In hour two of a gathering that stretched to almost 5, Josh Salcman, barely two months on the Palo Alto Unified College Board, stated aloud what different faculty board members little doubt understand sooner or later of their first time period: “I’m acutely aware that no matter how I vote, I’m going to deeply disappoint a large part of our community, including people whose friendship is important to me and whose opinions I hold in the highest regard.”
He was undoubtedly proper. Whether or not to require ninth graders to take an ethnic research course beginning subsequent fall was and certain will stay contentious this yr, not solely in Palo Alto however all through California.
Palo Alto had change into the newest skirmish in California’s ethnic research warfare. Salcman, who based two education-related tech startups, was within the center, in the end going through the awkward resolution of selecting between the views of enthusiastic college students and academics and apprehensive dad and mom.
Two selections in 2021 all however assured that. First, a battle-weary State Board of Schooling, after a number of rewrites, permitted an ambiguously worded curriculum framework that challenged districts to find out what needs to be included in an ethnic research course. Then, the Legislature mandated that colleges provide an ethnic research course in highschool beginning in 2025-26.
However not Palo Alto. Final week, board President Shana Segal, a Palo Alto native and former highschool trainer, referred to as for a particular board assembly to approve the course that Palo Alto highschool academics had developed. The district would provide it within the fall and mandate it for commencement, beginning in 2028-29. No matter state funding, that may be one yr forward of the state mandate. She set the listening to for later within the week, Jan. 23.
To pause or to not pause?
For 2 years, on the board’s course, a half-dozen veteran Palo Alto academics persevered to create a first-year ethnic research course. Final fall, they supplied a pilot model to twenty college students in every of the district’s two excessive colleges in Palo Alto. The scholars’ survey outcomes, all optimistic, had been in.
However on the similar time, members of the Palo Alto Mum or dad Alliance have been watching conflicts and lawsuits over ethnic research and complaints of antisemitism because the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas in October 2023 adopted by Israel’s mass destruction in Gaza.
On the middle of the battle is Liberated Ethnic Research, a pressure of ethnic research that made the liberation of Palestine a outstanding ingredient of instruction. Critics characterize it as a left-wing ideology targeted on the continued domination and oppression of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.
Ethnic research college at California State College and College of California and activists created Liberated Ethnic Research after the state board rejected the primary draft of the curriculum that they’d primarily authored in 2019. They’ve made spreading Liberated Ethnic Research a profitable aspect hustle and have contracted with not less than a number of dozen districts to coach academics and information instruction.
In a Might 2024 FAQ it printed, the Palo Alto dad or mum group cited language tying Liberated Ethnic Research to the proposed course.
Superintendent Don Austin has reiterated that Palo Alto’s course shouldn’t be Liberated Ethnic Research and that the Israeli-Palestinian battle gained’t be a part of a course on California racial and ethnic teams.
However in October, Linor Levav, an legal professional and co-founder of the dad or mum group, filed a Public Data Act request for curriculum supplies that the district had largely ignored. Finally, the district supplied a PDF that contained hyperlinks that couldn’t be opened.
The rejection has fueled suspicions. “And so the question is, why are they teaching materials that they’re not willing to even tell us about?” she instructed EdSource.
The dad or mum group referred to as for a “pause” from continuing with a mandated course.
Whereas working campaigns for his or her first time period on the five-member board, Salcman, Rowena Chiu and Alison Kamhi supported a delay. Now, the brand new majority’s marketing campaign place can be put to a take a look at.
The viewers within the boardroom was not significantly pleasant to the three dissenters. The room seated about 80, with some standing room. By board guidelines, college students get to talk first, they usually crammed a lot of the room. The adults lined up exterior to handle the board for one minute by way of Zoom or enter to take action individually. Forty-five had been put aside for one-minute feedback. College students, all supporting ethnic research now, clapped enthusiastically at feedback they preferred.
In the course of the listening to, the three board skeptics stated they shared among the public’s issues in regards to the course’s content material. They questioned its timing and sharply criticized the district for not being forthright about what can be taught within the course.
“I believe we have to be very transparent about what we are teaching, provide an opportunity for meaningful feedback, and not push through classes that make people and communities, including communities of color, feel unsafe, targeted, or disrespected,” stated Kamhi, who’s the authorized program director for the Immigrant Authorized Useful resource Heart.
Watch Palo Alto Unified board member Josh Salcman focus on his issues concerning ethnic research. (EdSource/YouTube)
Two hours into the listening to, when he was nonetheless advocating a delay, Salcman defined his dilemma, mixing excessive reward for the academics’ work with properly articulated reservations about among the content material.
He congratulated the academics who developed the pilot course and the preliminary college students who took it. Their presentation “underscored what I’ve heard from many community members who have emphatically urged me to vote yes.”
“I find myself agreeing with most of what they say,” he stated. “About how one-sided our current history classes are, about how little our students are currently learning about the experiences of historically underrepresented communities. How our students from those communities can feel so marginalized as they question why their family histories are nowhere to be found in our classrooms.”
And “how they wish we could have more challenging conversations about topics like power and privilege and structural inequity.”
Then he switched and laid out his issues and people he had heard locally:
“insufficient communication, which I share”
“ideologies that could increase a sense of division among students, which could lead to fixed mindsets or scapegoating”
“a lack of guardrails”
“widespread confusion about why, if there’s nothing to worry about, almost no details were shared about the course until yesterday.”
One factor he is aware of for sure, he stated, is: “We do not have a shared understanding of what the phrase ‘ethnic studies course’ means.”
“Is an ethnic studies course primarily about the histories, cultures, and contributions” of the principle ethnic and racial teams in California?” he requested, or “Is it primarily about concepts like ethnicity, identity, intersectionality, power, privilege, oppression and resistance? Is it a mix of both?”
Placing a steadiness
Not less than on paper and in pupil testimonies, Palo Alto’s course would seem to strike a steadiness. The academics’ eight-page course description — the shape that board members have used to approve all earlier programs — states that the course “examines social systems, social movements, and civic participation and responsibility through a local lens. … By fostering empathy and belonging, the course prepares students to engage meaningfully in our communities.”
The 4 models within the course can be Identification; Energy, Privilege and Techniques of Oppression; Resilience and Resistance; and Motion and Civic Engagement, by which college students would create their very own initiatives aligned to the course.
Every of the 4 models within the course would comprise pattern important questions, studying aims, and examples of assignments and assessments. College students would hold a journal of reflection all through. Every unit requires studying, analyzing and evaluating a number of and various sources.
Palo Alto Excessive historical past trainer Ben Bolanos acknowledged that privilege and techniques of oppression “are triggering for certain people” however stated it “is important to look at the shadow side of the human experience in order to understand what needs to be changed and how to look at and change the world for a better place.”
The phrase “oppression” appeared greater than 100 instances within the state framework, noticed Ander Lucia, a Trainer on Particular Project.
Watch pupil testimonies concerning ethnic research at Palo Alto Unified. (EdSource/YouTube)
All the coed evaluations of the course — 27 of the 40 who accomplished one — had been optimistic. A half-dozen ninth graders elaborated on the listening to.
“I’ll admit I had some reservations going into this course,” stated Gunn Excessive pupil Quinn Boughton. “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, but those fears turned out to be completely unfounded. This course didn’t just teach history; it built empathy.”
Gunn pupil Gabriel Lopez’s takeaway from the course was: “When one group of people takes power from another, I think it is the responsibility of school to teach us about the injustices people face. So, in the future and in our lives, we can strive for more equality.”
For his last challenge, Palo Alto Excessive pupil Amaan Ali organized Palo Alto college students to volunteer at tutoring applications for much less well-off college students in East Palo Alto. “These projects go beyond academic exercises. They empower us to turn knowledge into action,” he stated.
Boughton examined homelessness within the Bay Space “in a new light” to dissect the issue and “discuss the causes and impacts of the unhoused with my peers.”
The presentation impressed board President Segal, a Palo Alto native who taught highschool for greater than a decade. “So teachers, I just, I want to say these words,” she stated. “You did it right. I just want to make sure you know it. You did it right.”
Transparency questioned
Chiu and Kamhi repeatedly pressured that they strongly assist ethnic research.
“Ethnic studies is critical to me personally, but it is also something that I very much believe we need as a society,” stated new board member Chiu, a marketing consultant to the World Financial institution and an ethnic research teacher who, she stated, is scheduled to lecture on “Asian American Women and Difficult Conversations” at UC Berkeley.
However they remained unpersuaded, not due to what the academics introduced, however due to what the district had not supplied. The district waited till two days earlier than the assembly to ship out an agenda with data, and it didn’t comprise detailed details about the curriculum and the supplies that academics had used within the pilot.
“I also have very specific questions about the curriculum that was sent to us,” stated Chiu. “I’m sorry to say, while I’m sure you have an excellent course and the students all say so, I did find your materials difficult to navigate around. I couldn’t open some of the links.”
Because it turned out, Austin had included an outdated, detailed curriculum define referred to as a “scope and sequence” that included the damaged hyperlinks and websites requiring permission to open. Austin blamed the Public Data Act request that required offering outdated materials. However Chiu discovered that clarification wanting. She had spent 48 hours poring over a doc underneath the idea it will be taught within the pilot. That, she stated, “causes more confusion and more calls for lack of transparency.”
Neither Austen nor different district officers defined why the doc didn’t embody extra data than the presentation.
“I will say it’s quite possible that your course is not going to incite any of these incidents that we’ve seen in other school districts,” Chiu stated. “However, it’s connected to the issue of transparency. So if the community has not had, in their view, sufficiently transparent instructional materials, that fear is only going to grow.”
Kamhi put it otherwise. “What I feel really uncomfortable doing is saying every single student should take a course that we know is controversial, that based on the materials we’ve seen, some of which are problematic. Maybe they’re being taught in the classroom; maybe they’re not — without more information about what the course actually is.”
Dissenters’ dilemma
The three board members discovered themselves in a Catch-22. Pressed to say what within the course wanted to be modified, they couldn’t present solutions with out extra data.
After hours debating unsuccessful amendments to Segal’s movement, and amendments to these amendments, the unique movement was again on the desk.
To the academics, Segal and the fifth member, Shounap Dharap, the difficulty got here right down to belief. The founding academics had held listening periods for the general public when the course was being developed, and had made modifications in response.
“I want to reiterate my thanks, gratitude and trust in our teachers. These teachers are choosing to do extra work in addition to their daily teaching, lesson planning and grading. I know from firsthand experience the amount of time and dedication it takes to create curriculum,” Segal stated.
“When we are sitting here hearing that there are concerns about the course and the way the course is being presented to students, I, we can’t help but take that personally, right?” stated Jeff Patrick, social science educational chief at Gunn, “because that, that is our job and that’s the job we thought we had the trust of the board to do, right? We think we’ve done our job, and we don’t know what a pause is going to do.”
Dharap, a private damage legal professional and legislation professor, inspired board members to base their resolution on what they heard from academics and college students, not the unsubstantiated fears of the general public. “We really need to sit down and consider whether a decision that we’re going to make now is valuing adult inputs over student outcomes.”
The ultimate vote
Salcman sought an answer within the minutes earlier than the vote. He pointed to San Dieguito Union Excessive College District as a mannequin for involving the general public. It posted every ethnic research unit on a web site because it was developed with a type inviting feedback.
“I’m not saying now that we need to go back and do that. We are where we are” however is there a method to transfer the course ahead and contain folks within the course of? he requested.
Dharap stated the board already has liaisons with colleges to convey issues and frustrations and function a “conduit” for neighborhood suggestions. He stated the board can set course targets, measurements and expectations for public enter.
“How do I know that I have a commitment from folks in this room to try to address the concerns that I raised?” had been Salcman’s final phrases earlier than the vote.
Segal and Dharap stated sure rapidly. Chiu and Kamhi hesitated earlier than voting no.
The silence surrounding Salcman was unsettling. Twice throughout that point, Segal stated, “There’s time; we can all take a breath. We have time.”
Three and a half minutes appeared like hours handed earlier than Salcman stated his subsequent phrase, “Yes.”
Segal instantly introduced the movement handed 3-to-2 and ended the assembly and the webcast.
One can solely speculate what went by way of his thoughts in the course of the lengthy pause that adopted — questioning maybe which pal or shut adviser he would please or disappoint or whether or not he made the precise vote? Salcman didn’t reply to EdSource’s repeated invites to share his considering.
This story initially appeared in EdSource.
