WATSONVILLE >> The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees’ September 2023 decision to not vote on renewing its contract with Community Responsive Education — to provide consulting for an ethnic studies curriculum at the district’s three comprehensive high schools — had far-reaching effects throughout 2024. The resolution resulted in packed board meetings urging the renewal being brought back and likely factored in to voters choosing all new trustees in this year’s election.

“This a thing that we’ve told the board for months and months,” said Nat Low, an Aptos resident and co-director of the Asian American Justice and Innovation Lab, who has spoken at board meetings for the better part of the year. “If they don’t listen, if they don’t engage the communities, then we will mobilize to vote them out and get new representatives.”

In 2021, California became the first state in the nation to require high schoolers to take at least one semester of ethnic studies to graduate, starting in the 2026-27 academic year. That same year, the Pajaro Valley school board approved a contract with Community Responsive Education, a for-profit consultant firm founded by San Francisco State University professor Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and other ethnic studies instructors, to provide guidelines for ethnic studies curricula at the district’s three high schools.

However, when the contract came back for a one-year renewal at the board’s Sept. 13, 2023, meeting, it did not move forward. Trustee Oscar Soto motioned to renew it, but it died for lack of a second. The matter returned before the board’s Agenda Setting Committee in November 2023, and the committee voted 2-1 to not place the item on a future agenda, with Trustees Georgia Acosta and Kim De Serpa voting against it and Trustee Jennifer Holm dissenting.

The reason for rejecting the contract renewal was apparently due to allegations that the Community Responsive Education curriculum was antisemitic, claims that appear to stem from a rejected framework that was presented to the California Department of Education, which Tintiangco-Cubales co-signed. It was criticized by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus for lacking meaningful discussion of the Jewish experience and having minimal mentions of the Holocaust and hate crimes against Jews. Tintiangco-Cubales has denied allegations of anti-Semitism in the material, as have other proponents of the Community Responsive Education.

“I’ve asked repeatedly for evidence (of antisemitism),” said Bobby Pelz, Watsonville High School ethnic studies teacher. “I’ve asked them to show me, and nobody can seem to produce anything, and the reason why is because there isn’t any. There isn’t any antisemitism in our curriculum, they haven’t given us any criticism that would be antisemitic. Their organization doesn’t really provide curriculum at all. What they do is they consult on the curriculum that we would like to implement, and they try to help us with ensuring that it’s authentically ethnic studies.”

In the meantime, the district still has an ethnic studies program, but not the training provided by Community Responsive Education. Pelz said that training made implementing ethnic studies concepts easier.

“We had experts, real people who had degrees in ethnic studies,” he said. “Instead of me going into a book or studying online or trying to correct my mistakes, I was able to ask them, ‘How should I approach this topic? What kinds of topics would be appropriate for my community?’”

With the board not taking any action on the contract, many members of the public spoke at board meetings, asking the governing body to revisit its decision and bring the contract back, often resulting in 30-minute public comment sessions. Low began attending meetings with their partner and speaking out after it became clear the contract would not be returning.

“It was a decision made without evidence,” they said. “At this point, it’s a decision that is made against the wishes of many students, parents, teachers, community members in a way that privileges the opinions of three people.”

Low was very gratified to see such large turnouts at these meetings, especially among students.

“To have students come out in this way on school nights and really express their voices, that’s really important to listen to them,” they said.

It was not just the contract that became an issue for Low, but rather how they felt the board was not listening to constituents.

“Instead of trying to engage them and us, they engage in really undemocratic practices,” they said. “When the students started showing up in large numbers, they cut speaking time from two minutes to one minute, which seems like a really blatant way to silence student voices in particular.”

Low also cited the board moving certain agenda items up ahead of the public comment period, resulting in public comments running later. One meeting in September got particularly heated to the point where Board President Acosta called for a 30-minute recess and then cautioned that she would clear the room if there were any further disruptions.

The meetings resulted in the formation of Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice, an ad hoc coalition advocating for liberated ethnic studies. Among the events the coalition has hosted since its formation were a candidate forum and an ethnic studies town hall with Tintiangco-Cubales.

Lourdes Barraza, who co-founded the coalition with her husband, Gabriel, said she was inspired to do so after attending the board meetings. She and her husband had been following the national debate over critical race theory and took notice when Community Responsive Education had its own backlash.

“When we heard this, we were like, ‘Oh great, now it’s come to Watsonville,’” she said.

As someone who experienced racism firsthand despite being taught growing up that it was a thing of the past, Barraza was grateful when ethnic studies was implemented at the high school level. Upon learning that the contract was not being renewed, she reached out to De Serpa, who she said felt the framework painted Jewish people as oppressors.

“I was like, ‘No one’s making you look like an oppressor. It’s the Israeli government, not Jewish people,’” said Barraza.

After feeling De Serpa’s objections were more based on opinions than evidence, Barraza reached out to Tintiangco-Cubales who she thought answered her questions better.

“She sent me copies of the curriculum so that I could see that what she was saying was actually backed up by facts,” she said. “For me, I just felt that this (decision not to renew) was a hidden agenda. I didn’t feel like it was based on anything truthful.”

Even Barraza’s children have spoken up about the issue at school board meetings, with daughter Ixel and son Maximiliano speaking out since they were in seventh and ninth grade, respectively. Now a sophomore at Pajaro Valley High School, Maximiliano has taken ethnic studies classes and believes the curriculum is strong but felt the training provided through Community Responsive Education was necessary to maintain its strength.

“Without the CRE contract, eventually if a few teachers leave or if the administration changes a little bit, then our ethnic studies programs are gone,” he said. “That is problematic because ethnic studies is very important, especially to people at PV who are primarily people of color.”

In the midst of this debate, Dr. Heather Contreras was hired as the district’s superintendent. One thing she has done was meet with people on all sides of the issue, from proponents like the Barrazas and ethnic studies teachers to those opposed to bringing back the contract, including community members like Gil Stein, Doug Kaplan and Roz Shorenstein. Despite how heated the issue could be, Contreras said it has given her the opportunity to get to know the Pajaro Valley community.

“It allowed me to meet with so many different people and just listen and hear their concerns, or hear their hopes and desires and wishes,” she said. “Having that allowed me to really have a mechanism for meeting so many different people and learning about the district and what their needs are.”

As for whether or not the contract had a chance of coming back, Contreras said that it is a board decision. Usually, board decisions on curriculum are set in stone unless new information comes up, and in this case, she said there have been two developments that may impact how the board votes on the matter in the future. One was a U.S. District Court ruling which dismissed a lawsuit against a Los Angeles Unified School District teachers’ union over a liberated ethnic studies curriculum, which was criticized for being critical of capitalism, white privilege and the Israeli government. Judge Fernando M. Olguin opined that the allegations were irrelevant and that teaching material that makes others feel uncomfortable is not discriminatory.

Pelz said proponents have felt vindicated by the decision.

“It’s a different case, but it’s really the same argument,” he said. “A lot of times, (ethnic studies) talks about things that make people feel uncomfortable. It’s just the nature of the class, but that doesn’t mean we’re saying that anybody’s bad or that we’re inclined to demonize anything. What we’re doing is we’re looking at aspects of our society that we really could be doing better on.”

The other major change cited by Contreras was in the board itself. All three trustees who ran for additional terms, whether they had taken a strong stand on the contract or not, were voted out. Acosta was defeated by Carol Turley in Area 2, Soto was defeated by Gabriel Medina in Area 3 and Adam Bolaños Scow was defeated by Jessica Carrasco in Area 6.

Low was pleased with the results, as all the new trustees have expressed a desire to either bring the contract back to the board or take community input into consideration when voting on it.

“The results really strongly show that the community believes we need better representation on the board,” they said. “We need people on the board who will listen and, at the very least, have conversations about the CRE contract but also just in general.”

What will happen with the contract under the new board remains to be seen, but Contreras said she has been working to get to know the new trustees and set direction for the board. In the meantime, she said the district has partnered with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education for ethnic studies best practices. She also said ethnic studies is taught through an integrated approach, where the concepts are integrated into art, English language arts and history.

“Our students have to take one of those courses to fulfill the graduation requirements laid out by the state of California, but they have a choice in how they fulfill that requirement, which is really outstanding for students to be able to say ‘I want to take ethnic studies in this way,’” she said.

Contreras said some students enjoy the ethnic studies coursework so much that they end up taking all three.

“They have a lot of options, and those options have never changed,” she said. “We continue in that path, despite not working side by side with the consultant.”

Low feels the large turnout at board meetings was a positive.

“One of the things that I told the board early on is that, based on the way that they treated the students especially, they’re teaching the students what it feels like to be disempowered by public education,” they said. “Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice and all of us showing up, we’ve been teaching our communities and our students what it means to fight back and what it takes to challenge power in that way.”