San Francisco Unified School District parents are speaking out now that the district is requiring ninth graders to take a two-semester ethnic studies class.
Just days before the 2024-25 school year, SFUSD sent an email to parents of incoming freshmen notifying them that their kids were enrolled in a yearlong ethnic studies class, something that was previously an elective.
“It’s teaching to a particular ideology, not actual history,” said parent Viviane Safrin.
She said she supports ethnic studies, but she’s concerned about how this course is being implemented.
“This course for our freshman has replaced world history,” explained Safrin. “Our ninth graders are saying I took this course already in middle school and why am I having to take it again as a ninth grader for a full year?”
It covers topics like racism, activism, and comparing the merits of capitalism versus socialism.
“When I looked at what was being taught in this course, we’ve gone too far,” said Safrin about what she saw in the curriculum published online. “And it’s okay to say we’ve gone too far.”
Parent Scott Kravitz agrees.
“I feel that instead of fostering critical thinking or knowledge, all that we’re doing is creating ill-informed activists,” Kravitz said.
In 2021, a California bill required all high schools to offer an ethnic studies course by the 2025-2026 school year.
It needs to become a graduation requirement by the 2029-30 school year.
District leaders say they moved forward with the mandate properly, but parent Alex Wong questions that.
“The president of the board at the time, Lainie Motamedi, said, ‘Let’s slow this down,’ and the fact that SFUSD just continued to barrel through kind of just made me hesitant on why is everything being rushed when there’s still a lot of questions to be answered about this,” Wong said.
Ethnic studies has been offered as an elective for about a decade.
Wong said mandating a two-semester class will leave students missing out on other topics.
“I think the problem with SFUSD is it’s a full-year course,” said Wong. “The state law only requires one semester. There are only so many days in the school year, and the fact that you’re required to take an extra semester and leaves less time to take other classes kids may be interested in.”
On the state level, there are still four years before an ethnic studies class is required for graduation.
All the parents CBS Bay Area spoke with hope SFUSD uses the extra time to re-evaluate the course.
“Our city schools are reflective of the best of our society,” said Safrin. “We want to raise our kids here and provide the highest quality, rigorous curriculum. Giving our kids many choices and opportunities to learn.”