{"id":6145,"date":"2025-08-13T20:49:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/?p=6145"},"modified":"2025-08-13T21:03:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:03:57","slug":"update-on-ethnic-studies-in-bay-area-high-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/update-on-ethnic-studies-in-bay-area-high-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Update on ethnic studies in Bay Area High Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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FAIR network attorney, Lauren Janov summarized the status of the ethnic studies mandate in a recent op-ed published in the journal EdSource<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 When the California legislature passed AB101, the bill mandating that high schools offer an ethnic studies course starting in Fall 2025, they added a hugely consequential sentence \u2014 the ethnic studies graduation requirement will become \u201coperative only upon an appropriation of funds\u201d in separate legislation. The Senate Appropriation Committee estimated that the ethnic studies requirement would cost taxpayers $276 million per year, which competed with other more urgent priorities.\u00a0 The net result was that the 2025-26 state budget did not appropriate funds for ethnic studies, which means that the mandate has lapsed.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

In the meantime, many school districts developed ethnic studies courses in anticipation of the mandate, and its associated funding.\u00a0 Approximately \u00bc of all California high schools now offer ethnic studies with the overwhelming majority offering the most ideological version referred to as liberated ethnic studies.\u00a0 As summarized in a recent article in Politico<\/a><\/strong>, these classes have been extremely divisive with much of the controversy occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area.\u00a0 Some of the most heated exchanges have occurred at board meetings of the Palo Alto, San Mateo and Tampalpais Union School districts.<\/p>

The lack of a state mandate does not mean that ethnic studies requirements will go away.\u00a0 Some schools are backing away from the requirement while others are doubling down with the support of activists including many teachers.\u00a0 A recent example occurred in San Francisco<\/a><\/strong> where parents were sent a notice that their ninth graders would be automatically enrolled in a full year ethnic studies course.\u00a0 This notice was sent out over the objection of the school board president.<\/p>

FAIR has a number of resources that will be helpful for parents concerned about ethnic studies mandates.\u00a0 The most basic is a 2-page handout explaining ethnic studies for someone new to the issue.\u00a0 This handout includes information on what to look for in an ethnic studies course.\u00a0 For those wanting more detail, we have an analysis of the California ethnic studies model curriculum as well as analyses\/letters that have been used in other school districts.\u00a0 Although each school district has created its own curriculum, there are common patterns that we can help you identify.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIR network attorney, Lauren Janov summarized the status of the ethnic studies mandate in a recent op-ed published in the journal EdSource.\u00a0 When the California legislature passed AB101, the bill mandating that high schools offer an ethnic studies course starting in Fall 2025, they added a hugely consequential sentence \u2014 the ethnic studies graduation requirement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8702,"featured_media":6144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/bay-area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}