California Department of Education

Boards of Education, School Districts across California

 

We write to you today to express our gratitude on behalf of thousands of community members for hearing the Israeli-American community’s concerns, and removing antisemitism and hatred from the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) draft. We are thankful to the CDE for taking a stance against bigotry and discrimination.

 

Accordingly, we would like to reinstate that the curriculum's goals can only be effectively achieved by ensuring that the curriculum is implemented as the CDE intended. We wish to respectfully request that the CDE reaffirm its commitment to properly meeting the particular needs of our community.

 

Israeli-Americans are proud to play an active role within the greater California community. It is estimated that in recent decades more than 300,000 Americans of Israeli descent have come to call California home. We are all part of an immigrant community from the Middle East, and many of us also identify as Mizrahi Jews – a population that has formally requested inclusion in the ESMC on an equal basis.

 

Among minority groups within the California public school system, and increasingly in recent years, Israeli-American students have experienced a substantial increase in antisemitic incidents and bullying related to their national origin. This issue was brought to your attention last August via public testimonies delivered from teens in our community.

 

With the newly revised curriculum, we want to ensure the CDE’s understanding of its critical responsibility in keeping the public-school system free of agendas that cause members of the student body to be victimized based on their national origin. While we are very encouraged by the proposed revisions, we remain concerned that the Guiding Values and Principles of the ESMC are partly based on Education at War, a book which features deeply anti-Israel language and references.

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By further improving the curriculum and working together, we can build a better future for education, one which seeks to truly put an end to bias and bullying.

We also understand that local school boards have the flexibility and jurisdiction to alter the ESMC to fit local demographics and priorities. In its originally proposed version, the ESMC presented a material threat of institutionalizing national origin discrimination and fueling a further increase in antisemitic bullying and intimidation. The curriculum's nature of being open for modification raises concern, for if the first draft were to be drawn upon for content, or if similar problematic content were to be supplemented, the public-school system would instantly become a hostile environment, making Israeli-American children feel unsafe attending school and unwelcome in the classroom.

 

Along with other communities and social movements stepping up around our country, we are working diligently toward the same end goal: to neutralize prejudices and bring people together.

 

We therefore ask that:
 

1. The CDE take action by further improving the ESMC to remove references to biased anti-Israel content, as well as immediately issuing a policy guidance memo to all district school boards regarding national origin discrimination. Such a memo would help them understand how to detect harmful content such as BDS and antisemitic rhetoric, when they are presented with it.
    

2. District school boards acknowledge the responsibility and power vested in them by refraining from voting to support or implement supplemental curriculum that includes BDS, or any other harmful or antisemitic rhetoric that is new or was removed from the previous draft, and by thoroughly researching any proposed content.
    

3. Educators understand that social movements taught about in ethnic studies courses should aim to improve the lives of minorities in America. The BDS movement harms minority groups in America and does advocacy related to a foreign conflict that should fall outside the scope of high school ethnic studies courses. Referencing this hateful movement would contradict the goals of the ESMC, as BDS promotes hate and discrimination based on national origin. 

 

In closing, we thank you for your consideration of these requests and look forward to applauding your corresponding action.