
Press Releases
January 23, 2025
​
PALO ALTO -- In an unprecedented about-face, tonight the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) board will be making two critical decisions on a highly contentious statewide issue: whether to mandate Ethnic Studies as a high school graduation requirement and whether to approve the proposed Ethnic Studies course materials as its curriculum.
For months, the PAUSD administration refused to provide course materials to parents who requested them.
Yesterday, just hours before the vote, PAUSD published the course outline. With a mere few hours in which to review, the PAUSD Administration denied the public its Constitutional right to give input to its elected officials, and denied the Board an opportunity to exercise their crucial responsibility to thoroughly evaluate and approve instructional content.
It is now clear why the district steadfastly refused to provide anyone a meaningful opportunity for input and review. The curriculum - designed to be taught to 14 year old freshmen kids - contains extreme elements including:
-
In the opening unit on community-building, a resource video teaches: "Sometimes I just I say like, oh, white people do have souls. And my friends are like, 'no, no they don’t.'"
-
Civic engagement resources include the book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” which says: “The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves.”
-
Resistance content asks and answers this question: “Is AGENCY gained when oppression is resisted? That depends on whether or not the oppression was resisted violently or nonviolently.” (Violent Resistance and Agency and Course Final Essay Exam)
-
In the Identity unit, a video instructs students that “heterosexuality is just as much a social construction as any other sexuality” and “…among the Sambia of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, young boys perform oral sex on, and ingest the semen of, older men, as part of a rite of passage of adulthood.”
The proposed curriculum demonstrates that for over 12 months, PAUSD administrators have been misleading both the Board and the public. This course is a dramatic departure from the Introduction to Ethnic Studies course PAUSD previewed publicly.
Rather, this is a college-level Race and Resistance Studies course. Over 70% of it – 13 weeks – is about power, oppression, and resistance with a focus on violent resistance.
Race and Resistance studies is a far left political approach to Ethnic Studies – aka liberated Ethnic Studies – taught in college as an elective. It is not what the CA State Board of Education-approved in its Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum despite PAUSD Superintendent Austin’s statement assuring the public just a month ago that this course is just what the State recommended. ​
​
The upcoming meeting is accessible in the ways:
-
when: January 23, 2025, 5 pm PT
-
in person: PAUSD District Office, 25 Churchill Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94306
-
tv: A live webcast of the session will be available on local cable television https://midpenmedia.org/