After a Rigged Review Process, SFUSD Just Approved Its New Ethnic Studies Curriculum

Last night, SFUSD’s board voted 6-1 to approve “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey,” committing local funds to a two-semester curriculum that was validated by a process designed to produce exactly one outcome.

The same night, Friends of Lowell Foundation filed a formal Brown Act demand letter, demanding the district immediately postpone the adoption and citing open-meetings law violations. This is not FOLF’s first time running this playbook. In 2021, they challenged SFUSD’s removal of merit admissions at Lowell High School on similar Brown Act grounds — and won.

Here’s what the board just rubber-stamped.

SFUSD paid $147,000 to an LA-based nonprofit called Education Leaders of Color to run an “independent” evaluation of the curriculum. That evaluation was not independent. And it was not really an evaluation. Before the committee convened, no minimum passing score had been established. There was no defined threshold for adoption. They didn’t know what “pass” looked like because passing was never the point.

The committee composition tells you everything: 16 ethnic studies teachers, 15 other SFUSD staff, and 8 community members. Community members had a three-day window to sign up for a 15-to-17-hour commitment across two Saturdays. When a parent’s dissenting scores contradicted the majority, they weren’t debated or addressed. They were reduced to a footnote.

The Curriculum’s Track Record

SFUSD’s ethnic studies program has a history worth understanding — because the board just rubber-stamped another rushed decision.

The original homegrown curriculum, documented extensively by the SF Standard, characterized Mao’s Red Guards as a social justice movement and asked ninth-graders what white men should “give up” to achieve equity. Mayor Daniel Lurie rebuked it publicly. Parents dissented. The district scrapped it.

What followed was not a careful replacement process. In July 2025, Superintendent Maria Su spent $100,000 to rush-adopt the Gibbs Smith “Voices” curriculum just weeks before the school year began, giving teachers almost no time to prepare. Board member Supryia Ray voted against the purchase at the August 26 board meeting — and she was the sole dissenting vote again on Tuesday.

Ray was right. And the district ignored her.

The school board that originally mandated ethnic studies was removed by more than two-thirds of San Francisco voters, recalled for ending merit admissions at Lowell High School, renaming schools, and eliminating algebra for eighth-graders. All three of those policies were reversed. The ethnic studies mandate was not.

Meanwhile, the students inside this system are falling further behind on the numbers that actually matter. Eighth-grade math proficiency fell from 42% in 2022 to 41.2% in 2025, against a district target of 65%. Third-grade reading dropped from 53.1% in fall 2025 to 51.8% by winter, against a year-end target of 62%. The Blueprint SF petition puts the district-wide picture plainly: only 46% of SFUSD students are proficient in math. Only 53% are proficient in English Language Arts.

SFUSD has lost 4,000 students since 2019. Thirty percent of San Francisco kids are now enrolled in private school, the highest rate in California. The families who can afford to leave are leaving. Yet the board just committed millions more to a curriculum that none of them can independently verify was properly vetted.

A Rigged Process

The EdLoC evaluation was designed to reach a predetermined conclusion.

Nikhil Laud, the SFUSD district employee who oversees the ethnic studies program, was present throughout every review session. One source described him to the SF Standard as the “ringleader” of the process. The district called his involvement standard practice. But this was supposed to be an independent community evaluation. The supervisor of the program being evaluated was in the room the entire time.

Scott Kravitz, an SFUSD parent who sat on the review committee, scored the curriculum 0.5 and 1 out of 3 on the two primary criteria. The three other members of his group, teachers and a district employee, scored it between 2.5 and 3. The official submission recorded averages of 2.25. Kravitz’s objections appeared only as a footnote.

The lived experience inside those review rooms was worse than the numbers suggest. Dana Bernstein is a 25-year history professor at San Jose City College and an SFUSD parent who arrived at the sessions as a supporter of ethnic studies, hoping to improve the curriculum. She came with nearly 100 documented, page-by-page objections. When she tried to raise them, the EdLoC facilitator physically hovered over her and said, “No, you’re not supposed to give an example like that.”

Among Bernstein’s specific objections: an “identity wheel” exercise that forces students to classify themselves as either powerful or marginalized based on race, income, gender, and family status. And that Paulo Freire, whose Marxist pedagogy underpins the course’s framework, is presented as a role model with no critical context offered. These are exactly the concerns a real review process is supposed to surface.

EdLoC had a ready response for all of it. Their final report declared that critics weren’t identifying curriculum flaws. They were, in the report’s own language, “disagreeing with the foundational approach of ethnic studies as a discipline rather than rubric-based findings that the materials fail to meet the evaluative criteria.”

It’s a perfect trap. The consultant’s official response to every substantive objection: you’re not critiquing the curriculum, you’re critiquing ethnic studies itself. Disagree with anything, and you’re the problem.

One other contrast worth sitting with: the new K-12 history and social studies curriculum voted on the same night was chosen after a review of 17 different curricula. “Voices” was the only curriculum the ethnic studies committee was ever allowed to evaluate. Same vote, two standards of rigor. The board approved both.

What This Costs Students

SFUSD’s two-semester ethnic studies requirement is a local mandate that receives zero state funding. California only requires one semester. Governor Newsom excluded ethnic studies funding from the 2025 state budget. The district pays for this out of local funds, during a structural deficit, while math and reading scores move in the wrong direction.

Multiple California districts, including Santa Ana Unified and Mountain View Los Altos, have already walked their mandates back, cutting to one semester or returning the course to an elective. SFUSD is the outlier, not the model.

The Blueprint SF petition calls for straightforward corrections: reduce the requirement to one semester, sequence ethnic studies after foundational U.S. and World History courses so students have context before analyzing complex historical frameworks, pilot multiple curricula before committing to any single one, and redirect the savings to math and reading. None of that is radical. It’s what a district focused on student outcomes actually does.

“Curriculum shouldn’t come from a movement,” said an anonymous parent who sat on the committee. She supports social justice causes outside the classroom. What she doesn’t support is a school system that confuses advocacy with education while its students fall further behind.

The board voted 6-1 on Tuesday. They committed to a curriculum validated by a review with no passing threshold, run by a vendor whose mission is advancing equity outcomes rather than evaluating whether any specific curriculum actually achieves them, with the district’s own ethnic studies supervisor in the room as the “ringleader” throughout. Only Supryia Ray dissented. The rest didn’t blink.

The fight is now legal. Friends of Lowell Foundation’s Brown Act demand letter is the first shot. FOLF has done this before — in 2021, they challenged the board’s removal of merit admissions at Lowell High School on the same Brown Act grounds and won. That decision was reversed. This board should remember what that felt like.

Blueprint SF has created a petition. What comes next is voter accountability. Every name on that petition is a signal to every board member facing reelection that parents are counting, and that this vote is on the record.

San Francisco recalled three board members the last time the board decided it knew better than the families it serves. The ethnic studies mandate they left behind is now the only major policy from that era still standing. The board just chose to ignore parents again. History suggests that won’t end well for them.