A Southern California school board has become the latest proxy for culture wars brewing across the country after a conservative bloc voted to formally reject a state-endorsed curriculum that would have mentioned gay rights figure Harvey Milk. On Tuesday, a heated Temecula Valley Unified School District board meeting dissolved into shouts and jeers as parents, teachers, and community members confronted one another over a three-paragraph mention of Milk in supplemental materials for students in grades one through five. The controversy erupted in May when conservative school board members first rejected mention of Milk. The Temecula school board president, Joseph Komrosky, who has called Milk a "pedophile," said he has instructed the district to reject any materials shipped from the state. California law requires that public school districts have enough textbooks for each student and that social studies curricula provide information on the roles that Americans from diverse backgrounds have had in shaping history. The school board has not approved replacement learning materials after rejecting state-endorsed curricula. Turning school boards into surrogates for broader culture war battles is part of a familiar playbook deployed by conservative groups, which have focused on filling school boards with ideologically aligned members and clocked dozens of wins last fall. #Queer Up Education