In a controversial move, a financially struggling school district has spent nearly $400,000 on consultants focused on controversial “ethnic studies” rather than addressing poor student performance in reading and math.
The San Francisco Unified School District, grappling with potential school closures and a severe budget shortfall, has signed contracts funded by taxpayers with several consultants. These include Liberatory Visionaries Curricula, the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, and groups associated with Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an activist known for describing classrooms as “battlefields” where teachers engage in ideological struggles.
Between 2022 and 2025, the district allocated $260,000 for “professional development” sessions run by a UC Berkeley initiative that promotes lessons on topics like “divesting from policing systems,” “drag pedagogy,” creating personalized “land acknowledgments,” and anti-capitalist classroom activities.
The curriculum features unconventional instructional materials such as a “10-step guide for creating political graphics” and an “Abolition and Disability Justice Course,” which critiques capitalism as “the true crisis.”
Additionally, Liberatory Visionaries Curricula, led by Ashia Ojore Bomani—a former SFUSD teacher and ethnic studies consultant, according to her LinkedIn profile—received $55,000 this fiscal year to contribute to San Francisco’s ethnic studies curriculum.
Among the contracts, a $10,000 agreement approved in February promotes a textbook co-authored by Bomani titled “Carry On Tradition,” which is described as chronicling a “history of righteous resistance and rebellion.”
Critics have slammed the SFUSD’s ethnic studies courses as “unvetted and illegal.”
SFUSD was placed under strict state oversight two years ago due to fiscal issues — and remains seriously strapped with a $26 million projected deficit in 2028, according to public documents.
Only 41% of San Francisco eighth grade students were proficient in math last year, below a target of 65%. Third-grade reading proficiency was an abysmal 51.8% — below the target of 62%, the San Francisco Standard reported.
District budget documents shared with The Post show another consultant, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, collected more than $270,000 from SFUSD and another city agency, Department of Children Youth and Their Families, since 2019 through two organizations called P@nay Educational Partnerships and Community Responsive Education.
The latter group’s website says its goal is to “use education as a vehicle for liberation through the awakening of students’ critical consciousness,” offering strategic consulting and teacher coaching.
“We are teaching critical race studies…we’re very, very clear about that,” Tintiangco-Cubales said at a 2021 high school conference.
According to contract details posted online, Tintiangco-Cubales was paid $16,000 between 2018 to 2020 to “make social justice a reality” at Malcolm X Academy in San Francisco — where only 13% of students are proficient in reading, according to Niche.
Her organization Community Responsive Education collected $38,000 from SFUSD between 2019 and 2024 for “anti-racism” trainings.
San Francisco’s “ethnic studies” curriculum has attracted widespread controversy, with Superintendent Maria Su facing a congressional grilling over the district’s parental notification policies onTuesday.
The district spent $7 million on a textbook called “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” that critics say pushes far-left political ideology rather than preparing students for college.
One recent ethnic studies course was riddled with shocking claims such as labeling Chairman Mao Zedong’s murderous Red Guards as a “social movement” and even denying the legitimacy of the United States.
It was pulled after an embarrassing public outcry.
Fuming parents say the eyewatering spending on ethnic studies reveals the district’s misplaced priorities.
SFUSD rammed through the Voices textbook as a mandatory two-year requirement for ninth graders this year, despite parental protests.
The textbook heavily cites the Marxist philosopher Paolo Freire, who penned the socialist tome “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”
Some individual teachers have simply designed their own ethnic studies lessons.
Critics like Sarah Stettler, a San Francisco parent, say the book features an “identity wheel” that ranks students by “privilege” and contains offensive assertions about racial groups, such as insinuating that Asian Americans are really white.
“It’s being used by a lot of teachers to teach a lot of extreme views as fact, it is brainwashing a lot of our kids, and it’s not helpful,” Stettler said of the ethnic studies course.
She said the district should spend its money instead on proven literacy programs to help kids — such as a tutoring program called Chapter One that’s been credited with rapidly improving students’ reading.
“Right now the proficiency of our students is terrible, and every instructional minute is crucial,” Stettler added.
“SFUSD ninth graders are mandated a two-semester ethnic studies course that serves zero University of California requirements for graduation, while disrupting all other track classes that start freshman year — from language arts to music, STEM, etc,” parent activist Liz Le told The Post.
“For what? A class that teaches kids America, educators and capitalism are oppressive and require dismantling.”
