{"id":407721,"date":"2026-07-22T08:40:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407721\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T08:40:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:40:20","slug":"lowell-high-school-group-sues-sfusd-over-newly-adopted-ethnic-studies-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407721\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowell High School Group Sues SFUSD Over Newly Adopted Ethnic Studies Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The school district\u2019s ethnic studies program, originally adopted in the 1990s, has been embroiled in controversy over its former homegrown curriculum in recent years.<\/p>\n

Jul 21, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 3:17 pm PT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Unified School District Administrative Offices in San Francisco on April 18, 2025.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

A group of San Francisco parents sued the city\u2019s school district this week over its controversial ethnic studies course<\/a>, alleging officials violated public meeting laws while approving a new permanent curriculum this spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Friends of Lowell Foundation, a nonprofit group formed by Lowell High School alumni to protect merit-based admissions at the magnet school, filed a petition for a court order challenging San Francisco Unified School District\u2019s adoption of a permanent ethnic studies program for ninth graders \u2014 meant to replace its homegrown course, which came under fire<\/a> last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone needs to scrutinize this curriculum, and that did not happen here,\u201d Friends of Lowell Foundation secretary Frank Cheung said in a statement. \u201cRather than restoring public trust, the District again chose to circumvent the laws designed to ensure transparency and accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

SFUSD said it does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe remain focused on student outcomes and do not have additional information to share on this matter at this time,\u201d a spokesperson said via email.<\/p>\n

The original course had been under scrutiny for years after parents and a national education group raised concerns about biased and \u201cactivist-driven\u201d lesson plans and materials, some of which were exposed in media reports and by a national education group last spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Superintendent Maria Su was asked to answer questions about the course at a Congressional hearing about LGBTQ+ students<\/a> and diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools this spring.<\/p>\n

\"\"San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Maria Su testifies during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on parental rights and school content policies, on June 10, 2026, in Washington. <\/p>\n

One activity asked students to role-play as Israeli soldiers putting Palestinians into refugee camps, and another slide deck compared the civil rights movements to the Red Guards, an often-violent youth movement supporting Mao Zedong during China\u2019s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Some ethnic studies teachers told KQED at the time they had never taught or seen the materials.<\/p>\n

In response, Superintendent Maria Su paused the curriculum<\/a> developed by district educators over the last decade, and launched a pilot of Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey, published by the textbook and curriculum provider Gibbs Smith Education, last fall.<\/p>\n

In April, the school board approved a plan to purchase and implement Voices permanently after a vetting process that district leaders said included parent, student and teacher surveys, interviews and focus groups and classroom observations.<\/p>\n

Prior to the vote, the Friends of Lowell Foundation sent a demand letter to the district asking it to postpone the decision. The group said that the way SFUSD agendized the vote \u2014 folded into the same agenda item as other history and social science materials \u2014 violated the state\u2019s Brown Act, which guarantees the public right to attend and participate in local legislative body meetings.<\/p>\n

Friends of Lowell have asked the court to set aside the April 28 vote, among other remedies. The group is being represented by the same firm that successfully litigated the Foundation\u2019s challenge against eliminating merit-based admissions at Lowell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The school district\u2019s ethnic studies program, originally adopted in the 1990s, has been embroiled in controversy over its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-407721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}