Ethnic Studies in SFUSD Schools.

BE A PART OF HISTORY & SUPPORT THE RESOLUTION OF ETHNIC STUDIES IN ALL SFUSD SCHOOLS!!!

Time to pack the building folks!

WHERE: 555 Franklin Street San Francisco

WHEN: Tuesday, December 9, 2014

TIME: 5:00pm (Rally), 6:00pm (Meeting)

PLEASE WEAR RED! Bring your best signs/banners of support!

We urge the Board of Education to support the resolution for Institutionalizing Ethnic Studies in SFUSD when they come to a vote on Tuesday, December 9, 2014.

In 2010, SFUSD passed a resolution to support the development of a 9^th grade Ethnic Studies course, which was implemented in 5 schools throughout the district. Only 5 of the 18 high schools in the district offer students the opportunity to take an A-G approved Ethnic Studies course. Today, students, teachers, parents, and community organizations are coming together once again to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in ALL SFUSD Schools. Through the examination of counterstories and often times neglected narratives of all people, students learn to humanize and respect themselves, their families, and their communities.  Students will think critically about race, ethnicity, and culture in the context of their own identities and their lived experiences. With a curricular content and pedagogy informed by the need for social justice and equity, the Ethnic Studies course provides students with the critical lens necessary to analyze oppression and engage in transformational resistance through learning service projects.  These projects require students to collectively address issues in their own lives and make positive change in their communities.

In solidarity,

San Francisco Ethnic Studies Collective

OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT:

1) Sign our  online Petition!

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/409/890/407/ethnic-studies-in-all-san-francisco-unified-school-district-schools/

2) Write a letter of support to the School Board and email it to them and us by December 5, 2014 (Friday)

Building the next left in the Bay area

Teaching for Social Justice Conference

13th Annual Conference

Teaching for Social Justice– The Politics of Pedagogy

Saturday, October 12th, 2013 - 9:00am – 5:00pm

Mission High School

3750 18th Street, San Francisco, CA

For directions, click here


Note: Sacramento held such a conference for 19. However, with the abolition of
Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Sac State, the conference is gone.  We encourage all to attend the S.F. event. 

Teaching for Social Justice - Conference

13th Annual Conference

Teaching for Social Justice– The Politics of Pedagogy

Saturday, October 12th, 2013 - 9:00am – 5:00pm

Mission High School

3750 18th Street, San Francisco, CA

For directions, click here


Note: Sacramento held such a conference for 19. However, with the abolition of
Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Sac State, the conference is gone.  So, please attend the
S.F. event. 

Accreditation Issue at Community College of SF

CALIFORNIA ACCREDITATION AGENCY GOES "All In" ACCJC threatens to terminate CCSF by Rick Sterling‚ Jul. 08‚ 2013 On the second floor of a small office building in suburban Novato, California are the headquarters of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). A "For Lease" sign is out front. ACCJC office neighbors on the second floor are "1st Global Capital" and "Big Cat Advertising". The office is unassuming but ACCJC has managed to acquire the power to threaten the existence of community colleges throughout the state. The leadership of ACCJC has gone "all in" in a conflict with City College of San Francisco (CCSF). They have threatened to terminate the largest community college in the state, founded in 1935. What are the real reasons for the conflict? Why is ACCJC so intent on shutting down CCSF as it has existed and served San Francisco? See more; http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=11552#more

Corporate education reform threatens San Francisco Community College

CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM HITS SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLLEGE
By David Bacon

Truthout Report

http://truth-out.org/news/item/15213-corporate-education-reform-hits-san-francisco-community-college

SAN FRANCISCO, CA  (3/18/13) - On March 14, the day before the Trustees at San Francisco Community College District handed in the report that may decide the life or death of California's largest community college, student and faculty marchers headed downtown to City Hall.  A sinuous line of hundreds of chanting, banner-waving people stopped traffic on Mission Street, the main artery through the city barrio. Their mood combined equal parts of desperation at the prospect of the closure of the school, and anger and defiance at the kinds of changes that authorities are demanding to keep it open.

       

Shanell Williams, urban studies major and president of the Associated Students at SFCC, told a rally at the march's starting point on the college's Mission campus that the required changes are part of a larger effort to turn students into commodities, and move towards the privatization of education.  "Next year students will be affected by the Student Success Act," she warned.  "Every student will have to have an education plan, there will be repeat limits, and a 90-credit cap on the Board of Governors fee waiver [that allows poor and working class students to petition to waive tuition fees].  Now is the time when they need more student services and support from the administration, but they're cutting part time counselors and taking other actions that will be even greater barriers."

Closing San Francisco Community College became a possibility last spring when the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges sent a team to San Francisco, as part of a 6-year accreditation cycle.  The district, the largest public school system in California, had been warned earlier about deficiencies and knew there would be problems.  With 85,000 students and 1650 faculty, and an annual operating budget of $200 million, SFCC had never been sanctioned.  But under the impact of cuts in state funding, last year it had a deficit of $6 million.

School update

School Beat: 2009-2010 School Year in Review

by Lisa Schiff, 2010-06-03
Note: Starting next week School Beat will be on summer vacation until school starts again in mid-August.

The 2009-2010 school year is finally at an end. This has felt like a long one, mostly due, as it usually is, to the external pressures and challenges facing our schools. In the midst of the worst financial crisis in years and a political climate that is almost equally as turbulent, students, educators, families and other public education supporters have struggled with some success to keep our schools going and to push them higher on the list of priorities of things to be maintained, if not strengthened. With leaders like Governor Schwarzenegger, who continues his efforts to strip public schools of resources, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who enthusiastically promotes standardized testing and competitive grant-based learning models, California’s K-12 system has been hit hard from all sides.

The recession and related budget crisis have been felt strongly throughout this year. After tense negotiations, our district ended up having only four furlough days for teachers and just under two hundred pink slips ultimately issued. Hopefully this will be reduced even more if the emergency funding for education jobs finally comes through Congress. Even with that, it’s a clear measure of just how bad things are that the loss of that many teachers and the reduction of even a few educational days can feel like an aversion of disaster.

Discussion of where to cut took up much of the year and can be tracked through various documents and timelines on the San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) budget page. The deficit action plan laid out a set of proposed cuts that were presented and discussed atcommunity meetings and were ultimately accepted by the Board of Education (BOE) as options Superintendent Carlos Garcia could put into place as needed.

Two positive outcomes around the budget also occurred this year. The first was a fantastic Town Hall meeting organized by some SFUSD parents in an effort to galvanize action around the perpetual underfunding of California’s schools in both boom and bust times. The Funding our Future event, attending by elected officials, and hundreds of parents and public school supporters is now evolving into a new effort, called Educate Our State, the specific goals of which will hopefully be unfolding soon, revealing tasks we can all join in on.

Read the entire post at Beyond the Chron

SF Flower Show

Note, the San Francisco Flower show this year is in San Mateo.
AND, a union is picketing the event because union workers were not hired.

They ask that people not enter.
Duane Campbell
Sacramento