2FAG6OTS – Redwood High School – Visalia Unified School District

August 1, 2026

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How the Redwood High School Senior Picture Event Became An International News Story, And How The Visalia Unified School District Responded.

Thursday, February 12, 2026, was Senior class picture day at Redwood High School, in Visalia. An incident at that photo shoot would blow up social media, and garner world-wide attention. As members of the senior class were arranging themselves on bleachers for a panorama photo, a group of ASB members were on the side of the gym, getting ready to take their place on the front two rows, dressed in white T-shirts with letters printed on them, to spell out “ALWAYS LEGIT CLASS OF 2026”.

Unfortunately, about ten students took the opportunity to spell out something else, while the adults in the room were distracted. They arranged themselves to spell out the homophobic slur, “2FAG6OTS”, and quickly posted them to social media. The resulting storm hit almost immediately.

The following post details the events as they occurred, based on the information provided to me by Visalia Unified School District after a public records request made on April 17, 2026. After waiting several months for the information, I received the final document dump on July 27, 2026. There are many records not released due to confidentiality laws (which is completely understandable) and “attorney work product privilege”. This blog is based on the released documents, and therefore will not reflect all of the relevant information regarding the incident. This, however, is what we have.

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Mt. Whitney High School – Oak Tree status

July 21, 2026

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On Tuesday, July 21, 2026, the Visalia Unified School District held a meeting in the Mt. Whitney High School library, regarding expansion plans for the campus. Dominate in the minds of many at the meeting was the fate of several large oak trees.

One is dedicated to the “winningest coach in Pioneer history”, Douglas P. Rudolf, with a water fountain (his mantra was “hydrate!”) and sitting area created around the large oak tree. The proposed building you see in the lower left of the image above will sit where the tree is now. The other trees seen in the first picture also stand in the proposed building’s footprint. The alumni and general community did not like that idea. VUSD held a meeting to do damage control.

The lower building is new construction. The building above it is currently the administration building (and some classrooms on the second level, at least when I went there in 1972-1976), and is slated to be demolished and a new building put in it’s place. Several other oak trees are in the construction zones.

When word got out, the uproar was immediate. School staff, the wider Visalia community, and Mt. Whitney alumni (class of ’76 for me) let it be known destruction of that one specific tree was a non-starter, and the loss of the other trees was concerning, as well. They demanded changes to the plans. VUSD sent the Superintendent to try and smooth the ruffled feathers. If his words end up being the facts, it might have worked.

Superintendent Kirk Shrum said in the meeting that the District recognized the importance of the tree(s), and every effort would be taken to protect them. Action at the next Board of Trustees meeting is to hire and pay the architect to begin designing the new buildings, including their placement on the Mt. Whitney campus. The architect will be studying the design of the building(s), utilities, and the trees when designs begin. Placement of the building(s) may be able to be adjusted to protect the trees.

The next steps are to analyze the grounds, do the environmental studies, and determine the exact features of the buildings. Staff and committees will work on the plans, and Shrum insisted the preservation of the tree(s) would be a driving focus.

But.

If they can’t make it work any other way (according to them), the trees will come down.

(Removing optimist’s hat, putting on cynic’s hat)

I hope the words spoken at the meeting are what come to pass, and the school’s newest buildings can be built without destroying these ancient giants. I’m concerned that lip-service will be paid to their preservation, and at the last possible moment it will be determined that they “have” to be removed. It would be a great loss to the community.

The Mt. Whitney Yearbook is “The Oak”. It would be a shame if there were no more of them on campus after this project is completed in four or five years.

Tulare County GOP Lies in political post

July 21, 2026

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Screenshot

Tulare County’s Republican party is taking a page right out of Donald Trump’s playbook: Lie about your opponents. Why would they do that?

Here are some reasons.

One big one is they are desperate for someone to run against a popular City Council member, Emmanuel Hernandez Soto, and are trying again to smear him with lies. Back in September, they tried to run Soto off the council by saying he was “sympathizing with those who justified the assassination of Charlie Kirk”. That, of course, is a lie. Here’s what really happened.

I wrote a Facebook post, in which I said the following:

I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy to spare for one particular victim out of the hundreds that will be injured by guns today in the United States. Many of them will die from their wounds. Most are innocent of any crime, and are victims of the easy availability of guns in this country.

Charlie Kirk may die because of the hate he fed our country. He has consistently attacked various communities, spreading lies and hatred. It’s not surprising to me that someone finally broke, and fought back.

Violence is only acceptable to me in immediate self-defense, but that’s never really been what this society has taught its members. The easy availability and glorification of guns has turned what in the past would have been fistfights into shootings.

Whether Kirk lives or dies, he’s now a martyr for the christo-fascists and Christian nationalists. They won’t take the lesson that hate breeds violence, they’ll go after the same minority groups they always have, but with more fervor than ever before.

In the next hours, claims will rocket around the internet that the shooter was gay, or transgender, or an illegal alien, or an atheist, or an Islamic terrorist, or…

Now we wait. Will Kirk live or die? Will the shooter be caught? What were their motivations? How did they acquire the weapon?

The only ones I really feel sorry for are his children. They don’t understand why this happened to their daddy. They don’t deserve this pain.

Soto “liked” my Facebook post. Desperate to get another Republican on the Visalia City Council, the local GOP jumped. They tried to skew my post to mean I was justifying the murder of Kirk (it wasn’t an assassination – Kirk wasn’t that important), and by “liking” my post, Soto was justifying it, too. Of course, that’s not what I said, and that’s not what it meant.

That didn’t stop the Republicans of Tulare County. Ten people got up and spoke at a City Council meeting on September 15, 2025, strong in their performative outrage at Soto. They called for his resignation. He did not resign.

Their post claims Soto “consistently votes against District 4’s best interests”. They then claim he voted against Chik-Fil-A and Sam’s Club, but did not provide the dates for those votes.

They really shouldn’t open the “District 4’s best interest” can of worms, though.

Checking the minutes available on the City’s website as of publication date, Soto’s record in the last 71 votes show him voting with the majority 60 times. He voted “NO”, or voted “YES” with the minority, 3 times. He was absent (for his wedding) for 11 votes. (these are total votes, not number of council meetings)

Soto votes with the majority at just under 85% of the time.

If Tulare GOP wants to claim he “consistently votes against the city’s and District 4’s best interests”, they need to admit so do all of the other Council members.

But, as is the case with MAGA and the GOP, facts don’t matter. Tell the lies, because nobody in the base will check what you say. The only priority is to get someone they think of as “liberal” off the council, and fill that seat with a conservative they can control. They can’t control Soto, and that frosts them.

If you live in District 4, vote Soto this November.

VUSD Public Records Request – update

July 16, 2026

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On April 17, 2026, I filed a Public Records Request with the Visalia Unified School District. You can read the request and the reasons for it (the “f-word” incident at Redwood High School) here. On April 27, I got a response, which is covered here.

They indicated they’d respond by May 18, 2026. At that point, they informed me they DID have “responsive records”, and would provide further by June 17, 2026. On June 17, 2026, I got an email with some information requested in the PRA request, and informing me the date was pushed to July 17, 2026, for further response. (I’m sensing a pattern here.)

Well, it’s July 16, 2026, and I just received this email:

Response – 2026-07-16 Correspondence to Jim ReevesDownload

Everybody’s on vacation, so they need another week. New target date: July 23, 2026.

Don’t hold your breath.

Tick tock tick Flock

July 13, 2026

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Visalia Police Department Public Records Request – update

On April 19, 2026, I posted “What the Flock?“, my first entry about the proliferation of Flock Automated License Plate Readers in Visalia, California.

On April 24, 2026, I posted “Well, Flock Me!“, about a nearby community (Merced, California) disabling their Flock ALPR system after problems with unauthorized access were discovered. On that same day, I filed a Public Records Request with the Visalia Police Department, about Visalia’s recent installation of Flock cameras. The City had ten days to respond.

On May 5, 2026, I posted “Flock you later“, where the City of Visalia takes advantage of a 14 day extension to provide the requested documents.

On May 11, 2026, I posted “Flock the Lawyers“, wherein the City informs me they have to run it past the lawyers first, and they were targeting June 1, 2026 for release of the documents.

On May 27, 2026, “Flock Me A Little Bit” is the next chapter, in which the City is initially refusing to provide some of the requested documentation, since I was requesting the images in the system of a particular license plate. My license plate. I sent them a copy of my vehicle registration. The next target date for complying with my request was June 20, 2026.

On June 29, 2026, I posted to Facebook, tagging both the City of Visalia and the Visalia Police Department, that they were nine days past their own due date for information. That was at 1pm. By 3pm, I received a “supplemental response to your public records request”, via email. This response stated “The attached document shows the result of a Department audit searching for any monitoring and investigating activity for JJRJR. No data exists.” Except that wasn’t what I asked them to provide. I had no reason to suspect the Police Department deliberately did a search for my license plate, for whatever reason. What I asked for was every instance of my plate being recorded by the system. Those are two different things. They are not going to convince me that my plate has never been recorded by their system.

In that response, they also moved the date again. More information was supposed to be available July 20, 2026.

On July 10, 2026, I received this letter, and a link to a DropBox file with audit logs.

2026.07.10 RB Ltr to J.ReevesDownload

There are tens of thousands of pages (PDF file pages) in response to this part of my request. In case the link in the letter doesn’t work, you can see them at my Dropbox, at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6u6l4w0jwe54w6y1fvllu/AAZ4mAaSF8XPUJfqUpd2lwo?rlkey=iuqasfx1t6r8hhwgz02h36us1&st=qkgkdqht&dl=0

They state “The Department’s staff is continuing its diligent search and review of requested records. The Department’s staff members estimate they will be able to supplement this response on or about August 20, 2026, earlier if able.”

Tick tock tick Flock

Fresno County Board of Supervisors issues June Resolution

July 6, 2026

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(From left: Luis Chavez, Nathan Magsig, Buddy Mendes, Brian Pacheco, Garry Bredefeld)

It was NOT to recognize June as Pride month.

The ongoing culture wars in the Central Valley continue, with this front in Fresno County. With the ascension of Bredefeld to the position of Board Chair, there’s been a full-on assault directed at the LGBTQ+ community. With a move to prevent the county library from taking part in any June Pride month activities, and directing staff to research privatizing the county library system, Bredefeld and his fellow conservatives have been doing everything in their power to marginalize the LGBTQ+ population of their county.

On June 16, 2026, they passed a resolution, recognizing June as Traditional Nuclear Family Month in the County of Fresno. The selection of June was deliberate, as it is traditionally and legally recognized as LGBTQ+ Pride Month in the United States. Here’s the resolution as passed:

Revised Resolution No. 26-249Download

That’s not the resolution Bredefeld proposed, however. This is:

Resolution_as_originally_proposedDownload

In Bredefeld’s original resolution, there was a direct attack on the LGBTQ+ community:

WHEREAS, children are now under attack from anti-family groups that make
every effort to indoctrinate children into the LGBTQ lifestyle, promote genital mutilation,
abortion practices and Transgender ideology without parental knowledge or consent;
and

Calmer heads on the Board got him to accept a change, removing that paragraph, and replacing it with this:

WHEREAS, single mothers and fathers, grandparents, foster parents, and those
parents that have joint custody of their children are critically important to raising healthy children and are recognized for their sacrifice, hard work and devotion to their families and children; and

While the hate directed specifically at the queer community was removed, the resolution was still passed, 3-2, Chavez and Pacheco voting NO.

Expecting a furor of comments directed at his resolution, Board Chair Bredefeld restricted public comments to 15 minutes for those opposed to the resolution, and 15 minutes for those in support, with each speaker limited to one minute. Most government bodies schedule 3 minutes per speaker for public comments. While legal, it does not reflect well on any government official to be seen limiting the public’s ability to speak on a matter they consider important.

The conservatives in the Central Valley (see Porterville City Council and their recent one minute ‘oral communications’ limit) are still working diligently to undermine the progress the LGBTQ+ community has made in the past decades. Those opposed will continue to speak out, and remind them that their views are not the “one true way” many insist be imposed on others.

June remains Pride Month, no matter what the Fresno County Board of Supervisors say.

I hope your Pride Month was joyous. Happy Pride!

A Tale Of Two Tan Suits

July 5, 2026

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Just because the picture of Reagan popped up on a Facebook feed of mine today, we jump into the Wayback machine and visit 2014 and 1982. In both years, the President of the United States wore a tan suit.

One received no flak about his choice of suit.

The other was roundly chastised by right-wing pundits for disrespecting the office of the Presidency.

It’s almost as if it wasn’t actually about the tan suit.

The big difference? There was no Fox News in 1982.

Tulare County Board of Supervisors Public Records Request – final update (Proposition 50)

June 30, 2026

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On October 14, 2025, the Tulare County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution expressing Tulare County’s stand against Proposition 50, the ballot measure before California voters to redraw Congressional district boundaries. (The proposition passed in the November, 2025 election at 64.42% in favor.)

On June 5, 2026, I became interested in who requested this item be brought forth before the Board of Supervisors, and filed a Public Records Act request. To it’s credit, Tulare County responded quickly and thoroughly.

In that request, I asked who directed the item be placed on the agenda, and who wrote the suggested resolutions (one supporting the proposition, and one opposing it). After wading through a bunch of emails, and numerous copies of the same documents providing background (everyone seems to forward responses with the attachments), it became relatively clear.

Supervisor Vander Poel, in an email to the Board of Supervisors Chief of Staff, Israel Sotelo, on September 29, 2025, said, “I was approached this weekend regarding Tulare County’s position on Proр 50. I noticed Kern County took a position recently. Can we get an agenda item set for mid October to consider the same?”

On October 14, the item was on the Board agenda, with two drafts presented. One in support of the proposition, and one opposed.

Staff researched the issue, with emails flying fast and furious from hither and yon as they worked on Vander Poel’s request.

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Dragon update 2026

June 29, 2026

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Jim’s Dragon Lair (Gemini AI)

Did you know I raise dragons? Crazy, huh? I’ve talked about them before, in previous blogs. “Here Be Dragons“, “Rainbow Dragons at Pride Visalia?“, and “Dragon Update“. Check them out.

The issue with them today is food costs. Yikes! The Purina Dragon Chow I usually get them has jumped in price. I buy in bulk, so it’s been a while since my last order, and had a bit of a sticker shock moment when I went to reorder. These lizards are getting expensive! (I at least cut down on home repair costs by moving them to a stone building. No more scorched basement beams, or crispy wall coverings!)

But, they are cute as hell, and I can’t really let them go foraging among the stray dogs and cats in the city, now can I? The occasional opossum or gopher isn’t really a big thing overall, but they don’t seem to be able to smell skunk, and when they bring one of those home, it’s… well, it’s not fun. And yes, I do let them out once in a while to stretch their wings. Even though the underground lair is quite expansive, it’s still not enough to let them really get some exercise in. Good thing they’re as nocturnal as I am! It wouldn’t do to have them seen flying around in broad daylight, now would it?

They are miffed, I must say, to hear about the Visalia City Council gutting the oak tree ordinance. Some of those very old trees make great perches from which to survey their domains. So far, I’ve been able to deflect them from plotting revenge, but as more trees disappear, it might become difficult. I’m thinking I’ll blame the King, as they’re quite enamored with the entire royalty thing, and might see it as his divine right. We’ll see.

I guess I better get my order in, before prices go even higher.

I wonder if Amazon carries Dragon Chow?

VUSD to remove beloved Oak tree(s)?

June 28, 2026

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Mt. Whitney High School, Visalia, California

Social media sites are buzzing with a rumor that the Visalia Unified School District plans to remove one or more Valley Oak trees from the campus of Mt. Whitney High School, to make room for a new building.

Comments are of three types:

  1. They’re a hazard, cut them down.
  2. They can’t cut them down, there’s an Oak Tree Preservation ordinance in Visalia.
  3. Please don’t cut them down, there are so many memories of that/those tree(s)!

My response to the three comments?

  1. Properly maintained, oak trees are seldom a hazard. VUSD certainly has the resources to preserve the trees safely.
  2. The Oak Tree Preservation ordinance was changed last year. See my previous post about the change.
  3. The trees, as evidenced by their size, have been a part of the Mt. Whitney campus for a long time, possibly there even before the school was opened in the 1950s.

I’ve been unable to determine if the rumors are true. I can find no documentation on the VUSD website about plans for a new building on the Whitney campus. The school district has not submitted permit requests to the City of Visalia.

If the rumors are true, and VUSD does plan to remove one or more oak trees, they WILL have to apply to the city, since the revised ordinance still requires government organizations to get a permit. Whether the City will rubber stamp a request from the District for removal remains to be seen.

I’ll be watching this to see what happens. So far, it’s only rumor.

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