On Aug. 5, when the Escondido Union High School District board held its monthly meeting, longtime boardmember Carol Durney introduced herself during roll call.
“I was elected to this board in November 2014 as Bill Durney, and reelected in 2018 and 2022,” she said. “This year, I have come out as a transgender woman and I've changed my name to Carol Durney.”
Durney’s coming out has prompted an outpouring of both opposition and support. Last month, she faced calls to step down. Last week, community members waved rainbow flags and wore stickers that read, “We see you Carol.”
She said she’s been overwhelmed by the support.
“Maybe my name changed,” she said at the end of last week’s school board meeting. “But that doesn’t change me.”
The journey to last month’s school board meeting began in April 2023. Durney had a stroke. It took out part of her vision on her right side.
“But it also kind of changed my attitude,” she said. “It kind of woke me up and said, ‘Yo, you better start living. This could have killed you.’”
It also broke her life-long habit of biting her nails. Durney’s wife invited her to get a manicure and pedicure with her. That’s where Durney first tried nail polish.
“I put on nail polish and lit me up,” she said, looking down at her nails, now painted a shiny purple. “It was like magic. I couldn't believe it.”
Durney’s wife died suddenly last year. A month later, while she was cleaning their house, Durney decided to try on a dress.
“And as I put it on, I just completely broke down,” she said. “There was so much joy and happiness and love that I felt just putting on clothes. It was unbelievable what I was feeling.”
She came out to her kids and her church community. She told the school district’s superintendent and her fellow board members. Coming out at the August school board meeting was the logical next step, she said.
Eight of the 10 people who spoke during public comment in August called for Durney to resign from the board.
“You have psychological and mental issues when you want to pretend to be something that you will never be,” said meeting attendee Dran Reese. “You are a man, and I'm sure a fine one. But this is an abomination.”
Rosie Higuera, who leads the North County Republican Assembly, also asked Durney to step down.
“The voters voted for you as a man, and now you have become a fraud trying to become something that you are not,” Higuera said.
Durney said she won’t step down. She plans to run for reelection before her term ends next December.
“I've got my signs from the last time I ran, and I'm going to put a little pink ‘Carol’ over the name ‘Bill’ on the signs and put them back out there,” she said.
Durney is a registered Republican. She led the Escondido Republican Club a decade ago, she said.
“I still have mainly conservative beliefs,” Durney said. “I am definitely not happy with what the current administration is doing, especially with transgender people. But still, I've always been more of a conservative Republican.”
That hasn’t changed just because she’s come out as trans, she said.
“I may look a little different,” she said. “I've got some new experiences that, you know, will help shape my views, but I'm still the same person I was, maybe just a little different.”
This month’s school board meeting was standing room only. The majority of speakers were there to support Durney and to denounce the previous month’s comments.
Patricia Stepanek teaches in the district. She said she asked students what they’d like to tell Durney.
“They said, ‘Tell her, Carol, tell her that we love her and support her. Tell her that we need her there. Not just that we accept her there but that we need her there. Tell her that we need role models of LGBTQ people in power.’ So, Carol, my students, they want you here,” she said.
Durney wiped away tears after Stepanek’s comments.
Some speakers questioned why other school board members didn’t speak up or stop some of the commenters at the August meeting. Heather Smith teaches at Orange Glen High School and leads the gay-straight alliance there.
“As adults, we need to model appropriate behavior and respectful language,” Smith said. “We do not allow hate speech to be used on our campuses. We write referrals if there is hate speech on our campus. Why would we allow it in our boardroom?”
At the end of the meeting, board member Christi Knight said “silence does not mean agreement.”
“I have sat through years working for other elected officials that have been attacked. Horrible things have been said about them and their children and it's horrible to sit by and not be able to say anything or defend them,” Knight said. “This person I have served with for almost 13 years is my friend.”
During public comment, an attendee asked whether Durney’s beliefs had changed. She responded at the end of the meeting.
“I'm still a Republican,” she said. “I didn't become a Democrat because of this.”
Durney left this month’s meeting feeling much better than she had last month.
“There are people from my church there and other churches, but there were also teachers and educators. There were parents speaking up. There were community members, community leaders,” she said. “It was more of a representation of what I think Escondido does support.”
She’s ready to bring the focus back to her priorities for the district: increasing trades courses, improving math scores and giving English language learners the support they need.
“I'm not at the point where I've actually got any kind of ideas about doing anything different,” Durney said. “I'm just looking to get back to the board meetings and not have a whole bunch of people there talking about me. And let's get back to that role of governing.”
By next month’s board meeting, she expects her nameplate in the boardroom to read “Carol.”
