (JCCC) to push “equity” and “restorative-justice” programs that distract from basic academics and later drew federal complaints.

Blacklisting of Reformers and Fact Seekers

Millions of dollars were spent throughout Santa Barbara County on JCCC and its toxic, divisive indoctrination programs. A small band of radical NGOs get richly funded.

Those who speak out against them?

Blacklisted.

I saw the blacklist in action. I applied for 26 administrative and teaching positions across Santa Barbara County between February 2022 and March 2025. Zero interviews. Even administrators who once wrote me glowing recommendation letters would not hire me. The message was clear: speak up, and you are excommunicated.

Four Humble Suggestions

Your platform already targets bureaucracy and insider protection. Given my first-hand experience, I humbly suggest adding four more. Each one rests on existing authority in the Education Code and the powers of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Powers I hope you will wield with conviction and wisdom when you are sworn in 2027.

First

Direct every county office of education to post all consulting contracts over $25,000 on a public dashboard updated monthly, including the full unreduced contracts. The Superintendent of Public Instruction already has broad oversight and transparency authority under the Education Code.

Second

Direct the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to adopt and publish a transparent, statewide checklist for reviewing administrative-services credentials, applied equally to every applicant. This ends the selective enforcement I, and other reformers, have experienced.

Third

Mandate independent, routine compliance audits of how districts and county offices handle child-abuse and Title IX reports, with clear career and financial consequences for administrators who shuffle problem personnel instead of removing them.

Fourth

This one is critical — require full public disclosure of all contracts and payments between school districts, county offices, and third-party NGOs (especially those involved in equity, DEI, SEL, or social-justice programming). Direct the Department of Education to review these expenditures in annual audits for compliance with state academic priorities and prohibitions on using public funds for ideological indoctrination.

California spends more per pupil than almost any state in the country. Fewer than half our kids read at grade level. Florida, Texas, Tennessee –states the California elites love to mock – have left us behind on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, graduation rates, and parent satisfaction. They did it by choosing real reforms: clearer standards, stronger parental rights, less bureaucracy, and no protection for insiders or failing administrators.

Sonja, you are fighting for families and their students, not the elite political class, the unions, or the NGOs. I saw the dark edifice of all these bricks piled up high: the thought control, the dark sarcasm in the classroom…. California deserves a world-class, dynamic, and highly functioning system of education, not state-sponsored indoctrination camps.

I, and millions of other Californians, will come out to support you in this Primary and in the General Election in November. Let us help you remove the bricks that protect a corrupt and failed government education system.

Together, let us tear down this wall.

Sincerely,

Christy Lozano

Santa Barbara, California

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