During a contentious five-hour special Board of Education meeting on Jan. 23, the Board narrowly approved a freshman ethnic studies course as a high school graduation requirement beginning with the class of 2029. The vote was 3-2, with board members Shana Segal, Shounak Dharap and Josh Salcman voting in favor while Rowena Chiu and Alison Kamhi voted against.
In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom made ethnic studies a state graduation requirement starting with the class of 2030 by signing Assembly Bill 101. Since then, a group of social studies teachers from Gunn and Paly have worked for two years to create a single-semester ethnic studies course designed to replace one semester of freshman World History.
Both schools offered one pilot ethnic studies class last semester to freshmen, covering four ethnic minorities: African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
A week prior to the Jan. 23 special board meeting, Superintendent Don Austin said he realized Newsom never allocated funding to the ethnic studies mandate in his proposed yearly budget. As a result, he said, the course was no longer a state mandate.
After talking to the ethnic studies teachers about this, Austin said he went to the board agendizing committee, consisting of himself, Segal and Dharap.
“First, I went to our ethnic studies teachers, told them what I discovered and told them why I thought it was problematic,” Austin said. “They were disappointed but understood. Then, I asked our board president and vice president to meet with me and shared the information with them. I recommended pulling (ethnic studies from the agenda), and in our case the president has final say …(so) we had an agreement (to pull it).”
On Jan. 16, Austin publicly announced the decision to remove the approval of ethnic studies from the agenda of the upcoming board meeting, but after he said that message to the community, he said he received numerous emails criticizing this abrupt change.
“Shortly after, (Segal) called me back and said that she’d like it agendized,” Austin said. “It was too late to put it on (Jan. 21), so we landed on a special meeting date to have it heard.”
Only five days after ethnic studies was pulled from the agenda, Austin sent a ParentSquare update notifying the community of the special board meeting to discuss the approval of the course.While there were three public meetings about the course over the past year and a half, the full curriculum of the course was never released publicly. About 36 hours prior to the board meeting, Austin released a curriculum outline PDF titled “Curriculum and Sample Lessons.” Social studies Instructional Leader Mary Sano said during the board meeting, though, that this was not the finalized curriculum but a “brainstorming document” from about a year ago. Sano declined an interview request for this story.
Before Sano’s statement at the board meeting, some attendees, including parent Alan Crystal, expressed concerns about the document Austin released which included PDFs that posed the question “Is AGENCY gained when oppression is resisted?” to which the notes say, “That depends on whether or not the oppression was resisted violently or nonviolently.”
Board member Rowena Chiu said prior to the meeting that she didn’t know the document Austin released was unfinished and that her understanding of the course’s content was largely based on the brainstorming document.
“I was concerned to find that the materials as presented to me were either incomplete or during the meeting it was claimed that they were working drafts,” Chiu said. “I did see a slideshow, which I assumed was a form of a lesson plan, but some things seemed removed … After the board meeting. When I went back to look for the slideshow, it was removed from the packet.”
Because topics taught in ethnic studies are sensitive, Crystal said openness about the curriculum is crucial.
“There was an original direction that the state took about what should be included in the class, and that caused a big uproar amongst many communities because the content was really out of line,” Crystal said. “The subject of ethnic studies has been very controversial, and that being the case, I think that would be a situation where the school district would want to take extra measures to be transparent.”
However, all the students enrolled in the pilot course who spoke at the board meeting gave positive feedback.
“I recently completed the ethnic studies pilot program. I’ll admit I had some reservations going into this course,” Gunn pilot student Quinn Boughton said. “I wasn’t sure how much it would apply to me as a white student or whether the topics might make people feel divided or uncomfortable; those fears turned out to be completely unfounded. The curriculum and our teachers were able to navigate this delicate subject matter in a way that was inclusive and engaging for all students.”
And both Paly ethnic studies pilot teachers, Benjamin Bolanos and Christopher Farina, said they provided the community with sufficient materials needed for the school board to approve their curriculum.
“We provided the same thing that we provide for all of our course proposals, which is a detail of all of the essential questions and learning target documents across all of our units,” Farina said.
And Bolanos said the community should have more trust in teachers and their ability to create a class, without community input.
“We’re the expert on the curriculum and curriculum development,” Bolanos said. “We were trained to teach the discipline we studied and how to do that while it’s effective and with the best strategies in the classroom.”
In addition, Austin said there’s a balance to be had.
“There are people that say they just want to see the daily lesson plans. That’s unprecedented,” Austin said. “There’s no course in our entire district where every daily lesson plan is presented. Also, I don’t want our school board to think it’s their role to approve daily lesson plans. That would be quite an overreach.”
He also said teachers will be providing a syllabus for the California Ethnic Studies course soon with a more in-depth layout of the course.
Even so, Chiu said there wasn’t enough information for her to vote to approve the course.
“I feel like there’s been very little transparency and inability for the current board members and all the community who are concerned to even judge this,” Chiu said. “We have asked for materials under the California Ed Code … that pertains to instructional materials. There has been some concern within the community that the district has not provided the materials in a timely and transparent fashion, and so we also, as board members, have asked to see a full curriculum.”
Crystal agrees.
“I’ve been very disappointed by the lack of transparency,” Crystal said. “There have been community members and parents who’ve been asking the administration for months … for information about the class. Many community members have been concerned about understanding what’s going to be in the class, but the administration has really not been forthcoming at all.”
For Chiu the environment of the Jan. 23 board meeting made her feel pressured while casting her vote to pause the course, and she wondered how the other board members felt about that before they cast their vote.
“I think it is safe to say generally that the atmosphere in the room was very hostile and intense,” Chiu said. “The room felt very one-sided. There was finger clicking and cheering for certain positions and for other positions. Of course that made things very hostile. So certainly I think everybody on the board felt pressure, but I think it is fair to say that the three new board members felt more pressure.”
Following this board’s decision to approve the course for next year’s freshmen, Austin said teachers will have full jurisdiction over the course.
“The board’s role on that class ends with approval,” Austin said. “(It’s) beyond the scope of the board. The teachers are happy to revise as they go and to see what’s working and what doesn’t work.”
Farina agrees.
He said, “We do have a continued opportunity to reach out to the community and help them feel comfortable with the version of the course that we’ve developed and understand that we do really feel like it is in the best interest of all of our students to have this course.”
Kamhi and Salcman did not respond to interview requests for this story.