T.-4 20-1186 Discussion and possible Adoption by the Board of Education of Resolution No. 1920-0246 - Affirming Support of AB2016 California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Draft Created by Ethnic Studies Experts.
As a youth educator in Oakland and a Jew, I strongly support this resolution to include the Ethnic Studies Curriculum in Oakland schools. This curriculum provides much needed representation for Arab youth, who deserve to learn their history, culture, and narratives in school. To present and uplift Arab and Palestinian narratives is not antisemitic; it is powerful and necessary education for everyone, including Jews! I would have benefited *so* greatly as a young Jew in high school to learn about Palestinian and Arab history and culture and actually build solidarity with my neighbors. Progressive Jews stand in solidarity with Arab Americans to endorse this curriculum. With your power to influence the education Oakland youth receive, please do not deny whole communities from learning their histories, or shortchange the capacity of Oakland teachers and the young people they teach to hold complexity while engaging in critical conversations about race and identity.
I oppose this resolution for a simple reason: rather than it being a bulwark against racism, it is in fact racist. Blatantly racist. I'm all for an honest look at the contributions made by the many ethnic groups that make up the Oakland community, but this curiculum doesn't do that. It picks and chooses which groups receive praise, and which should be shamed. That's not only not ok, it is frankly disgusting. This curriculum promotes a narrow point of view, whereas education should be promoting creative and analytical thinking. Please don't make Oakland the laughing stock of the world. WE'RE BETTER THAN THAT!
I SUPPORT this resolution. I am a member of TWO Oakland synagogues--Temple Beth Abraham and Chochmat Halev--and an active part of Jewish community in the Bay Area. I have three children in OUSD (Montera and Tech). I am also a tenured professor in the UC system. I take exception to six "Rabbis of Oakland" claiming to "represent nearly 2000 Jewish households as well as the many unaffiliated Jewish families in Oakland" in calling for rejection of this bill. It is vitally important to the world we live in, with its history and climate of racism and hatred, that students of color see their stories and histories in our textbooks; it is also important that white students such as my children learn these histories, and practice critically analyzing, considering, and debating issues around race, colonialism, gender, and structures of power. I support the curriculum, its focus on Arab, Central American, and PI studies, and asking students to think about Israel, Palestine, and BDS.
Dear Oakland School Board,
There is a reason this flawed curriculum is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote No on the current Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Oakland Tech already has an excellent Ethnic Studies course and I'm sure that they would be willing to share their materials within the district until the rewritten curriculum is ready from the state.
One Oakland voter,
Selma Meyerowitz
1500 West View Drive (Oakland resident with Berkeley address)
Berkeley, CA 94705
I support this resolution because our youth deserve to know their history and where they came from, like any other community. I urge the board to adopt the curriculum to continue to do that Oakland cares about it's Arab community.
I oppose this version of the curriculum. It tells a grossly simplified, one sided story of the arab-israeli conflict, and promotes antisemitism. the topic should be studied more holistically, or you will be doing all students a grave disservice
I support the resolution in favor of the draft ESMC. Arab, Central American, and Pacific Islander children deserve to see their community’s stories properly told in school. We need to follow the lead of the 6 other cities who have unanimously passed similar resolutions in favor of ESMC draft: San Francisco, Richmond, Albany, Hayward, Castro Valley, and Alhambra.
Dear Oakland School Board,
There is a reason this flawed curriculum is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote No on the current Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Oakland Tech already has an excellent Ethnic Studies course and I'm sure that they would be willing to share their materials within the district until the rewritten curriculum is ready from the state.
One Oakland voter, Nina Johnson
As a mother and former educator, I support this resolution. We need to look at history through a factual lens and not a revisionist one. We can't rewrite or omit aspects of history that are factually true, and have generational effects on the families that our school district serves. It is unfair for Arab American, Pacific Islander and Central American students to not see their experiences reflected in OUSD’s curriculum. Our resources are currently insufficient, and the Model Curriculum is a needed guide and resource for our teachers.
The curriculum needs more work. There are parts of it that are biased and inaccurate and need to be revised. There’s a reason why the state of California did not adopt it. Please oppose.
Born, raised, stayed, married, went to school and still stayed in Oakland, had two kids, now in their 30s and my wife and I are still here. My parents were Eastern European refugees after WWII who were lucky enough to be brought here in 1950 after 5 yrs in German displaced persons camps. Without educations they had to take up jobs they never would have if there had been no war. They faced extreme prejudice and found kinship with many others of all ethnicities through their jobs. Their two children received good educations and worked hard to get good jobs. Prejudice is tough on the receiving end and I get that. What I don’t get is why the proposed curriculum is so bent on creating even greater divides among us. Anti-semitism is simply another form of racism. We are too good as a community to internationally impose such a biased curriculum which will only serve to divide us. Teach the very important subject matter but not from a biased political perspective. Please foster peace. Vote no
I wholeheartedly support Ethnic Studies & AB-2016. This rushed resolution proposes to preempt the final pending curriculum in favor of one widely rejected statewide. Why?
Last summer, Gov. Newsom, SSup Tony Thurmond, the legislature & many others recognized the harm this early version would cause to our collective community. Many Oakland ethnic groups do not appear in the curriculum. Jewish Americans are 1 such excluded group.
14 State legislators reported this draft:
- erases the Jewish experience
- fails to discuss anti-Semitism
- reinforces negative stereotypes about Jews, &
- Institutionalizes teaching anti-Semitic stereotypes in our schools
The governor assured the public the model curriculum would be revised substantially.
Our Jewish tradition highlights teaching children to live with understanding & appreciation of their own culture, & respect & openness to others. The draft curricula does neither.
There is a reason this deeply flawed curriculum has been rejected as it currently stands and is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote NO on Resolution 1920-0246 regarding the Ethnic Studies Curriculum. A better, more inclusive version will be coming soon.
To the OUSD Board of Education,
As a longtime resident of Oakland, a director of an Oakland-based nonprofit, and a member of the city's Arab and Palestinian community, I urge you to stand in support of Ethnic Studies and adopt this resolution. Our community has continually come under attack by voices that drum up fear and xenophobia - not unlike that of our current U.S. president - and it is truly unfortunate that our culture, our history, and our desire for dignity must once again endure attempts at censorship, erasure, and attacks.
History is regrettably rife with injustices against many groups, particularly Native American communities, African American communities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and women. It would be doubly shameful if we did not learn from these injustices by disallowing these same communities from being able to teach their own stories and struggles. Yet for the Palestinian community, this is precisely the question before you today.
As a rabbi who has served the Oakland community for over 30 years, I am in full support of this. I've witnessed the benefits such programs can have in dispelling myths and connecting communities. I don't doubt that this program would have 100% support if it didn't include one ethnic group, I'm very saddened by the fact that so many members of my community have so much hate and misinformation against Arabs and Palestinians who have been in the bay area for decades and number in the hundreds of thousands. Arabs/Palestinians deserve a voice! For too long they have been marginalized and demonized as nothing more than terrorists, they have been silenced and this is something unacceptable. This resolution is the first in a long series of steps in educating the community, by starting with the youth you start at the root. Many of my fellow rabbis have voiced support for this, and hopefully when we beat COVID-19 I will be there to voice my support
I am a current student and Arab-American, and I cannot stress how important it is to include an Arab ethnic studies program. I wish I had the classes, professors, resources, and academic space to further explore and understand my identity—especially in a post- 9/11 world. Programs like these are ones that empower young Arab-Americans to learn to love themselves, understand each other more deeply, and ultimately build community. I definitely support Resolution 1920-0246!
This curriculum needs to be edited to account for understanding and accepting of all peoples. Analysis is the key to reducing bigotry. It is our role as parents and providers to teach our children who is telling the news and why. It is our job to ensure that our kids are not complacent and one-sided. Anti-semitism can often be difficult to detect and acknowledge. Anti-semitism is often disguised as indirect narratives and MUST be rooted out. Oakland stands for tolerance of different cultures. Let’s teach understanding and empathy, not hatred.
Oakland will have ethnic studies. Thats a good thing, and its mandated by law. But Oakland's children deserve better than the current curriculum. Please vote no .
I strongly encourage the Oakland school board to reject this measure. Instead of teaching our kids to seek to understand others better it creates greater division between groups which goes against the very positive intentions of an Ethnic Studies curriculum. Please wait for the State to implement improvements to the program. Oakland students deserve a program that is well thought out, and inclusive of all ethnic minorities, not one that perpetuates bias and prejudice towards some groups in our community.
As a youth educator in Oakland and a Jew, I strongly support this resolution to include the Ethnic Studies Curriculum in Oakland schools. This curriculum provides much needed representation for Arab youth, who deserve to learn their history, culture, and narratives in school. To present and uplift Arab and Palestinian narratives is not antisemitic; it is powerful and necessary education for everyone, including Jews! I would have benefited *so* greatly as a young Jew in high school to learn about Palestinian and Arab history and culture and actually build solidarity with my neighbors. Progressive Jews stand in solidarity with Arab Americans to endorse this curriculum. With your power to influence the education Oakland youth receive, please do not deny whole communities from learning their histories, or shortchange the capacity of Oakland teachers and the young people they teach to hold complexity while engaging in critical conversations about race and identity.
I oppose this resolution for a simple reason: rather than it being a bulwark against racism, it is in fact racist. Blatantly racist. I'm all for an honest look at the contributions made by the many ethnic groups that make up the Oakland community, but this curiculum doesn't do that. It picks and chooses which groups receive praise, and which should be shamed. That's not only not ok, it is frankly disgusting. This curriculum promotes a narrow point of view, whereas education should be promoting creative and analytical thinking. Please don't make Oakland the laughing stock of the world. WE'RE BETTER THAN THAT!
I SUPPORT this resolution. I am a member of TWO Oakland synagogues--Temple Beth Abraham and Chochmat Halev--and an active part of Jewish community in the Bay Area. I have three children in OUSD (Montera and Tech). I am also a tenured professor in the UC system. I take exception to six "Rabbis of Oakland" claiming to "represent nearly 2000 Jewish households as well as the many unaffiliated Jewish families in Oakland" in calling for rejection of this bill. It is vitally important to the world we live in, with its history and climate of racism and hatred, that students of color see their stories and histories in our textbooks; it is also important that white students such as my children learn these histories, and practice critically analyzing, considering, and debating issues around race, colonialism, gender, and structures of power. I support the curriculum, its focus on Arab, Central American, and PI studies, and asking students to think about Israel, Palestine, and BDS.
Dear Oakland School Board,
There is a reason this flawed curriculum is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote No on the current Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Oakland Tech already has an excellent Ethnic Studies course and I'm sure that they would be willing to share their materials within the district until the rewritten curriculum is ready from the state.
One Oakland voter,
Selma Meyerowitz
1500 West View Drive (Oakland resident with Berkeley address)
Berkeley, CA 94705
I support this resolution because our youth deserve to know their history and where they came from, like any other community. I urge the board to adopt the curriculum to continue to do that Oakland cares about it's Arab community.
I oppose this version of the curriculum. It tells a grossly simplified, one sided story of the arab-israeli conflict, and promotes antisemitism. the topic should be studied more holistically, or you will be doing all students a grave disservice
I support the resolution in favor of the draft ESMC. Arab, Central American, and Pacific Islander children deserve to see their community’s stories properly told in school. We need to follow the lead of the 6 other cities who have unanimously passed similar resolutions in favor of ESMC draft: San Francisco, Richmond, Albany, Hayward, Castro Valley, and Alhambra.
Dear Oakland School Board,
There is a reason this flawed curriculum is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote No on the current Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Oakland Tech already has an excellent Ethnic Studies course and I'm sure that they would be willing to share their materials within the district until the rewritten curriculum is ready from the state.
One Oakland voter, Nina Johnson
As a mother and former educator, I support this resolution. We need to look at history through a factual lens and not a revisionist one. We can't rewrite or omit aspects of history that are factually true, and have generational effects on the families that our school district serves. It is unfair for Arab American, Pacific Islander and Central American students to not see their experiences reflected in OUSD’s curriculum. Our resources are currently insufficient, and the Model Curriculum is a needed guide and resource for our teachers.
The curriculum needs more work. There are parts of it that are biased and inaccurate and need to be revised. There’s a reason why the state of California did not adopt it. Please oppose.
Born, raised, stayed, married, went to school and still stayed in Oakland, had two kids, now in their 30s and my wife and I are still here. My parents were Eastern European refugees after WWII who were lucky enough to be brought here in 1950 after 5 yrs in German displaced persons camps. Without educations they had to take up jobs they never would have if there had been no war. They faced extreme prejudice and found kinship with many others of all ethnicities through their jobs. Their two children received good educations and worked hard to get good jobs. Prejudice is tough on the receiving end and I get that. What I don’t get is why the proposed curriculum is so bent on creating even greater divides among us. Anti-semitism is simply another form of racism. We are too good as a community to internationally impose such a biased curriculum which will only serve to divide us. Teach the very important subject matter but not from a biased political perspective. Please foster peace. Vote no
I wholeheartedly support Ethnic Studies & AB-2016. This rushed resolution proposes to preempt the final pending curriculum in favor of one widely rejected statewide. Why?
Last summer, Gov. Newsom, SSup Tony Thurmond, the legislature & many others recognized the harm this early version would cause to our collective community. Many Oakland ethnic groups do not appear in the curriculum. Jewish Americans are 1 such excluded group.
14 State legislators reported this draft:
- erases the Jewish experience
- fails to discuss anti-Semitism
- reinforces negative stereotypes about Jews, &
- Institutionalizes teaching anti-Semitic stereotypes in our schools
The governor assured the public the model curriculum would be revised substantially.
Our Jewish tradition highlights teaching children to live with understanding & appreciation of their own culture, & respect & openness to others. The draft curricula does neither.
I ask that you reject Resolution 1920-0246.
There is a reason this deeply flawed curriculum has been rejected as it currently stands and is being reworked at the state level. Please be patient and vote NO on Resolution 1920-0246 regarding the Ethnic Studies Curriculum. A better, more inclusive version will be coming soon.
To the OUSD Board of Education,
As a longtime resident of Oakland, a director of an Oakland-based nonprofit, and a member of the city's Arab and Palestinian community, I urge you to stand in support of Ethnic Studies and adopt this resolution. Our community has continually come under attack by voices that drum up fear and xenophobia - not unlike that of our current U.S. president - and it is truly unfortunate that our culture, our history, and our desire for dignity must once again endure attempts at censorship, erasure, and attacks.
History is regrettably rife with injustices against many groups, particularly Native American communities, African American communities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and women. It would be doubly shameful if we did not learn from these injustices by disallowing these same communities from being able to teach their own stories and struggles. Yet for the Palestinian community, this is precisely the question before you today.
I urge you to not erase us.
Important resolution that needs to be passed in this racist climate we live in. Oakland is once again on the forefront of progress
As a rabbi who has served the Oakland community for over 30 years, I am in full support of this. I've witnessed the benefits such programs can have in dispelling myths and connecting communities. I don't doubt that this program would have 100% support if it didn't include one ethnic group, I'm very saddened by the fact that so many members of my community have so much hate and misinformation against Arabs and Palestinians who have been in the bay area for decades and number in the hundreds of thousands. Arabs/Palestinians deserve a voice! For too long they have been marginalized and demonized as nothing more than terrorists, they have been silenced and this is something unacceptable. This resolution is the first in a long series of steps in educating the community, by starting with the youth you start at the root. Many of my fellow rabbis have voiced support for this, and hopefully when we beat COVID-19 I will be there to voice my support
I am a current student and Arab-American, and I cannot stress how important it is to include an Arab ethnic studies program. I wish I had the classes, professors, resources, and academic space to further explore and understand my identity—especially in a post- 9/11 world. Programs like these are ones that empower young Arab-Americans to learn to love themselves, understand each other more deeply, and ultimately build community. I definitely support Resolution 1920-0246!
This curriculum needs to be edited to account for understanding and accepting of all peoples. Analysis is the key to reducing bigotry. It is our role as parents and providers to teach our children who is telling the news and why. It is our job to ensure that our kids are not complacent and one-sided. Anti-semitism can often be difficult to detect and acknowledge. Anti-semitism is often disguised as indirect narratives and MUST be rooted out. Oakland stands for tolerance of different cultures. Let’s teach understanding and empathy, not hatred.
Oakland will have ethnic studies. Thats a good thing, and its mandated by law. But Oakland's children deserve better than the current curriculum. Please vote no .
I strongly encourage the Oakland school board to reject this measure. Instead of teaching our kids to seek to understand others better it creates greater division between groups which goes against the very positive intentions of an Ethnic Studies curriculum. Please wait for the State to implement improvements to the program. Oakland students deserve a program that is well thought out, and inclusive of all ethnic minorities, not one that perpetuates bias and prejudice towards some groups in our community.