It is disappointing that the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers (PVFT) did not do its homework (Guest Commentary, Oct. 28) when it waded into political support for Pajaro Valley Unified School District board (PVUSD) candidates who favor for-profit Community Responsive Education (CRE) and consultant Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales.

Contrary to what partisans for CRE would like us to believe, the Ethnic Studies Program at PVUSD is alive and well without additional outside contracts under the leadership of Superintendent Heather Contreras. We urge voters not to be misled by false claims about the current PVUSD board of trustees.

A history lesson might be useful here. Perhaps PVFT leadership is unaware that the first Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum (MESC), co-authored by Tintiangco-Cubales, was rejected by Gov. Gavin Newsom and numerous organizations as being offensive to the Jewish community. Tintiangco-Cubales subsequently signed a letter disavowing the revised version of MESC and then marketed the original Liberated ES approach to school districts like PVUSD.

In August 2023, Brooks Allen, executive director of the California State Board of Education, sent a letter warning school officials that such vendors might be violating state Education Law Section 220, which prohibits bias and discrimination against protected groups. Public testimony at the Sept. 13, 2023, board meeting brought Allen’s letter to the attention of the PVUSD board of trustees, and after discussion, the trustees did not renew the CRE contract. Furthermore, Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a legal alert to schools in January to stress the importance of presenting “factual and unbiased information whether discussing communities or countries.”

An outline of a curriculum may not be detailed enough to display such bias. Books recommended to students and training given to teachers are more revealing. For example, CRE trainers at the Santa Cruz County Board of Education in 2021 promoted an ahistorical “Palestine solidarity” narrative. CRE and Tintangco-Cubales continue to maintain that this narrative belongs in Liberated ES. Maybe that explains why UC Santa Cruz faculty member Christine Hong and others often voice anti-Israel blood libels (“genocide”) to justify their insistence that CRE has the only acceptable version of Ethnic Studies.

Who stands to gain from renewing the CRE contract? The consultant gets another $110,000 to promote their narrative to teachers. Yet Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley school districts developed their Ethnic Studies courses using free state resources, without paying expensive outside consultants.

The Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers mentions grant funding for CRE. Yet the mission of California Anti-Bias Grant funding is specifically to emphasize training against antisemitism and bias against other minorities. CRE does not even include antisemitism training and, in fact, excludes Jewish- American contributions in ES. CRE is affiliated with the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES), which celebrated the massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

The CAMERA Education Institute considers that the board “made the correct decision not to allocate Anti-Bias Grant funding to CRE.”

Rabbi Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international leader in the fight against antisemitism, calls the PVUSD board’s action “the right and courageous decision.” Rabbis leading Jewish congregations in Pajaro Valley and Santa Cruz County also favor an Ethnic Studies curriculum “that will unite, not divide, the PVUSD community and celebrate our diversity, not exploit it for political ends.” PVUSD should have this goal for its Ethnic Studies classes going forward.

This Guest Commentary was signed by Roz Shorenstein, Linda Shaw, Renee Roberts, Lauren Leff, Sonia Deetz, John Jackson, Thomas Deetz, Paul Dresher, Jane Jordan and Mark Rosenberg.