LA MESA – The Grossmont Union High School District upended three years of ethnic studies planning last month when Governing Board President Gary Woods introduced a new curriculum.
The April 24 meeting agenda included a notice that the ethnic studies curriculum — in development since 2022 by district teachers and staff — would be available for public review ahead of a June 10 hearing and possible adoption.
Work on the curriculum began following a 2021 state law requiring public high schools to offer at least one semester of ethnic studies beginning in the 2025-26 school year. GUHSD’s program was slated to launch when the new school year begins in the fall.
Instead, Woods shocked the audience by pulling a binder from beneath the table with an alternate curriculum sponsored by Oakland-based libertarian think tank Independent Institute.
The proposal, which had not been publicized ahead of the meeting, blindsided those who had worked on the curriculum, with Valhalla High School social studies teacher Jackie Naah saying it felt like “an ambush.”
“Even suggesting that at the last minute … felt like a slap in the face and disrespectful to those of us who had been paid by this district to create it,” Naah said.
Every school in the district had two teachers on the committee that wrote the curriculum and had been updating the board throughout the three-year process.
An unruly meeting
GUHSD board meetings have been a raucous affair since a February announcement outlining the elimination of dozens of education jobs. Since then, hundreds of attendees have carried signs at meetings in protest, and private security has had to patrol the aisles to keep order.
Last month’s meeting included the board’s refusal to rescind layoff notices to librarians, teachers and support staff.
But the controversy about the ethnic studies curriculum overshadowed all else. When Woods displayed the binder, an immediate outcry erupted, with shouted questions asking why the item was not on the agenda and where the curriculum was from.
Trustee Robert Kelly demanded a recess to the meeting so the crowd could be called to order, saying: “They are out of control.”
When the board returned, it agreed to postpone the June 10 hearing until staff have had time to review the Independent Institute’s Comparative Cultures Ethnic Studies Curriculum the same way they had the district-created teachings.
Naah said that typically, faculty-created open educational resources that are to be shared among all schools in the district get a “rubber stamp” by the board — which made Woods’ surprise proposal all the more shocking.
Woods said if staff like the Independent Institute curriculum, then both it and the faculty-created content could be offered to district schools. It would be an alternative, not a replacement, he said.
But Naah said having different options for a state-mandated course would be unprecedented.
A lack of transparency
Woods justified the surprise move by citing rules around trustee meetings.
“We have to discuss this publicly,” he told the audience amid protests. “We could not have done this earlier privately.”
Up until the legal deadline to publicly post an agenda, a board member typically would have the power to request an item be added ahead of a scheduled meeting.
Delaying an upcoming hearing and introducing a motion not on the board agenda may not technically violate the Brown Act, which guides public transparency at government meetings. But it could still undermine the spirit of accountability to the public, said Annie Cappetta, a legal fellow at the First Amendment Coalition.
“Assuming the board president has input over items that appear on the agenda, it certainly would have been much more transparent and fair to the public if he had noted that he would be introducing an additional curriculum from an outside group beyond the one that district faculty devoted their resources toward,” Cappetta said.
Woods did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.
Audience members and teachers weren’t the only ones surprised by the move. Trustee Chris Fite said it “came out of the blue,” adding, “We should let the educators do this who’ve been working on it” for three years.
Substitute teachers are now being brought in to teach classes while district teachers on a newly formed review board examine the alternate curriculum.
“I feel like this is a waste of their money and a waste of our time when we already have a really great curriculum,” said Naah, the social studies teacher. “Frankly, if they had gotten behind our curriculum, they probably could have packaged it and sold it to other districts in the state. But instead of doing that, we’re gonna spend more money.”
State mandate in limbo
The delay in curriculum comes as a semester-long ethnic studies course was set to become a graduation requirement for all California freshmen who start high school in 2025.
That rule, however, hinged on the state funding materials, teacher salaries and staff training for the programs — something that has not happened and now seems unlikely amid a budget shortfall. Gov. Gavin Newsom has not set aside the $276 million needed annually for the course he hailed as enabling “students to learn their own stories, and those of their classmates.”
The ethnic studies mandate was passed after years of advocacy from educators amid controversy over how contemporary issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict and systemic racism would be taught.
Research at San Francisco Unified School District found ethnic studies courses improved attendance rates, grade point average, graduation rates and even college enrollment when struggling ninth-graders took the class compared to a control group who did not.
Now, besides state budget woes, the Trump administration’s threats to withhold funding from schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs makes the implementation of the course more fraught.
Some school districts, like Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, are moving forward with teaching the curriculum, while others, like Chino Valley Unified, are holding off until they are forced to, according to the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Unified already has ethnic studies as a graduation requirement.
Many districts remain in limbo, unsure whether to keep the course regardless or scrap it unless funding is added before school begins in the fall.
Comparing the curricula
Williamson Evers, a former fellow at the Hoover Institution who specialized in research on education policy and is now senior fellow and director of the Center on Educational Excellence, co-wrote the Independent Institute’s curriculum.
He criticized California’s model curriculum, which GUHSD faculty consulted while writing their course, saying the teachings are based on “intersectionality,” a key component of critical race theory, a frequent educational target by conservatives.
For the studies Evers developed, he created a historic survey of American cultures based on the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, with 82 turnkey lessons. The curriculum was published free online in November 2024 — the timing of which was another reason Woods blamed for his last-minute proposed change — with promises it was evenhanded rather than “left of center.”
For example, Evers said that while he believes concerns are overblown about the lingering effects of redlining — the discriminatory practice of denying mortgages to minority residents — the Independent Institute curriculum does not parrot his viewpoints. Instead, it calls for debates among students.
Naah criticized the curriculum for encouraging less civic engagement, but Evers said that was intentional.
“One thing we don’t do is we don’t try and say, ‘OK, we’re going to divide the class up: Blacks over here, Latinos over here, Hispanics over here, Asians over here, Jews over here, blah, blah, blah. Tell us all your problems. Now, how are you gonna fight to fix things?’ We are not a political action curriculum,” Evers said.
The district-created curriculum is based around three themes: identity and self; oppression and resistance; and civic engagement and transformation. Teachers could choose to cover five ethnic identities within those themes based on what they were comfortable with and tailored to their student population. As of October 2023, 42.25% of the GUHSD student body identified as Hispanic or Latino.
East County also has the largest Middle Eastern population west of Michigan. In-depth coverage of Middle Eastern immigrants was an important inclusion in the staff-created curriculum. The Independent Institute curriculum has only one 90-minute lesson on Middle Eastern and North African identities during “Unit 7: White Americans.”
From Naah’s perspective, ethnic studies helps students develop critical thinking skills needed in the job market. As an interdisciplinary course, it combines aspects of statistics, economics, sociology, politics and history.
“That’s why it would be such a great course for freshmen because it introduces them to so many different elements of social science,” she said.
With state funding not included in Newsom’s revised budget and the June 10 hearing delayed, when — or if — a GUHSD ethnic studies curriculum will be approved remains unclear.
