BHUSD’s 2026 Board Race Has Gone Completely Off the Rails

Written By BHUSD Watch

In 2022, Judith Manouchehri had sixteen endorsements from Beverly Hills community leaders supporting her first Board of Education run.

Three weeks out from the 2026 election, not a single one of these sixteen former supporters has re-endorsed her, and at least five of them are openly endorsing her opponents in an effort to oust her from the Board.

The toxic campaign Manouchehri and her running mate David Cienfuegos are now waging to cling to power despite this exodus of support is proof enough that neither deserve your vote on November 3rd.

(Editor’s note: This article was lovingly crafted without any use of AI whatsoever.)

Introduction

Imagine for a moment that two groups of residents are vying for control of a local school board in an upcoming municipal election, which hinges on two open seats. The race has entered its final stretch, and each group is being given an opportunity to make its best pitch to the community for why its candidates should be elected over the other group's. Importantly, the race is supposed to be non-partisan, so voters are fairly expecting the candidates to avoid mudslinging and keep their supporters focused on relevant substantive issues.

The first group argues that the school district has major problems. Under the board’s watch, student absenteeism is on the rise, behavioral and academic standards are being watered down, reports of racism and bullying are rampant, budgets have been misallocated and squandered, teachers are leaving in protest of their working conditions, and the district's academic rankings have plummeted. The board has also been repeatedly dinged in court for legal misconduct, losing the district vast sums of money in unnecessary defense costs and creating a steady stream of embarrassing headlines, all of which lowers the district’s prestige and distracts from the board’s core mission.

The second group responds by calling the first group a pack of mentally ill Satan-worshipping pedophiles. They publish defamatory videos stalking their opponents’ children (leading courts to grant restraining orders against them), surveil and intimidate their opponents’ canvassers, send hostile campaign surrogates to disrupt their opponent’s events (requiring them to be forcibly ejected), flood local parent chats and social media with contrived, misleading, and outright false personal attacks supported by manipulated photographs, and collaborate with right-wing influencers on viral harassment campaigns whose comments are filled with calls for their opponents to be killed, deported, and/or have their kids taken away by Child Protective Services.

You don't have to imagine it, because that's the current sad state of the race for the BHUSD Board of Education.

Part 1:
How Did It Get This Bad?

“The current school board is appalling. Their lack of civility to each other and to the public is disgusting and it reflects very poorly on the District and our community. It is hardly the example that we want to set for our kids. We need change. There are three candidates who could effect that change: [They do not include Judy Manouchehri or David Cienfuegos.]”
— Dr. Julian Gold, former Mayor of Beverly Hills and former supporter of Judy Manouchehri

On the evening of December 16, 2025, Judy Manouchehri was sworn in as President of the BHUSD Board of Education. Her first official act as President, made less than 10 minutes into her tenure, was to backstab a colleague in open violation of state and local law just to deprive her of a ceremonial title, consequently embroiling the school district in costly public interest litigation that remains ongoing to this day and has required five different law firms to be parachuted in as part of a desperate bid to clean up the mess.

In all fairness, this was Manouchehri being consistent. As the Board’s Vice President in 2025, she similarly excelled at steering BHUSD into one public relations disaster after another:

Things didn’t get much better in 2026:

If you happened to be an attentive parent concerned about these troubling developments, Manouchehri also stifled your ability to openly raise your concerns to the Board by (a) moving general public comments to the end of Board meetings; and (b) eliminating the option to deliver them via Zoom. Her explanation? Forcing people to sit through all-evening Board meetings gives them an appreciation for the trustees’ work. In other words, legal speaking rights are a special treat, and parents don’t get them unless they first spend four to five hours eating their veggies.

Manouchehri’s disdain for critical public feedback is only rivaled by her disdain for critical colleagues, to whom she is frequently intemperate and abusive. In what world does sharing an article about evolving views on standardized testing with your coworkers warrant a response of “You must be out of your goddamn mind to share this bullshit with us”? Presumably the same world in which you kick the same colleague out of a trustee meeting while screaming “puppetmaster” at them so loud that half the district office can hear you.

Manouchehri’s public unraveling has resulted in a total collapse of support from city leadership, none of whom still view her as capable of being an effective Board member. As of the date of this article’s publication, Manouchehri has not managed to retain a single individual endorsement for her reelection campaign. If you navigate to her website and attempt to click on the “Endorsement” page, it literally does nothing.

Try as you might, Manouchehri’s website refuses to show you her endorsements. It might be a tad embarrassed about it.

That is unheard of for an incumbent in Beverly Hills, particularly one running on the (stolen from Donald Trump) slogan of “promises made, promises kept.” If Manouchehri kept the promises she made in 2022, one would think at least one of the 16 endorsements she received in 2022 would be enthusiastic about reendorsing her in 2026.

The problem is that Manouchehri no longer resembles the centrist she ran as in 2022. Instead, she has established a four-year track record of injecting far-right ideology into her work, and both the left and right now clock her as a MAGA politician. A lead apparatchik for the California GOP has labeled Manouchehri’s reelection essential to continue the Republican Party’s dismantling of public schools, which is why Manouchehri now also finds herself categorized under the “MAGA-aligned” label in prominent cautionary California voter guides.

Given the significant harm inflicted in recent years by the political polarization of school boards and the intense public appetite to reverse that pendulum swing, it would not have been surprising to see Manouchehri bleed some prior endorsements perturbed by her ideological drift. To lose all of them, however — and have five Beverly Hills luminaries (Bob Wunderlich, Nancy Krasne, Alissa Roston, Eliot Finkel, and Dr. Julian Gold) explicitly flip support to Manouchehri’s opponents — is something that cannot be so easily explained away.

Not that Manouchehri’s team hasn’t tried. Fellow Board trustee and chief propagandist Russell Stuart has been working overtime to push out gallons of AI slop in defense of Manouchehri’s record, including by castigating every pillar of the community who now opposes Manouchehri as simply being part of the city’s “old guard.” Yet Stuart’s dismissive handwave has only served to highlight the sheer breadth of established Beverly Hills leadership that Manouchehri has alienated with her persistent and unrepentent misconduct.

A partial list compiled by Russell Stuart of the many Beverly Hills civic leaders — including eight (8) BHUSD Board Presidents and four (4) Mayors — backing Kim Lifschitz and Jackie Kruger over Judith Manouchehri, including five who endorsed Manouchehri in 2022 and now support her ouster.

The “old guard” argument also fails on a more fundamental level: Four years ago, Manouchehri and her team were venerating the wisdom of these very same individuals. She told the public that they were both trusted authorities on civic leadership and an appropriate judge of her character, hence why their endorsements should carry weight. By that logic, their refusal to endorse Manouchehri in 2026 carries even greater weight, as they’ve now had an opportunity to see her in action — and they clearly didn’t like what they saw.

Nor can Manouchehri’s team effectively portray this schism as a purely ideological (i.e., left vs. right) disagreement, as that would lead to the absurd conclusion that Beverly Hills is bereft of a single respectable Republican figurehead from whom Manouchehri could seek a substitute endorsement in 2026.

UPDATE: Since this article’s writing, Manouchehri has obtained one solitary endorsement from Lisa Korbatov, a radioactive “Trump crony” who singlehandedly cost BHUSD millions of dollars unsuccessfully fighting the now-widely celebrated Metro line extension and whose husband is in the Epstein files. If this is the best — indeed, only — endorsement that Manouchehri can get for her 2026 campaign…yikes.

What Manouchehri is actually suffering from is an earned reputation for pervasive toxicity. Her practiced congeniality gives way to a viciousness behind closed doors that has repelled a broad swath of our city’s stakeholders, severely impairing her ability to be an effective representative of our schools in any forum.

Faced with this predicament, Manouchehri’s reelection strategy now relies on three things: (1) inflating her accomplishments, (2) tapping into culture war, and (3) destroying any pretense of civility in the race by overseeing a campaign of smears, personal attacks, and incessant harassment of her opponents.

Each is worth examining in turn.

Part 2:
Lies, Damned Lies, and (Judy’s) Statistics

The data tells the story: Less than a decade ago, Beverly Hills High School was ranked the 105th best high school in California (according to SchoolDigger) and 771st nationally (according to U.S. News & World Report). As of today, it’s 402nd in the state and 2,184th nationally. Confronted with these dismal statistics, the current Board gambled on a bloodbath to reorient the district, ultimately losing a superintendent, four principals, six assistant principals, four assistant superintendents, two executive directors, and an athletic director all in the space of two years.

While BHUSD’s shakeup has yet to raise the district’s statewide or national rankings, Manouchehri is keen to point out that these evaluations lag by two years, such that the latest USNWR figures only take us through 2024. To appropriately grade Manouchehri, she asks that we consider unverified and self-selected internal BHUSD data, which does show modest gains in certain areas (while intentionally burying unflattering statistics like our declining graduation rate). Yet even this cherry-picked data ultimately collapses when given proper context.

Take the claimed jump in BHUSD’s standardized testing scores, for instance: 4% in English language arts, 5% in mathematics, and 9% in science. While positive, these figures represent a minority of the data crunched by USNWR to calculate rankings, and the increases are nowhere near sufficient to buoy BHUSD’s tumbling position on the charts, as we are not only failing to keep pace with less-resourced neighboring school districts, but with our own 2019 statistics. The same is true of our AP scores, which increased by only 4% while the nationwide increase was 19%. Both increases are largely attributable to the College Board’s 2022 rescoring of nine subjects. Manouchehri is touting that BHUSD successfully jumped its racecar at the starting line while everyone else is already on their second lap.

The claims regarding BHUSD’s dashboard metric satisfaction, attendance rate, and college applications are even shakier. The five dashboard metrics subject to a “meets standard” designation are 100% self-reported, so Manouchehri is bragging about the district giving itself a passing grade. The 95% daily attendance rate, meanwhile, papers over a 12.8% chronic absenteeism rate (increasing to 37.5% for long-term English language learners). And while college applications may have risen by 37%, acceptances have increased by only 6%, meaning our students are mostly just hemorrhaging application fees.

At bottom, Manouchehri’s show-and-tell presentation is akin to anamorphic pavement art: seemingly impressive at first, but it requires that you only examine her work from one specific angle. Step to the side even a little bit, and the illusion is shattered. “BHUSD By the Numbers” thus only functions as a credit to Manouchehri if you’re willing to stipulate to four things:

  • First, ignore the entire first half of Manouchehri’s tenure on the Board that contributed to our current statistical slump, in which she fails to identify any dissent she voiced or instances where she broke away from the Board’s prior governing direction.

  • Second, accept Manouchehri’s credibility in vouching for internal BHUSD data that has not been vetted by any external authority, but is instead being strategically leaked by an incumbent trying to reverse a prevailing narrative.

  • Third, accept Manouchehri’s claim of responsibility for the alleged turnaround in student scores despite failing to identify any specific changes she championed in the district that ostensibly contributed to said turnaround.

  • Fourth, ignore that even if the turnaround is real and attributable to her work, it represents a negligible increase for purposes of our rankings, particularly when comparable schools are showing much greater improvement.

And yet even if all these stipulations are granted, even if all the statistics pan out, even if BHUSD is genuinely on the ascent, it still wouldn’t be enough, because Manouchehri has presided over the most dysfunctional Board in living memory. A handful of academic metrics ticking up during her tenure would neither justify nor excuse the damage she has otherwise done to the institution she oversees. Manouchehri is not a governance savant in possession of once-in-a-generation talent. There’s nothing magical about her prescriptions. Beverly Hills is a smart, educated city filled with smart, educated people with all the funding and resources we could possibly need. There is simply no reason to accept a petty tyrant as the price to pay for marginal improvement.

It is for this very reason that academic improvement has not been at the forefront of Manouchehri’s true reelection pitch. It does too little to distinguish her from her opponents, the immediate yields are unimpressive, and nobody likes having to tell voters that their accomplishments won’t be capable of recognition until USNWR catches up in two years’ time. This has led Manouchehri to search for other areas of advocacy that yield more immediate dividends.

Which brought her to culture war.

Part 3:
What’s Zionism Got To Do With It?

Beverly Hills is estimated to be about 70% Jewish. One could hardly imagine a community in which there is more consensus about the need to protect Jews against the threat of antisemitism. One way to accomplish that is to be diligent about not conflating inflammatory geopolitics with the broadly-agreeable goal of ensuring Jews are never attacked for their religious or cultural identities. One way to not accomplish that is by using our students as unwitting props in a raging debate over foreign policy, which Manouchehri already attempted once to disastrous consequences. So why does she appear to be doubling down on that failed strategy?

In short, because tapping into tribalism is easier than doing a good job.

Enter the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (“ICAN”), founded in 2018 to “advocate[] for unequivocal support for Israel and strengthening the relationship between the U.S. and Israel in the scientific and economic sectors, sustainable development, and cybersecurity,” as well as “advocate[] for legislation that prevents actions intended to delegitimize Israel by those in the BDS Movement. “ What does any of that have to do with operating a local school board? Well, according to ICAN, school boards can be the first stepping stones for “politicians who advance anti-Israel agendas without organized opposition until they reach positions of major influence.” Yet rather than seek to remove such issues from our schools so they can singularly focus on their mission of educating children, ICAN wants to pull an Uno reverse card and instead have the Board serve as an incubator for pro-Israel politicians to similarly ascend the ranks of state and federal government. As of earlier this year, ICAN has explicitly teamed up with the California Republican Party for this very purpose.

Not coincidentally, ICAN is the only endorsement Manouchehri received in time to include on any of her political advertisements, and the one she continues to hang her hat on today. If the goal is to get partisan politics out of our schools, supporting a candidate with exclusively partisan backing is an odd way to go about it.

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with being backed by a pro-Israel organization — Manouchehri’s opponents in the Board race, Kim Lifschitz and Jackie Kruger, are both supported by Democrats for Israel, whose endorsement questionnaire is largely identical to ICAN’s. The difference is that Lifschitz and Kruger have over a dozen individual endorsements and four organizational ones. Because their base of support is well-rounded, they need not focus on attempting to out-Zionist their competition in order to be compelling candidates, which is an important distinction given the fact that BHUSD is a public, secular school district. Nor do they need to weaponize their Jewish faith for such a cynical purpose.

Manouchehri, as of right now, does not have that luxury. Her candidacy is defined by her ICAN endorsement. On her doorhangers, ICAN takes up about as much space as Manouchehri’s own name. She can’t even wish people a good Yom Kippur without shoehorning it in. And we have already seen the chaos wrought when she clumsily attempts to make Zionism a centerpiece of her school board advocacy:

Voters should not expect any better from Manouchehri going forward. To this day, she and ICAN champion her handling of the district’s gutted antisemitism resolution as though it were something to be proud of, failing to disclose that it necessitated an emergency override mere days after passage and showing no appreciation for the tangible harm it did to both the Jewish and Israeli communities of Beverly Hills. Manouchehri even claims the threats and harassment needed to happen to prove antisemitism is real. We can think of many other ways to accomplish that goal without endangering BHUSD students, but to each their own.

Simply stated, if one of the goals in this election is to ensure our Board reflects a celebration of Jewish identity and a solid commitment to combating antisemitism, Manouchehri’s ICAN endorsement fails to meaningfully elevate her above the competition. Moreover, her record of harmful adventurism suggests she may well be a worse advocate on Jewish issues when compared to her opponents. How did Team Manouchehri attempt to rectify this?

By mounting an unsuccessful pressure campaign to get her opponent’s competing endorsement rescinded.

Part 4:
Calling In the Goon Squad

On September 25, 2026, the entire leadership board of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles received an after-hours email with the subject line “Serious Concerns Regarding Kimberly Lifschitz Endorsement.” Its author, Ellie Kadz, recited a litany of baseless debunked accusations against Lifschitz and insisted that DFI “publicly explain how this endorsement is consistent with the standards it asks of our community.” Kadz described herself as simply “a mother of three Jewish daughters,” the “[d]aughter of Rabbi Shamon Okhavot,” and a “Proud Zionist.”

Kadz was being coy, as she is many other things of note: a political appointee of Manouchehri to BHUSD’s finance committee, a donator to Manouchehri’s current Board run, and a recreational political saboteur who brigades virtually every Instagram post about the Board election with the same dozen or so compatriots trying to manufacture consensus, spread propaganda, and attack contrary opinions. Presumably, she understood that her gossamer-thin and borderline-defamatory claims to DFI-LA would be seen through immediately if her partisanship were disclosed, but you can’t blame a girl for trying.

Kadz is one of several high-level surrogates for Manouchehri who provide her with critical distance from the worst tactics of her supporters. Indeed, Manouchehri’s claim to running a “super clean and positive campaign” might be slightly harder to swallow if the public knew she was simply delegating the task of smearing her competition to fellow Board trustees and allied influencers. The smears invariably have nothing to do with Lifschitz and Kruger’s actual proposals for the work of the Board, instead trading on right-wing shibboleths as red meat for a national audience that Manouchehri is clearly trying to cultivate for later political ambitions.

Notably, these tactics are unique to Manouchehri in this race. Nobody is descending upon social media posts about Manouchehri with the sort of invective being leveled at Lifschitz and Kruger. Nobody has lobbied ICAN to rescind its endorsement of Manouchehri. Nobody has demanded the local news stop reporting favorably (or even neutrally) on her. Nobody has created fake newspapers to churn out daily attack pieces on Manouchehri barely disguised as journalism. Nobody has conscriped influencers with six-figure followings to rebroadcast lies about Manouchehri, thereby subjecting her to sustained campaigns of harassment and threats.

Manouchehri presumably maintains that she is not responsible for the conduct of her allies, surrogates, or supporters. But a campaign cannot be “clean” when that commitment extends no further than the candidate’s fingertips. Just this past weekend, Manouchehri published an official campaign collaboration with David Hakimfar, who operates the Instagram account “Street People of Beverly Hills.” Three days prior, Hakimfar was thrown out of an event for Kim Lifschitz held at a private home that he had infiltrated for the sole purpose of screaming disruptive culture war nonsense at her. The thought of Manouchehri’s opponents orchestrating such a spectacle at one of Manouchehri’s events is unthinkable. For Team Manouchehri, it was just another Thursday.

Partial footage of Judith Manouchehri‘s campaign surrogate David Hakimfar disrupting a Q&A with Kim Lifschitz before being ejected from the event.

Perhaps sensitive to the changing tides, Manouchehri has recently seen fit to take matters into her own hands. On October 12th, she was spotted following and threatening BHUSD teacher Judith Chan as the latter went door-to-door in Beverly Hills volunteer canvassing for Lifschitz and Kruger. Manouchehri was apparently furious that Chan, in an entirely permissible exercise of her First Amendment rights, conveyed her profession and belief that many BHUSD teachers support Lifschitz and Kruger despite their union, the Beverly Hills Education Association, succumbing to pressure and declining to issue any endorsements in the Board race this year. Of course, Manouchehri has no right to demand that BHUSD credentials not be used for mere self-identification, nor that the sentiment of its teachers not be expressed in the form of individual endorsement, but that did not stop her from trying in a fit of thuggish intimidation.

Manouchehri’s cutthroat tactics, and those of her cohorts, reflect local politics at their absolute worst. By taking an ends-justify-the-means approach, banking on divisive (and overwhelmingly irrelevant) wedge issues, and seeking an audience well beyond our city’s residents — people who have no skin in the game but plenty of axes to grind — Manouchehri has ceded any claim to the high road. Her strategic silence does not exculpate her from the consequences of having dragged this Board race into the mud. She and her campaign apparatus have overseen a coarsening of discourse in Beverly Hills that has no historical precedent, never once calling for civility from her followers. The reason for this is not difficult to discern: Manouchehri has genuine antipathy for her opponents.

We know this because there’s a recording of Manouchehri flaunting it.

Part 5:
The Fruits of Litigation

On September 3, 2026, Manouchehri was deposed for the third and final time in the ongoing litigation over her decision to block fellow trustee Dr. Amanda Stern from the office of Vice President. Manouchehri already lost the main battle in the case back on April 9th, when the presiding judge held that Manouchehri had indisputably violated the Board’s own bylaws governing the order in which vice presidents are seated. She then lost a second battle trying to avoid having her deposition taken, followed by a third battle over her refusal to properly answer questions in her first and second seatings. All of which is to say that by Day 3, she was not happy.

Manouchehri’s misery was unfortunately of her own making. Once faced with the court-ordered prospect that its trustees would not be able to avoid having their depositions taken, BHUSD’s attorneys asked to resolve the case on July 22nd and had a full settlement agreement ready to sign on July 28th. One problem: Manouchehri had announced her reelection campaign on July 24th, in between those two dates, and she no longer had any appetite to swallow her pride for the good of the district, even when the settlement was for zero dollars and zero cents.

Over the course of her deposition testimony, it became clear that Manouchehri’s refusal to settle the case had nothing to do with the merits of her position, as she didn’t have the first clue what those merits even were. Instead, she returned time and time again to her belief that the litigation, filed half a year before the Board race even began, was political persecution being undertaken to assist her electoral challengers (as though the court hadn’t already found her liable), and holding her accountable was “dividing the community” (as though her original law-breaking had not).

Manouchehri repeatedly refused to acknowledge the court’s findings on the merits of the mandamus case against her, instead attacking the lawsuit as a promotional tool for her opponents in the 2026 Board race.

Manouchehri’s mask didn’t fully slip, however, until the conclusion of her formal questioning. The moment she (incorrectly) thought she was no longer being recorded, she tossed her own campaign flyer at the deposing attorney and condescendingly suggested that he “support a real candidate, not a little girl who wants a horse in the window that her husband is getting for her at the detriment and to the cost of the community’s wellbeing.”

Judith Manouchehri Attacks Kim Lifschitz on Hot Mic at Deposition

The deposing attorney was Daniel Lifschitz, husband of Board candidate Kim Lifschitz. He had been trying to settle his case against the district since well before his wife announced her candidacy, and it is only due to Manouchehri’s intransigence that the case continues. (After all, why would Lifschitz drop a case he is winning?)

More importantly, Manouchehri’s tirade was revealing in multiple ways. Not only did it show that she treats following the law (and being held accountable for breaking the law) as a political calculation, it demonstrated that Manouchehri will consistently mistreat people whenever she thinks nobody can prove it. She waited until right after the deposition’s videographer cut his camera to berate a public interest litigant who had given her every opportunity to do the right thing, and the only reason we know about it is because her reckless impulsivity (and the court reporter’s microphone) got the best of her.

Though final determination of Manouchehri’s legal fate will not come before the election (as she successfully delayed trial until December 1st), it has illuminated the sheer lengths to which Manouchehri will go for the purpose of hurting those who stand in her way, and how little control she has over her words and actions when given that opportunity — no matter the consequences to herself or the district she represents. And in that sense, she already has an eager protégé.

Let’s meet David Cienfuegos, shall we?

Part 6:
Protecting (Some) Students

David Cienfuegos, much like Russell Stuart before him, is a man uncomfortable in his own political skin. Though an archconservative who advocates for book bans, rails against woke ideology, and threatens to call Child Protective Services on parents for having the temerity to supply a display copy of a Maya Angelou book in a school library, he feels compelled to identify as a “Clinton Democrat" to strangers, seemingly forgetting that anyone can look up his Republican Party registration, $500 donation to Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, and endorsement by Beverly Hills’ primary GOP liaison.

Cienfuegos has spent most of his Board campaign riding on Manouchehri’s coattails, leading observers to conclude that he was handpicked to help keep Manouchehri in power. He mostly earns his keep by playing the role of Manouchehri’s pit bull, and much like a poorly-trained pit bull, he’s shown no compunction about sinking his teeth into vulnerable children.

Early in the election cycle, there was a kerfuffle about the prevalence of candidates’ lawn signs being stolen. Although this was happening on both sides (as occurs literally every election cycle), the Manouchehri and Cienfuegos (“M&C”) contingent not only became fixated on the idea that it was happening exclusively to them, but that it was being directed from on high by Lifschitz and Kruger. Their evidence? Two blurry pieces of doorbell camera footage showing a young male removing lawn signs, one of which shows them exiting the back seat of a white Tesla similar to that driven by Kruger’s 17-year-old son.

Wrote Cienfuegos: “It seems certain people are stealing more than the spotlight this election.”

It doesn’t take a trial lawyer to see the myriad holes capable of being poked in this theory: the person in the footage does not resemble Kruger’s son, the car’s license plates are not shown, and the Krugers are far from the only residents of Beverly Hills with a white Tesla. Nevertheless, when the collective hue and cry of M&C supporters alone failed to produce satisfactory consequences, Cienfuegos decided to up the ante by explicitly accusing Kruger’s son of criminality, providing the Kruger family’s home address to his followers, and posting video of himself unnervingly casing their household.

The level of irresponsibility demonstrated by Cienfuegos here is breathtaking and requires close examination:

First, Cienfuegos provides absolutely no proof that the white Tesla parked at the Kruger’s home is the same white Tesla seen in the Ring Cam footage. No video or photograph of a theft-in-progress has shown the license plate of the car being used, and it stands to reason that if Cienfuegos had such evidence on hand, he would have posted it to substantiate his naked claim that it’s a “match" to the Krugers’ car. That strongly suggested Cienfuegos was falsely claiming to possess undisclosed supporting evidence simply to have his accusations taken more seriously by the public, which is not only odious behavior, but potentially per se defamatory at the level of actual malice.

Second, even if Cienfuegos were able to prove Kruger’s son had stolen one or more lawn signs, he could not have picked a more inappropriate method of handling the situation. A sensible and mature adult would have privately approached Kruger about their concerns and simply asked her to speak with her son. The second-best option, and still arguably overkill, would have been to send any legitimate “proof” of matching license plates to the Beverly Hills Police Department and let them reopen their previously-closed investigation if deemed appropriate.

The absolute worst thing to do is exactly what Cienfuegos did: make a conclusory allegation against a minor child and BHUSD student, provide the minor’s home address to a riled-up base eager for retribution, and tell them to “grab the popcorn.” Cienfuegos’ conduct was so appalling that Kruger was able to immediately seek and successfully obtain a restraining order against him, such that Cienfuegos is now prohibited from even setting foot on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. Let that sink in: a candidate for school board is currently legally barred from being within 100 yards of the very school he wants to govern.

But that’s not even the worst part of the story. Cienfuegos was so incensed at being held accountable for having illegally stalked and threatened a child that he tried and failed to get an emergency restraining order of his own against Kruger’s son, mostly in the hopes that it would pressure Kruger to drop her own meritorious case against Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos’ rejected application is a rollicking read, as he admits to not actually possessing evidence of a license plate “match” to Kruger’s car, claims to live in fear of Kruger’s son, and conspiracizes about a family-wide plot against his candidacy.

In one fell swoop, Cienfuegos demolished his credibility as someone who claims to hold the safety of BHUSD students as a priority. Is there any doubt that if a student pulled a stunt like Cienfuegos’ against a peer, they would be appropriately disciplined at a bare minimum? How can we trust a Board candidate to model good behavior for our kids when they can’t even model good behavior in their audition for the role?

Maybe Cienfuegos can answer that when he manages to learn anything else about our district.

Part 7:
A Culture of Entitlement

You can tell a lot about individuals by how they respond to adversity. As the Board campaigns enter their final weeks, it has become abundantly clear that M&C did not expect this to be a competitive race. In a sane world, they would seek to create genuine dialogue with their skeptics, address the more divisive aspects of Manouchehri’s record on the Board, be contrite in the face of criticism (even if selectively), and ensure their collective team pulls its punches as befitting a non-partisan local race. They would remember that, in a city of less than six square miles, we all still have to be neighbors on November 4th.

Unfortunately, we do not appear to be living in that world, as even neutrality is treated as a capital offense on Team M&C. Take the Beverly Hills PAUSE (“Promoting Alternatives to Unhealthy Screen Exposure”) group, a big tent of parents “dedicated to reducing excessive screen time and advocating for healthier childhood development in the digital age.” All five candidates in the 2026 Board race support the work of PAUSE — as such, the group declined to throw its collective weight behind an endorsement in favor of issuing a detailed questionnaire to inform its members’ individual voting choices.

Manouchehri was apparently so outraged at the indignity of not receiving an immediate endorsement from PAUSE that she declined to take part in their questionnaire. Accordingly, when the results were compiled and issued to the group, every response slot reserved for Manouchehri was blank. It was a bad look, and her supporters knew it. So they doubled back to insist that PAUSE should just endorse Manouchehri (and Cienfuegos) anyway.

The sense of entitlement that oozes from these patronizing messages exemplifies why M&C’s supporters continue to alienate so many voters in Beverly Hills. Set aside the fact that Manouchehri’s “intentional technology” resolution supposedly demonstrating her deep commitment to the group’s cause was just her copying LAUSD’s homework, with Cienfuegos then adding his deep understanding of the word “shall” to the Board Policy that followed (which admittedly compensated for an established deficit in Manouchehri’s legal understanding). The notion that M&C’s work for PAUSE, no matter how beneficial, created a loyalty pact with the group’s collective membership is intensely unmeritocratic. PAUSE leadership wanted to identify the candidates who will do the best work prospectively, not those who believe they have earned their keep retrospectively, and their questionnaire was a wholly uncontroversial way to accomplish that.

But that’s not the game M&C want to play. They want reflexive loyalty. The fact that it’s proving so elusive is driving them insane.

And, well, insane people do insane things.

Conclusion

We here at BHUSD Watch hope this was an illuminating article for you to read, because it was not a fun one to write. We would have much preferred the opportunity to write about this year’s Board race with a focus entirely on field-wide substance, comparing and contrasting each candidate’s plans and suggesting whose is on more solid footing. With the way the race has been run by the incumbent (and incumbent-aligned) side, that analysis simply isn’t possible. To the extent they have genuine policy on offer, it has been entirely drowned out by grievance, vitriol, and a persistent demand that we embrace norms in which their worst behavior is an acceptable model for how adults in our community may treat fellow BHUSD families. We refuse to condone that.

Manouchehri and Cienfuegos have conducted a self-disqualifying campaign for the Board. Manouchehri has failed to deliver for BHUSD on substance, misled the public on ideology, and mired the district in crisis after crisis of her own making. Cienfuegos, meanwhile, has demonstrated a lack of personal judgment so profound that it landed him with an honest-to-goodness restraining order against him for the remainder of his campaign, and he has otherwise offered no clear vision for the district beyond facilitating Manouchehri’s whims. Switching from a bad 3-2 majority to a worse 4-1 majority, thus confirming our community’s willingness to tolerate M&C’s deplorable tactics, spells disaster for our schools. We have a chance to not just say no to failed policy, but no to a culture of abuse that is inimical to the safety of our children and beneath the dignity of our incredible district. We hope the community seizes that opportunity.

BHUSD Watch
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