Ethnic Studies Class will be optional for 9th Grade English
At the February 4, 2025 Board Meeting the SDUHSD school board voted 5-0 to make the proposed new 9th Grade English/Ethnic Studies class optional for the upcoming 2025-26 school year. By making this course optional, parents can now enroll their students in the 9th Grade English or 9th Grade English Honors class with the traditional curriculum. English with Ethnic Studies will be offered separately.
Prior to this Board Meeting the District was on a path to require all 9th Graders to take a combination 9th Grade English/Ethnic Studies class to meet the State of California’s mandate to require a semester of Ethnic Studies to earn a high school diploma beginning with the graduating class of 2029/30. However, this mandate, by law, is only effective if the State’s budget provides funding to California schools to design and implement the new requirement. The proposed budget released by the Governor last month did not provide for the funding of Ethnic Studies classes, so as of today, the mandate has not become effective.
Our school District is planning next year’s course offerings now, so a decision had to be made once we knew that the budget did not contain the required funding to make Ethnic Studies a mandatory class.
For all practical purposes, the District could do one of three things given these new developments.
1. Not offer the English/Ethnic Studies class next year and instead keep 9th Grade English as it is while we wait to receive more information from the State government.
2. Offer the 9th Grade English/Ethnic Studies class as an option to students next year but also offer traditional 9th Grade English classes.
3. Continue with the prior plan of dropping the traditional 9th Grade English class and only offer the combined English/Ethnic Studies class.
Staff’s recommendation, and frankly the obvious thing to do at this point, is to select Option 2 – offer the combination English/Ethnic Studies class as an option while maintaining the traditional English class for those who would like to take that route.
After some discussion and debate, the Board voted 5-0 to accept staff’s recommendation. As such, incoming 9th Grade students can choose the English class they would like to take.
This is a win for parents and students. Every family can decide what is right for their particular student and not be forced to take a class they may disagree with.
It is possible that the Governor will include funding for Ethnic Studies in his June budget revision, or on some other future date. If he does that, then the law would kick in and our Board would have to decide what we do, but in any case, that will not affect the course offerings for 2025-26. In the meantime, the Ethnic Studies Curriculum Development Team and the English teachers will continue to pilot the English 9 Ethnic Studies curriculum for the rest of this school year.