Nothing about your kids without you
Our schools don't raise Glendora's kids. Glendora's families do — and the schools stand beside them.
I'm C.J. Cohick — a Glendora dad, married into a Glendora family, running for the Glendora Unified school board in Area 2.
Mary and I homeschool our kids. And our neighborhood school is still part of our life: it's where our kids learned to ride bikes, and it's part of why our street feels like home. I'm telling you that up front because it's the whole idea of this section in one family: parents are the first teachers. Schools are the partners. When the partnership is honest, kids flourish. When it isn't, trust breaks — and trust is the hardest thing to rebuild.
Parents don't work for the district. It's the other way around.
Most of what's good in Glendora's schools starts at somebody's kitchen table. A parent teaching a kid to tell the truth. To finish what she starts. To treat people right. The school's job is to build on that work, not to work around it. That sounds obvious. But school boards everywhere have gotten this backwards — treating parents like a group to be managed, told things late, or not told at all.
Glendora already settled this question.
In October 2023, this school board faced a simple question: when something important is happening with a child at school, do her parents have the right to know? The board split 3 to 2. And the following election, Glendora voters answered louder than any board vote could: two of the trustees in that majority lost their seats. Not because of a slogan. Because families in this town expect to be told the truth about their own kids. I'm not running to re-fight that vote. I'm running to make sure its lesson sticks: a board answers to the families it serves.
What I will actually do as your trustee:
No surprises.
Parents should hear big news from the district first, not from a Facebook group, not secondhand, not after it's already decided. Whether it's a program change, a safety issue, or something happening with their own child, my standard is simple: if it matters to your family, you hear it early, straight, and from us.
Board meetings a parent can actually follow.
Right now, knowing what the board is about to decide takes a lawyer's patience. I'll push for plain-language agendas and for flagging big decisions before the meeting where they're voted on — so a working parent has a real chance to weigh in while it still counts, not just comment after it's done.
A door in, for every Glendora family.
Thousands of families around us homeschool or use private schools, and our district has things their kids can't get anywhere else. College classes at Citrus. The aviation program. Languages, arts, advanced classes. I'll make sure every family in this district knows those doors are open, because families choosing Glendora schools — a class at a time, a program at a time — is how our enrollment grows and every kid benefits. Strong schools and strong enrollment go together.
Stay reachable after the election.
Candidates knock on your door in the fall. Trustees should still be listening in the spring. I'll hold regular open hours: a table at a coffee shop, once a month, no agenda, where any parent can sit down and be heard. If a board answers to families, it should be easy to find.
The bottom line
Our schools don't raise Glendora's kids. Glendora's families do — and the schools stand beside them. When a district honors that, families trust it, enrollment grows, and kids flourish. That's the whole plan. It isn't complicated. It just takes a board that remembers who it answers to, every meeting, every vote.
"You homeschool. Why should you be on this board?"
Fair question, and I'd rather answer it than let it sit there.
I could send my kids to Glendora Unified. We chose something else for this season. That's not a knock on our schools — it's a fact about our district that nobody on the board has lived from the inside.
If you're a parent with kids in our schools: you deserve a trustee whose loyalty is to the families of this district, not to any faction on the board. I don't have a kid in a classroom whose teacher might read my votes. What I do have is a stake in this town my family isn't leaving.
If you're a teacher or staff member: I'm not coming in to tell you your job is being done wrong. I think our schools are good, and the people in them are why. What I want to bring is help where you're currently getting none — clear district guidance on AI, and a board that stops quietly making your job harder.
And if you're one of the families we've lost: I know why you left. I'd like to be the trustee who gives you a reason to come back, a class at a time.