The San Francisco Unified School District announced Monday that ethnic studies courses will continue in fall 2025.
Plans to shelve them temporarily, as Superintendent Maria Su was previously considering, have been dropped.
Instead, the school district will buy an ethnic studies curriculum already in use elsewhere in the state while it audits the district’s current version of the course.
It has not yet decided what curriculum it will borrow for the 2025-26 school year. Regardless, the district made it clear that Su will have oversight on any changes to any curriculum, including those for other classes.
Any supplemental curriculum that teachers choose to add to their classes, including ethnic studies classes, will be subject to “administrative regulation” by the superintendent. That applies to materials added to courses before or after they are taught in the classroom.
“I remain deeply committed to the importance of Ethnic Studies in developing critical thinking, cultural understanding, and civic engagement among our students,” Su said in a statement. “As we prepare for a successful start to the school year, my goal is for SFUSD to offer Ethnic Studies with intention, quality, and shared purpose.”
Mission Local reported last week that the superintendent was weighing pausing ethnic studies across the city for one or two years to review its curriculum.
The potential pause sparked an uproar from teachers, who warned that removing the course this close to the start of the school year would be destructive to student learning and cause a logistical nightmare.
Administrators met with Su and members of the school board, and educators circulated a petition to continue the program that gathered nearly 2,000 signatures.
Some parents have complained that the course is poorly organized and promotes leftist ideology over learning. Ethnic studies remains a one-year graduation requirement for all students unless the school board removes it.
SFUSD has offered a version of ethnic studies for 15 years, and was one of the first districts to adopt it. Its course curriculum has been developed over those years, though it did not require freshmen to take it until this year.
It will be replaced by a more standardized course. One version the district is considering for the upcoming school year is available for purchase ready-to-teach from a textbook company.
A joint statement from the San Francisco teachers’ union and administrators’ union expressed support for the plan to maintain the ethnic studies program. The statement said that unions and experts in the field would help review the current curriculum, and the district said the review process would include input from families, administrators, teachers and the school board.
“Our position regarding any proposed changes to curriculum or educational programs will always be focused on whether the discussions respected the opinions of professionals,” the union’s statement read.
Anna Klafter, the president of the SFUSD administrators union and a principal at Independence High School, said that the details of how administrators will be included in the audit have yet to be figured out, but the union expects to have a seat at the table.
“I’m feeling really positive and really grateful for the productive conversations that principals were able to have with Dr. Su and her team,” Klafter said.
This comment session reeks of parents unwilling to expose their children to the hard truths of privilege. “My kid doesn’t have to learn about privilege because they have a black friend.” “Lefties are trying to tell my kids that there is evil in the world.” Absolutely there is a right way to teach this material. But the only way that we leave a better society for our kids to to make sure they are raised to question the “truths” they’ve been fed and understand the plight of those that are less privileged than themselves.
Mission Local: I just learned about AB 715 and how it relates to this story. I would have liked to see how that bill to strip teachers of their free speech masquerading as a protection again “antisemitism”
I do want to qualify by statement to underline that there are few right ways and many wrong ways to teach this course. I don’t mean to discount parents concerns and it is incredibly possible that the teachers are ill-prepared to support students in this arena. And that teachers are getting things wrong, I don’t know the particular situation or teacher the parents are referring to and I may easily agree with their assessment. However, that doesn’t mean we scrap the whole program. It also doesn’t mean that we pick apart the curriculum with a fine tooth comb. We have to expect that our children will learn things that we disagree with in the world, but it is also someone else’s view, someone else’s lived experience, and we’re not going to agree with every portion of the curriculum. If there are ways you can help support your teachers in improving the curriculum, I think you should work with the teacher, not scrap the whole program. We live in a racist society and it can be incredibly difficult to talk about race and have everyone agree, but that doesn’t mean we just don’t talk about it.
How much will this cost?
Realistically, they probably need to fire the teachers who agitated to keep this course, because they are likely the ones who use their authority to spread race-based hate.
Ethnic studies classes are a good idea in theory, but unfortunately, combined with far left teachers it becomes nothing more than a session of racial grievance.
This subject matter is not only divisive but it is being taught in a very one sided, biased manner. Many of us parents feel that it is racism at its core. Our students are being forced to write letters to the governor in support of ethnic studies as required class assignment. Whether our students are in support of the course or not. My children’s friends group looks like the United Nations.many different ethnicities. Last year my son and all his friends in his ethnic studies class thought their teacher was a crazy racist!