In a 3-2 vote, the Mountain View Los Altos High School District’s board decided on Monday night to shorten its required, yearlong ethnic studies class into a single semester course.
Board members were initially evenly split at the Oct. 27 meeting, with Alex Levich and Vadim Katz strongly favoring shortening the class, while Thida Cornes and Esmeralda Ortiz were committed to maintaining the district’s current full-year requirement.
Ultimately, casting the deciding vote fell to board member Catherine Vonnegut, who said she understood the arguments from both sides and could almost “flip a coin” to make her decision.
Because of divided opinions among both the public and her fellow board members, Vonnegut opted for what she considered a compromise: keeping the course as a requirement but making it one semester instead of two.
“I really do believe in the class,” Vonnegut said. “We could distill it down to the highest priority parts that we want to present in ethnic studies.”
MVLA implemented ethnic studies as a required course for all freshmen in 2023. That was ahead of a state mandate that was expected to take effect this fall for high schools to offer at least a semester of ethnic studies. However, because the California Legislature failed to allocate money for the course, that requirement isn’t in place.
Against that backdrop, MVLA’s board has been weighing options to shorten the class starting next school year. The topic has been a divisive one among local community members, mirroring debates that have happened in districts throughout the state.
At Monday’s meeting, Ortiz disagreed with Vonnegut that the course could effectively be pared down to a single semester, arguing that from the research she’s done, ethnic studies plays a vital role in helping students, especially students of color, feel seen and heard.
“I can’t belittle the benefit that a yearlong course provides,” Ortiz said. “You can’t necessarily quantify that in an SAT score or in some of the data that we’ve seen, even the survey data, but it’s real.”
She also emphasized the work that went into making the ethnic studies course what it is today, which she didn’t want to diminish by voting to dismantle the current requirement.
Katz echoed the effort that went into creating the course but expressed concern about reports from some parents and students that the class sometimes feels divisive, lacks rigor and reduces complex historical issues.
“The one semester ethnic studies course will ensure every student engages deeply with its critical topics, but it also restores space for additional electives in ninth grade, setting students up for success early on,” Katz said.
Nearly 50 teachers, parents, alumni, students and local residents spoke at Monday’s meeting about ethnic studies, with public comment on the topic lasting two hours. Roughly 40% of the speakers praised the district’s current ethnic studies requirement, while the remaining 60% urged the board to make a change.
Those in favor of maintaining the full-year course argued that students need more than a single semester to meaningfully engage with material that they said equips them to properly function in today’s diverse society. On the other hand, those against keeping ethnic studies in its current form said that the course is not challenging enough for students and that the curriculum is too loose, with different content presented, depending on the teacher.
Toni Moos, a parent of four MVLA graduates, asked the board to keep the course as it is. A full-year gives students the chance to grow, have uncomfortable conversations, build trust and challenge assumptions, Moos said. As Black Jewish students, Moos told the board that her children often felt unseen in the classroom, which is something she believes ethnic studies can change.
“To shorten or dilute this course now would send a message that understanding identity, culture and equity is somehow extra, instead of essential, to preparing students to thrive in our global, diverse society,” Moos said.
In contrast, community member Guy Resheff, urged the board to reconsider the ethnic studies course and raised concerns about the curriculum. “Every teacher is doing their own thing,” Resheff told the board, prompting student board representative Claire Schwarzhoff to nod in agreement.
“That’s not how schools work,” Resheff said. “We have rules for a reason, and honestly, for a district that pays teachers this way, it’s embarrassing to see this level of misunderstanding.”
Superintendent Eric Volta emphasized at a previous meeting that it was important for the board to make a final decision by the end of October so that staff members would have time to make any changes to curriculum before the district builds its master schedule in January.
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Well done to our newest board members who drove this decision home. Mission accomplished. And be honest, this is why you ran for school board in the first place. Remember that students learn about ethnic/ethical studies through their social media, not main stream media and the watered down curriculum fed to them. Young people see right through your true motives.
I’m sadly not surprised with how Ms. Vonnegut likened this vote to a coin toss. What a way to govern, Ms. Vonnegut. I’ll remember that the next time I see your name on a ballot. What a disservice to all the students who are currently feeling insecure, unseen, scared or unrepresented in the current political and social climate, while those with the means and the power have redirected and shifted the narrative once again.
As a current student at Mountain View highschool who is of mixed race and intersecting identities, I am deeply dissapointed and saddened by the MVLA school districts decision to truncate the ethnic studies courses. Ethnic studies is a crucial class in this current political climate where the ugly parts (which are often the most important ones) of US history are being censored or outright erased, this is such a crucial class because it teaches these things and teaches compassion, understanding, tolerance, and allyship. It helps students feel seen and are more likely to engage in the material. Calling it “not academically rigorous enough” is silly because as someone who’s taken this class, it quite literally functions the same way any other history class would. Including of course the rigor. If you seriously belive that ethnic studies “isn’t academically rigorous enough” I strongly suggest you think about the implications of that statement and check yourself to see what would cause you to make such a claim.
Good decision. My kids took the year-long version of ethnic studies, and felt that there was not enough material taught to compensate for the loss of the World Studies class.
When we view this local controversy alongside national events like the push for AB 715 in California and attempts to smear NYC’s Democratic mayoral candidate as an anti-semite, it looks less like a grassroots issue and more like a national astro-turf campaign designed to marginalize and censor Black, Brown, and especially Palestinian perspectives.
Calling any attempt at an honest discussion of the lasting legacy of colonialism ‘anti-semitic’ is dishonest. Not only are Levich and Katz attempting to block a long-overdue discussion of the Nakba but they also smears the 61 percent of American Jews who believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Given the vocal lobbying by pro-Israel pressure groups like the ADL and American Jewish Committee, it’s difficult to view Levich and Katz as good-faith actors who sincerely care about our children’s education. Instead, they appear to have sought election specifically to prevent any perspective other than their own from being allowed in our schools. They should be ashamed. They should resign.
@ Leon Bronstein
Where is it written that Levich or Katz called the course “anti-semitic”? That was not the issue at all—you seem to have made it up. The major issues were that it was not academically rigorous, which I can confirm, having seen the coursework, and that there was not enough material being taught to justify a yearlong course. The third issue is that the state did not produce the money they had promised to fund the course. Your comment ignores all of these entirely reasonable positions and instead tries to confabulate some kind of moralistic political controversy.
I am not claiming that Levich or Katz labeled the course ‘anti-Semitic’. My point is that when viewed against the broader efforts by pro-Israel groups to block the Ethnic Studies course in Californian schools and subsequently attempt to have the state withhold its funding, it becomes difficult to view Levich’s or Katz’s actions as being in good faith.
The pushback against including Black and Brown perspectives in Californian schools dates back to at least 2019, when it triggered a significant backlash led by the AJC, the ADL, and other Zionist organizations. For more context, I recommend this 2020 article from Jewish Currents: https://jewishcurrents.org/attacks-from-pro-israel-groups-threaten-californias-ethnic-studies-curriculum.
It is deeply dishonest for the same groups that attacked the curriculum, watered it down, and then had the state withhold funding to now argue that it should be curtailed or abandoned completely because it is allegedly underfunded and lacks academic rigor. Ultimately, we must decide if we genuinely believe non-Eurocentric views should be included in our school curriculums or not.
So now students will have one less semester of preparation before advanced classes Sophomore year. When test scores and AP scores drop, it is teachers who will be blamed and not the school board who upended 20 years of successful instruction with their waffling over Ethnic Studies.
Also, the community sure has a low opinion of their teachers and their ability to deliver quality education which is real interesting since we were just named best school district in the Bay Area. I guess we should enjoy that distinction while we can.
20 years of successful instruction? Ethnic Studies as a full year mandatory requirement was added only in 2023. And MVLA students seemed to do pretty well prior to that requirement.
It remains to be seen how well the small 3 year bubble (Class of 2027, 28, 29) will do in AP and SAT.
Although, as Trustee Vonnegut noted “we should be teaching critical thinking and empathy and inclusion in all our classes.”
Knowing what I know about how it is taught in MVLA, this course – perhaps unwittingly – creates divisions by portraying some groups as perpetrators and others as victims. More bluntly, it attempts to teach white people how to be racially sensitive, in a district that is, in my opinion as a non-white person, by and large post-racial.
It’s not just targeted at White privilege you say? Well consider this. When discussing stereotypes, it had a lot to say about Black stereotypes, Latino stereotypes, Asian stereotypes, but apparently nothing about White people, as if to say the concept doesn’t exist in popular culture. I had to introduce my child to “White Men Can’t Jump”, originally the 1992 basketball sports comedy featuring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, remade in 2023.
I wish they had done that, because that way it would have made all the kids feel equal while still learning the same lesson – that we should watch our tendency to subscribe to stereotypes.