Pastor Tim Thompson is determined to make a difference in the type of education students in California receive by recruiting and supporting conservative school board candidates who are parents.
The school boards in Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, and Menifee have 14 vacancies combined and Thompson is backing 10 candidates who are running.
“This year in particular it's been a lot easier for me to find people to run because parents are more awake to what's going on in government-run schools,” said Thompson, founder of the 412 Church with campuses in Murrieta and Temecula Valley.
412 is a reference to Acts 4:12, Hebrews 4:12, and Ephesians 4:12 in the Bible.
“Our mission is to win people for Christ, disciple them and then send them out to win other people for Christ,” Thompson said.
All of the candidates are parents who submitted a written application in order to become school board candidates backed by the Inland Empire Family Political Action Committee (PAC).
"We had a whole vetting process," Thompson added. "We assigned a team to each person and the team reviewed their social media as far back as they could to see what type of content they post. We hired a private investigator to do background checks on every single one of them."
Thompson launched the Inland Empire Family PAC earlier this year and has been holding fundraisers ever since to reach a financial goal of $250,000.
“Our platform is that the parents are the parents,” he said. “The state is not the parents. The district is not the parents. The parents are the parents. So, we want parents to be advised and consulted with and have the ultimate authority and ultimate choice for what their kids are going to be exposed to while in a government-run school.”
So far, the PAC has collected more than $30,000 in contributions.
“The reason there are 14 open seats is that certain members have resigned and those seats had to be appointed by the existing school board members and whoever got appointed still has to run to keep the seat,” Thompson told the Southern California Record.
Although the election is not until November, Thompson has already begun promoting the 10 candidates.
“We're going to be knocking on doors, doing videos for social media advertisement, in-home meet and greets, public meet and greets and we're also using my social media platform,” he said.