SFUSD ethnic studies vote reignites debate over curriculum, process

A fight over who gets to shape ethnic studies in San Francisco schools has returned to the center of school politics, with the district moving toward a permanent curriculum even as critics argue the process shut out the very people it was supposed to include.

San Francisco Unified School District has taught ethnic studies since 2010, when a pilot launched at five high schools and then expanded to all SFUSD high schools in the 2015-16 school year. But the latest overhaul has become a broader test of trust. On June 30, 2025, Superintendent Maria Su announced a comprehensive ethnic studies plan for the 2025-26 school year, and the district later identified Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey as meeting its requirements after reviewing curricula used across California and nationally.

The district’s timeline called for an April 2026 board adoption meeting on a permanent recommendation, part of a plan that would move ethnic studies from a contested pilot and interim approach into a lasting part of the high school experience. SFUSD says the Class of 2029 still must complete two semesters of ethnic studies to graduate, though ninth graders in 2025-26 can opt out and satisfy the requirement later through alternate pathways.

That requirement lands in a district of about 50,000 students, the seventh-largest in California, where the politics of curriculum carry outsized weight. California public schools are 77% students of color, and ethnic studies has become a proxy battle over representation, history and who gets to decide what students learn about their own identities.

The tension sharpened last year when some parents criticized the old curriculum as biased and “activist-driven.” SFUSD responded by pausing its homegrown materials and auditing them while teaching from an interim curriculum. The district has also said its history-social studies curriculum has not been comprehensively updated in more than 20 years, a gap Su said mattered because districts typically refresh materials every six to 10 years. She also pointed to outdated texts that still list George W. Bush as president.

The board fight now stretches beyond the class itself. SFUSD says it is recruiting educators, families and community members for a Voices Curriculum Review Committee, a signal that the review process remains part of the political battle. Another layer of uncertainty hangs over the yearlong ethnic studies mandate, which was not on the board agenda even though reporting in April said SFUSD planned to auto-enroll all ninth graders in the course. California’s AB 101 tied the state graduation requirement to legislative funding, and the 2025-26 budget did not include that money, leaving that mandate stalled for now.