Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-San Fernando Valley), who chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, provided an update on the status Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) in the state.
Gabriel was speaking on a September 23 webinar hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California. Gabriel told the moderator, A Wider Bridge Executive Director Tye Gregory, that a bill was passed prior to Gabriel’s election to the Assembly in 2018 requiring the state to develop an ethnic studies curriculum. In 2019, the first draft of the curriculum was filled with “antisemitism” and “anti-Israel bigotry,” Gabriel said, prompting the Jewish Caucus to pull the “fire alarm on it.” “Our community started to pay more attention to it,” he said.
A year later, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed Assembly Bill (AB) 331, which would have mandated ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement, arguing that the draft at the time still needed some work. A more recent bill requiring ethnic studies for high school, AB 101, passed both houses of the legislature earlier in the month and is currently awaiting Newsom’s signature.
Gabriel explained that AB 101 is different from AB 331 in that it provides a lesson on Jews from the Middle East and North Africa––also known as Mizrahi Jews––and uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The demonization and delegitimization of Israel as well as double standards against the Jewish state are included under the IHRA definition.
Additionally, AB 101 adds several new guardrails to existing guardrails to prevent bigotry and bias from entering the classroom, according to Gabriel. Prior to AB 101, there were three such guardrails: the curriculum has to be “appropriate for everyone,” “not reflect or promote directly or indirectly bias, bigotry or discrimination” and “can’t teach or promote religious doctrine,” Gabriel said, pointing out that the “religious doctrine” guardrail is modeled off the current state teaching code for sex education. The new guardrails added under AB 101 include adding the word “nationality” to the discrimination guardrail to prevent discrimination against Israelis. AB 101 also ensures the guardrails not only apply to the curriculum but also toward teachers and “instructional material,” Gabriel said.
Additionally, AB 101 requires school districts to be transparent on the exact curriculum they’re adopting and hold public comment sessions before implementing the curriculum, according to Gabriel, as the guardrails do provide some “flexibility” on what school districts can do with the curriculum. However, districts are barred from adopting the first draft of the ESMC, Gabriel said. The guardrails will go into effect on January 1, 2022, whereas the ESMC will be phased into California schools over several years.
“Those are really, really important changes to the legislation and they’re going to help in making a difference in how ethnic studies is taught in this state,” Gabriel said.
Gabriel also pointed out that the authors of the initial ESMC draft have since asked for their names to be taken off the curriculum, which shows that “we made extraordinary progress on the model curriculum, he argued.
The Jewish Caucus leader added that the caucus was able to forge allies with the Black Caucus, Latino Caucus, and Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Caucus on the ESMC; Gabriel argued that it’s important for the Jewish community to tell other minority communities that they agree on the need for ethnic studies, but that the Jewish community will not accept anything from those who “want to erase the American Jewish experience.”
The fight now will go to the local level, as Gabriel said that the Jewish community needs to ensure that local school districts adhere to the guardrails laid out in AB 101.
The fight now will go to the local level, as Gabriel said that the Jewish community needs to ensure that local school districts adhere to the guardrails laid out in AB 101.
“I can’t promise that there aren’t going to be rough patches here… but we’re ready to suit up,” Gabriel said. “We’re in the game.”
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