Lowell High School Group Sues SFUSD Over Newly Adopted Ethnic Studies Curriculum
A group of San Francisco parents sued the city’s school district this week over its controversial ethnic studies course, alleging officials violated public meeting laws while approving a new permanent curriculum this spring.
The Friends of Lowell Foundation, a nonprofit group formed by Lowell High School alumni to protect merit-based admissions at the magnet school, filed a petition for a court order challenging San Francisco Unified School District’s adoption of a permanent ethnic studies program for ninth graders — meant to replace its homegrown course, which came under fire last year.
“Everyone needs to scrutinize this curriculum, and that did not happen here,” Friends of Lowell Foundation secretary Frank Cheung said in a statement. “Rather than restoring public trust, the District again chose to circumvent the laws designed to ensure transparency and accountability.”
SFUSD said it does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.
“We remain focused on student outcomes and do not have additional information to share on this matter at this time,” a spokesperson said via email.
The original course had been under scrutiny for years after parents and a national education group raised concerns about biased and “activist-driven” lesson plans and materials, some of which were exposed in media reports and by a national education group last spring.
Superintendent Maria Su was asked to answer questions about the course at a Congressional hearing about LGBTQ+ students and diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools this spring.
One activity asked students to role-play as Israeli soldiers putting Palestinians into refugee camps, and another slide deck compared the civil rights movements to the Red Guards, an often-violent youth movement supporting Mao Zedong during China’s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Some ethnic studies teachers told KQED at the time they had never taught or seen the materials.
In response, Superintendent Maria Su paused the curriculum developed by district educators over the last decade, and launched a pilot of Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey, published by the textbook and curriculum provider Gibbs Smith Education, last fall.
In April, the school board approved a plan to purchase and implement Voices permanently after a vetting process that district leaders said included parent, student and teacher surveys, interviews and focus groups and classroom observations.
Prior to the vote, the Friends of Lowell Foundation sent a demand letter to the district asking it to postpone the decision. The group said that the way SFUSD agendized the vote — folded into the same agenda item as other history and social science materials — violated the state’s Brown Act, which guarantees the public right to attend and participate in local legislative body meetings.
According to the petition, the public received no clear notice that the board would permanently adopt the curriculum, and the publicly posted agenda for the April 28 meeting does not explicitly mention that it would include approving the ethnic studies course.
“This curriculum was rushed through without the transparency families deserve, and it was paid for with money San Francisco voters restricted for our children’s enrichment,” Friends of Lowell board member Sarah Stettler said in a statement.
However, under California state law, ethnic studies is considered a social science, and the new textbook was adopted alongside new social studies curricula for much of the district.
The petition also alleges that SFUSD refused to provide parents access to the curriculum prior to the vote, citing publisher copyright. Friends of Lowell said that California law requires that the district itself makes instructional materials available for review regardless of copyright restrictions.
Board Vice President Jaime Huling contested that claim during the meeting, saying that there was a physical copy of the textbook at SFUSD’s headquarters, and the materials were accessible to the general public through a two-week free trial. She said she’d also requested a full digital copy from the publisher prior to last year’s vote on the pilot, and was granted access.
Board member Supryia Ray, who cast the lone dissenting vote against adopting Voices, said at the time that she was unable to access the full curriculum.
Friends of Lowell have asked the court to set aside the April 28 vote, among other remedies. The group is being represented by the same firm that successfully litigated the Foundation’s challenge against eliminating merit-based admissions at Lowell.