The Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) has been working on fulfilling the new California requirement stating that all graduates must pass an ethnic studies course starting with the graduating class of 2030. For TUHSD, the course is called Community and Consciousness and will be a graduation requirement for the class of 2029. The semester-long class is taken after Social Issues and is a part of the social studies requirement. Community and Consciousness consists of three units: Introduction to Ethnic Studies, Systems of Power and Self-Empowerment for Civic Engagement. In addition, the district wants to include two new units into the course: Jewish American Experience in the U.S. and Arab American Experience in the U.S. Since the release of the first three units of the curriculum, parents have shared their opinions on the course and the two new proposed units. The organization Tam Union Together — a group of parents who have been engaged in this topic for two years — has set up a petition and outlined their concerns in a 19-page letter, urging the district to pause teaching the two proposed units in the spring of 2025, as many community members feel as if the course focuses on the wrong topics. Former Redwood parent Laurie Dubin believes that the course needs changing.

  “The fatal flaw [of the course] is that the Jewish American Experience unit did not have any content on today’s form of antisemitism… They gave what they called modern-day examples of antisemitism and they were all examples from the far right…[which aren’t accurate examples of antisemitism] that students are going to be experiencing when they go to college,” Dubin said.

Tam Union Together argues that the course follows a more liberated form of ethnic studies — which teaches students to critically examine systems of power and systemic oppression through the perspective of marginalized groups — instead of inclusive ethnic studies, which focuses on teaching a wide range of cultures, which they argue is better. The California Attorney General urged schools in a legal alert to try to provide an inclusive curriculum, but Durbin believes the class does not follow this.

“I think the Community and Consciousness [course] does not align with the California State Legislature’s intent because the framework is all through a binary racial lens where you have either oppressed or oppressor [and] victim or victimizer and identities are a lot more complicated,” Dubin said.

The curriculum was released on Jan. 8, which parents argue was not enough time to review the curriculum in time for the feedback sessions that took place in the following weeks on Jan. 16 and 23.

“The full curriculum with the unit lessons… were only provided to parents after over a year of requests informally… and only after an official request written with the assistance of a lawyer did parents receive the curriculum,” Dubin said. 

Although parents have issues with the curriculum, freshman Amalia Quaroni who is currently enrolled in the new course feels there are benefits to taking the class. 

“I’ve definitely been enjoying the class so far and do feel like it is covering important topics,” Quaroni said.

Dubin also feels that the district needs to change how they have approached communication with community members.

“Instead of being collaborative and transparent, [the district] was the opposite and emails went unresponded to and they dragged their feet on providing [information about the] curriculum,” Dubin said.

Community members also think that the course has strayed from the course outline that was approved by the board, a responsibility board member Kevin Saavedra emphasizes falls on the administration.“It’s the responsibility of the administration to design the curriculum as long as it’s being done in accordance with the approvals that we give them,” Saavedra said. 

The decision on the two new units will be made soon.