Advocates for San Francisco parents are furious over what they call “untested and illegal” civics classes that have been conducted without meaningful input — citing segregated curriculum as a “wheel of privilege” that organizes students into an “oppressor/oppressed frame,” according to a legal warning sent to city leaders.
The Friends of Lowell Foundation, which advocates for academic excellence at San Francisco’s premier magnet school Lowell High, blasted a year-long civics course that was recently adopted permanently by the San Francisco Unified School District — making it mandatory for ninth graders.
The scathing letter accuses the San Francisco Board of Education and district leaders of quietly pushing a $7 million, required ninth-grader course called “Voices” largely hidden from concerned parents.
“Kids are being sorted, labeled, and educated according to race-based frameworks that no parent agrees with and that no reasonable reading of the civil rights law allows,” said Lee Cheng, a civil rights attorney and founder of the Friends of Lowell Foundation, which successfully sued SFUSD to reinstate the merit-based admissions program after it was flagged the first time.
“This is the kind of government-sponsored racism that the civil rights law was written to prohibit,” Cheng said.
San Francisco ninth-graders were given a “wheel of power and privilege,” created by teacher Sylvia Duckworth, which sorts people according to various categories of “power,” such as race, gender identity, religious identity, marital status, disability and “disrespect.”
The book’s goal is to provide students with the “concepts and tools they need to analyze the impact of race and ethnicity in US history and today,” according to its website. Vocabulary is divided into Native Studies, Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Asian American/Pacific Islander Studies units.
Friends of the Lowell Foundation called it “a thoroughly politicized text” that, instead of informing students about their world, teaches “racial deterrence and despair.”
The foundation alleged in a 53-page memo that the district hid the curriculum from parents – requiring in-person appointments during work hours to view the Voices book, confusing agenda items for the Board of Education and scheduling ethnic studies discussions on Jewish and Muslim religious holidays, violating families’ civil rights.
Requiring year-round civics courses robs students of a choice that will help them get into college, said SFUSD parent Liz Le.
“It puts the students of San Francisco at a disadvantage and it’s illegal,” Le said. “We are losing students because we are losing money.”
In 2021, California lawmakers made one semester of racial studies mandatory for high school students.
San Francisco chose to extend the requirement to one year, first introducing “home-grown” citizenship courses that were fraught with controversy, such as referring to Chairman Mao Zedong’s Red Guard as a “social movement,” the US as “a place called the United States,” and comparing parental authority to a “repressive system.”
San Francisco Superintendent Maria Su has announced a “new approach” to civics studies after a major backlash from the previous plan.
Although Voices is now a district-approved civics curriculum, each teacher is still using the old curriculum, The Frisc reports.
“The United States is not a perfect country … but these students are taught to hate their peers and hate their country, and that’s at the heart of it,” said Christine Linnenbach, an attorney and president of the Friends of Lowell Foundation.
San Francisco County has lost thousands of students over the past 10 years, prompting a program to close schools.
Critics say they are not opposed to studies of nationalism and support that give students an honest view of American history. But the foundation says the Voices curriculum makes unsubstantiated, sweeping claims that collapse diverse histories into “subthemes of oppression, resistance and activism.”
Le pointed out that the category of “whiteness” that “white” is not just a race, but refers to a person’s position in the “national category of race, ethnicity and economy.”
She said a visiting race teacher at her teenage son’s school led a discussion about “real monsters” that included the police and Hitler and serial killers – and other lessons she called “simplistic, almost racist.”
Linnenbach believes it’s part of a larger effort to force a political agenda on students.
“Everything is organized, with these policies and curriculum, based on race. It is unacceptable to create this victim/perpetrator relationship where 14-year-old children learn to despise each other based on the color of their skin,” he said.
The Friends of Lowell Foundation has sought a meeting with Mayor Daniel Lurie and city officials to discuss the alleged violations. Although SFUSD is largely supported by federal funding, the city of San Francisco provides support to the district.
The district did not respond to a request for comment.
Lurie’s office pointed to a statement he made last year supporting “an effective program that meets local and state needs and serves our students effectively across the district.”
Only 41% of eighth graders in San Francisco were proficient in math last year, compared to the goal of 65%. Third-grade literacy was only 51.8%, below the goal of 62%, the San Francisco Standard reported.
Linnenbach said he is willing to take the matter to the Department of Justice and even the White House if his party’s concerns are not addressed.
“This issue is happening up and down the state of California,” he said. “We have decided to take our issue to elected leaders because school districts, not only in San Francisco but also in California, are not responding to the needs of parents.”
