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With ethnic studies being reduced to just a single semester requirement, some Mountain View Los Altos High School District teachers could face layoffs in the new year.
I know that teachers are very, very concerned, but there’s a lot of things that you just can’t answer right now.
Eric Volta, MVLA Superintendent
In a split vote, the MVLA school board decided last month to shorten its required, yearlong ethnic studies class to a one semester course. Now, the board faces a series of related decisions, including whether or not to initiate a process that might result in some social studies teachers being let go, Superintendent Eric Volta said.
“Next year’s freshmen will only be required to take half a year of social studies,” Volta said. “We won’t need as many freshmen social studies teachers next year as we do this year.”
For the district to lay off teachers, the school board would first need to initiate a Reduction in Force process, which is a formal procedure through which employees are notified no later than March 15 that they could be laid off.
The board of trustees is not expected to vote on whether to start this process until February 2026, Volta said. Even if an RIF process is undertaken, it does not necessarily mean that any teachers would end up losing their jobs, he added.
“We don’t want to lose quality teachers, there’s no doubt about it,” Volta said. “But, we also want to be fiscally responsible.”
An MVLA history teacher, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of potential layoffs, told the Voice that “it’s nervous times” for educators in the district, adding that teachers have been getting mixed signals about what’s going to happen.
The teacher noted that when district staff created the ethnic studies curriculum several years ago, they did so at the board’s direction, following requests from community members to require the year-long class for all freshmen.
“All of a sudden, they’re now four years later absolutely axing half of the freshman sections across the district, with the potential to lose teachers that have faithfully served their community and empowered young people for a very long time,” the history teacher said.
According to Dave Campbell, the president of the district’s teachers’ union, MVLA has not considered laying off teachers in over 40 years. With tens of millions of dollars sitting in reserves, he said that he doesn’t see why the district would even contemplate letting teachers go.
“The investment is not only in our students, but also our staff,” he said. “We’ve hired the best, and we want to keep the best. In a time when other districts are having trouble finding teachers to staff, it just seems very gross that we’re just willing to throw teachers away.”
As one of the top paying districts in the nation, Campbell said that MVLA attracts “experts,” and he thinks that getting rid of any teachers would be a “colossal blunder.” At the same time, he expressed confidence that the board of trustees will recognize the value of its teachers and not pursue layoffs.
Volta, on the other hand, said that the board members knew of potential consequences like this one when they made the decision to change the ethnic studies requirement.
“I know that teachers are very, very concerned, but there’s a lot of things that you just can’t answer right now,” Volta said. “Will teachers be laid off? Don’t know. Will the district go through the process? Most likely. Will teachers lose their job? I’m not sure that anyone will.”
Instead of leaving the district, some teachers might be given the option to earn a credential in another subject area, allowing them to teach a different class, Volta said.
If the district decides to move ahead with the RIF process, Campbell said it’s going to require “some creativity” on the part of the district and union to shuffle teachers around.
As part of the board’s decision to shorten ethnic studies to one semester, the trustees also opted to change the district’s 40 unit social studies requirement to a 35 unit requirement. This means that instead of having to take four full years of social studies, students will now only have to take three-and-a-half years.
At an upcoming Monday, Nov. 17 study session, board members are expected to discuss whether to apply the 35 unit social studies requirement to all current students – including those who have already completed or are currently taking a full year of ethnic studies – or to begin enforcing the requirement with next year’s incoming freshman class.
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I’m not sure what the union expects here: we pay the teachers to sit around in empty classrooms where no classes are being held?
If there is another opening, they can compete with the other “experts” applying for those positions.
Sorry union, (husband is in a union), this is where you tend to embarrass yourself.
I’ve been following this for a while and there are some key points missing. No teacher is expecting to sit in empty classes, but instead want to design and teach interesting elective options (Geography, personal finance, etc). Board Member Catherine Vonnegut voted for this explicitly saying she didn’t want any layoffs and instead have the social studies teachers design and offer social studies electives to students. The social studies teachers were eager to do this and then were told to stop by district administration. Volta told teaching staff that no RIFs would happen, and then told the MV Voice that they likely would. Depending on his audience, Volta is telling a different story.
As a parent of two public school students in Mountain View, I have no desire for them to attend ‘atnic studies’ classes which pritch political agenda to kids in a fancy name.
More than that, I do not support our district to pay ethnic studies teacher that is not needed because students are not taking the class.
If the teacher is so skillful, why can’t they teach something else?
Perhaps mv voice can write about how a group of people from outside the district crashed the board meeting to promote ethic studies.
Our district should focus on real problems and stop wasting time and money promoting political agenda to our kids
Ethnics study class was mandated by the state but funds for it never materialized. Hence, it is logical to reevaluate what to do. My child is finding class interesting but looking at the actual materials, I see limited value — especially given how much the same topic is sprinkled now through nearly every class. Ymmv but I am glad the kids are going to get to take regular social study classes as well.
If the school board didn’t want to support Ethnic Studies any more, they could have gone back to how it was before the pandemic. A full year of World History would have given Freshmen a foundation to prepare them for Sophomore AP classes. Now Freshmen will just be unoccupied during one semester when they could be learning. And I think we need to remember, our ranking is so high (#1 in the Bay Area) because we have the Best teachers. We’ll have to hire new teachers eventually, but the best people won’t apply here if they know MVLA is willing to lay off tenured teachers on a whim.
@ Iphi
I totally agree. The World History classes were interesting, academically rigorous, and packed with useful information, especially for those who go on to study European history in 10th grade.
For sure they should be going back to a full year of World History. This has been the way of high schools for aeons. Cutting it was the mistake made when introducing this new Ethnic Studies thing for a year.
Re: “All of a sudden, they’re now four years later absolutely axing half of the freshman sections across the district, with the potential to lose teachers that have faithfully served their community and empowered young people for a very long time,” the history teacher said.
This whole situation is a result of the prior board’s overreach when imposing a mandatory 1 year ethnic studies requirement, the only one of its kind in the local region. Moreover, this change was encouraged by the very same teachers union and the cast of usual suspects that also showed up to defend the class during the recent board meetings.
Now that the board overreach has been recognized and rolled back, there’s going to naturally be less demand for the teachers – some of whom were no doubt hired only 4 years ago.
In the real world, it’s called change. Most humans react by adapting and re-skilling. I don’t see why teachers should be any different?
We need to stop pretending this layoff discussion is about “fiscal responsibility.” That is a smokescreen. This is the local execution of a national political project to sanitize history, and board members Alex Levich and Vadim Katz are simply the local enforcers.
I believe Levich and Katz are acting as dishonest, bad-faith actors with an ulterior agenda. However, it is important to view them as bit-players in a much wider game. They are executing a playbook written by the right-wing Zionist lobby—spearheaded nationally by groups like the ADL and AIPAC—to ensure that any honest exploration of the history of the native Christian and Muslim populations of Palestine is erased from our schools.
We see this censorship happening at every level of government. We see it in the Trump administration’s attempts to deport university students who pen op-eds offering a non-Zionist perspective. We saw it in Sacramento with AB 715, where these lobbying groups successfully withheld funding for projects prioritized by the Black, Asian, and Pacific Islander caucuses until they agreed to legislative “guardrails” that neutered the Ethnic Studies curriculum.
The reason the current material feels “boring” or “watered down” to students is because it was deliberately stripped of its substance by these exact forces. The original intent was to explore our common history from a non-Eurocentric perspective. Instead, we are left with a curriculum designed to ensure our children learn about Anne Frank—as they absolutely should—but are systematically prevented from learning the name Hind Rajab.
Our teachers are now facing layoffs not because the district is broke, but because our board members are prioritizing the comfort of a political lobby over the education of our students.