SFUSD ethnic studies class swaps textbook for controversial materials

A Washington High School ethnic studies class replaced much of the district-approved textbook with outside classroom materials built around Sydney Sweeney, Elon Musk and political activism, pushing SFUSD’s control over one of its most sensitive courses back into the spotlight. The lesson mix turned a ninth-grade class into a test case for how far teachers can go before supplementing the curriculum becomes something closer to substitution.

The episode lands in a district where ethnic studies has been under scrutiny for years. SFUSD has offered the course since 2010, and the San Francisco Board of Education made it a two-semester high school graduation requirement in 2021 through Board Policy 6146. The district has pointed to Stanford research finding that students who took ethnic studies had higher attendance, credit accumulation, graduation rates and post-secondary enrollment, but the program has also drawn objections from parents who have called it biased and “activist-driven.”

That tension has already forced the district to revise course materials. On June 30, 2025, Superintendent Maria Su announced a plan to pilot an interim ethnic studies curriculum used by other California districts while SFUSD audited its own materials. The district said it would also begin enforcing a new administrative regulation on supplemental instructional materials in the 2025-26 school year. SFUSD later said the standardized curriculum would roll out across high schools in fall 2025, with an independent audit to follow.

Even after those moves, the fight did not end. SFUSD approved a new permanent ethnic studies curriculum in April 2026, signaling that the dispute had shifted from whether the course should exist to who gets to define its content and how tightly it should be monitored. SFUSD says the class must meet California State Board of Education guidelines, Common Core standards and University of California A-G requirements, and students may opt out of the pilot ethnic studies curriculum through a course change request.

The Washington High School lesson also arrives as federal pressure intensifies. Su was summoned on June 9 and June 10, 2026, to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about SFUSD’s ethnic studies and gender policies, with lawmakers expected to question how the district handles race, sexuality and parent notification. The U.S. Department of Justice has also launched a review of SFUSD and three other Northern California districts over sexual orientation and parents’ rights policies.

For Washington High School families, the immediate issue is more basic: whether the district knows what is being taught in classrooms that are supposed to follow a state-aligned curriculum. For SFUSD leaders, the broader problem is whether repeated course reviews, audits and policy changes have actually given the district a firm grip on what happens once a teacher closes the door.