San Francisco schools accused of hiding controversial ethnic studies course from parents
San Francisco Unified School District may be in legal trouble over a mandatory “ethnic studies” coursethat critics say is packed with radical ideology and insulting messages about Jewish and Asian Americans — as an advocacy group claims the divisive lessons were illegally hidden from parents.
School officials refused to make the two-semester course, called Voices, available to parents before it was hastily rammed through at an April 28 Board of Education meeting, according to a lawsuit filed by Friends of Lowell Foundation, which advocates for academic merit at San Francisco public schools.
The complaint filed at San Francisco Superior Court further alleges that the district raided a special fund intended for arts, music and other enrichment programs to pay for a $7.3 million history and social studies overhaul that included the controversial course for high school freshmen.
Cash-strapped SFUSD — which is facing school closures and deficits exceeding $25 million — shelled out at least $400,000 to ethnic studies consultants who peddle lessons on defunding the police, “land acknowledgments” and tearing down 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.
Critics say the ethnic studies course hammers ninth-graders with far-left political ideology about anti-capitalism and oppression and doesn’t even count towards University of California credit — meaning students are forced to take the identity-obsessed course instead of electives that are helpful for college admissions.
An “identity wheel” featured in the “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” textbook asks students to sort one another by race, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, “indigenity” and even 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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