The board of the San Francisco Unified School District, which educates more than 50,000 students at 122 public schools, decided to purchase a new ethnic-studies curriculum without fulfilling its legal obligation to provide the public with prior notice, according to Marc Levine, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.
“We are concerned that the San Francisco Board of Education approved textbook purchases before adopting or publicly reviewing the related curriculum,” Levine, a former California state representative, told JNS. “This circumvents the transparent process required by law.”
Laura Dudnick, the district’s executive director of communications and external affairs, told JNS that the board voted 5-2 on Tuesday to approve the staff recommendation to buy the curriculum, which is called “Voices.”
During several periods in the board’s nearly six-hour meeting on July 29, it took up discussion about what it called “purchase of ethnic-studies pilot curriculum” on its agenda. Many speakers told the board that it was meeting to discuss buying the curriculum without having gone through the legal process, and parents, students and a local rabbi discussed antisemitism. Many others spoke in support of the curriculum.
“We’ve seen what happens when ideology guides the way we educate students, and there was a historic recall of this school board because of it,” one person told the board. “I implore you, use this as an opportunity to build bridges with the parent community in SFUSD. Not drive wedges further.”
“Take the time for a disciplined review. Make the curriculum publicly available. Do the right thing,” he said.
Jared Boigon, a parent in the district who was at the meeting, told JNS that ethnic studies is important in a “diverse community” like San Francisco; however, the board acted in a “hasty” way regarding an “unvetted, unapproved curriculum.”
“That feels like a step in the wrong direction,” he said.
Supryia Ray, a member of the board, said during the meeting that she is “deeply troubled by the district’s handling of ethnic studies,” and although she supports ethnic-studies education, “we are not doing things right.”
Ray, who participated via video feed, told the board that as she understands it, all ninth graders are enrolled in the ethnic-studies course but can opt out. “To call a course that is being offered across all high schools a ‘pilot’ seems to stretch the understanding of that term beyond recognition,” she said.
At the end of the meeting, board president Phil Kim brought the motion to approve the cost of the “pilot program” for the following year to a vote. “Do we have a second?” he asked. The vice president seconded. Ray cut in and asked if she could ask questions. She was told that there was already a motion and a second.
“It was not made clear that we were moving to a vote,” Ray said. “I would like to, in this case, make a motion to table this, and I’m happy to explain why.”
“I previously said I had multiple additional questions that I wanted to ask, and so there was no indication that we were going to be coming to a vote before I was able to ask those questions,” she said.
Kim apologized and told her, “Let’s see the outcome of this vote first, because the discussion may continue if the vote does not pass.” Ray asked if he would withdraw the motion so she could ask her questions. “I would like to see through this motion first,” he said. “And if this motion fails, then yes, we can entertain the conversation.”
Ray was one of the two board members to vote against the motion. After her vote, she explained that, among other objections, she had asked as a board member “multiple times” in vain to access the curriculum. “I find that absolutely astonishing,” she said. “I have even offered to go into the district central office and sit down at whoever’s computer has a license and look at it.”
Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at Lowell High School, part of the district, told JNS that she has seen versions of the Voices curriculum that contain “harmful misrepresentations of who Jews are.”
Per state law and district policy, the superintendent’s staff was supposed to present the curriculum at a meeting and field board questions. It was then supposed to make the curriculum accessible to the public and to hold public comment and vote to approve the curriculum before having a vote to authorize the purchase, according to Statmore, who attended the meeting.
“That did not happen,” Statmore said. “The superintendent basically sought approval for her staff recommendation to make the purchase.”
“People seemed pretty upset at the meeting,” she added. “Most of the parents who spoke wanted them to follow the law and follow the process,” she said.
‘We’ll put guardrails in place’
Rachel Lerman, vice chair and director of appeals and motions for the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JNS that the school board voted only to end debate about the ethnic-studies curriculum, not to adopt it.
“If the curriculum is adopted, it will be without the board’s consent,” she told JNS.
Lerman has been told that the Voices curriculum doesn’t discuss Israel and the Palestinians, but “as we’ve seen in many other schools, teachers bring in their own teaching material to help illustrate the oppressed-oppressor narrative that they want to teach about,” Lerman told JNS.
Lerman said that the Voices curriculum is “based on the oppressed-oppressor kind of narrative,” which “usually is not good when it comes to the Jewish people, who tend to be put in the ‘oppressor’ category.”
“They keep saying, ‘We’ll put guardrails in place.’ But none of that’s been done yet,” Lerman told JNS. “It does seem hasty and premature.”
Maria Su, district superintendent, said on June 30 that SFUSD would add an ethnic studies curriculum for the upcoming academic year that would be a graduation requirement for students.
The district’s projected 2025-26 budget includes $128,234 for “ethnic studies support.” The “loaded budget” cost for ethnic studies support listed in the 2024-25 academic year was $1,736,823.
Viviane Safrin, a parent in the district, told JNS that the district claims to let students opt out of ethnic studies, but no alternatives are approved to meet the requirement. “What are counselors going to offer to the students?” she said.
Safrin told JNS that many students did not opt out last year for that reason, and the district cites that lack of repudiation “to justify decisions that were already made without transparency.”
The office hours that the district offers for parents to learn about the ethnic studies curriculum—from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on 10 work days in August—are “very narrow windows,” Safrin said.
