San Francisco Unified School District is facing a legal challenge over its required ethnic studies class, with opponents alleging the curriculum promotes radical political themes and includes offensive material about Jewish and Asian American communities. The advocacy group behind the lawsuit also claims the district unlawfully kept the controversial lessons out of parents’ view.
According to a lawsuit filed by Friends of Lowell Foundation, a group that supports academic merit in San Francisco public schools, district leaders did not provide parents access to the two-semester course, titled Voices, before it was approved during an April 28 Board of Education meeting.
The complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, also accuses the district of diverting money from a special fund meant for arts, music and other student enrichment programs to help finance a $7.3 million revamp of history and social studies instruction, including the disputed freshman ethnic studies course.
SFUSD, already struggling with budget shortfalls topping $25 million and the possibility of school closures, paid at least $400,000 to ethnic studies consultants connected to lessons involving police defunding, “land acknowledgments” and critiques of capitalism, The Post previously reported.
“Everyone needs to scrutinize this curriculum – and that did not happen here. SFUSD has never fully reckoned with its long record of discrimination against Asian Americans,” said Frank Cheung, secretary of Friends of Lowell Foundation.
“Rather than restoring public trust, the District has once again chosen to circumvent the very laws designed to ensure transparency and accountability,” Cheung added.
Opponents argue the mandatory ethnic studies program exposes ninth-grade students to strongly left-leaning lessons on oppression, anti-capitalism and identity, while failing to qualify for University of California credit. They contend that students are being required to take the course at the expense of electives that could strengthen college applications.
One section of the “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” textbook includes an “identity wheel” activity that asks students to categorize themselves and classmates by race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, “indigenity” and body size.
A section on “whiteness” claims that Jews and Asian Americans are now considered “white” due to their status within a societal hierarchy — an assertion that some critics of the book find deeply offensive.
Roughly one-third of SFUSD is Asian American, according to public data.
The lawsuit alleges that the school district effectively hid the course from parents after a homegrown ethnic studies course that was riddled with shocking content — such as praising Chairman Mao’s Red Guards as a “social movement” —was abruptly pulled after a parent backlash.
“How can we trust this district to choose a curriculum? For ten years, it kept a homegrown course classrooms that was never board-approved and never shown to the public,” added Friends of Lowell Foundation board member Eugene Lee.
“That course described Mao’s Red Guards as a social movement, called this nation the ‘so-called United States,’ and presented a plan to redraw five Southern states as a separate nation, asking 14-year-olds for their thoughts on this ‘resistance against white supremacist borders’ rather than asking them to weigh it critically.”
The Voices course was slipped into an April board agenda, meaning few parents were aware it was happening — and they were only allowed to view course materials in-person during work hours, the lawsuit alleged.
The textbook’s stated goal is to give students “terms and tools they need to analyze the impacts of race and ethnicity in US history and the present day,” according to its website.
Supriya Ray, who was the lone Board of Education member to voice concerns about the ethnic studies course at the April meeting, acknowledged “there was no forum in which people were allowed to have substantive discussions about ethnic studies, the content, the framework, the two semester mandate.”
“I’m particularly concerned about putting our kids into such a politicized course, especially when they’re only in ninth grade… without even having had world history or U.S. history to provide context. To me, this doesn’t support critical thinking. It actually impairs it,” she added.
Superintendent Maria Su was questioned about the ethnic studies course at a June congressional hearing, claiming the curriculum “went through a rigorous evaluation process.”
“Yes, we also have modernized and brought in standard state-aligned curriculum for language arts and math and history and social science,” Su told Rep. Kevin Kiley.
The lawsuit asks the Board of Education to repeal its adoption of the ethnic studies course.
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