Students at a middle school in Los Angeles walk to class. ROBYN BECK / AFP)
Credit Robin Beck / AFP
Members of the Legislative Jewish Caucus have switched strategies to address their alarm over rising incidents of antisemitism in schools.
They have abandoned a bill that called for creating academic standards that would have spelled out what should and should not be taught in American ethnic studies courses.
Instead, with leaders of three other legislative ethnic caucuses also expressing support, they have introduced a bill to strengthen and broaden existing anti-discrimination protections based on race and ethnicity to include new wording to apply to national identity and religion.
The Assembly Education Committee will hold a special hearing on Assembly Bill 715, introduced by Assembly Members Rick Zbur, D-San Francisco, and Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, on Wednesday at 1:30. That is the final day for moving forward any bill for possible passage this year.
“AB 715 demonstrates solidarity among California Legislative Diversity Caucuses to resolutely stand with the Jewish community to adopt meaningful legislation to root out hate in our classrooms,” said Zbur in a statement.
The bill would add teeth to the Uniform Complaint Process in schools. It would also create a state-level Antisemitism Coordinator to oversee compliance with laws preventing discrimination.
And it would apply anti-discrimination protections to content taught in class and to the contractors who write the courses’ lesson plans and train teachers. Although the bill does not mention ethnic studies, it presumably would apply to groups affiliated with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, which compares Israel’s repression of Palestinians with European colonialists’ subjugation of people of color in Africa and Asia, and white American settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans. Many of the complaints and lawsuits charging antisemitism have been against schools and districts that use the Liberated Ethnic Studies course content.
Zbur said that school districts have ignored or delayed responding to complaints by Jewish families of bias and a hostile school environment. “Families should not have to file lawsuits,” he said.
The key sections lay out broad intentions; the exact language is still being negotiated, Zbur said, and will be added as amendments to the bill in the coming weeks.
The Jewish Caucus’ prior bill, to replace the current ethnic studies voluntary framework with academic standards, would have faced a years-long contentious process and has low odds of passage. It was opposed by the California Teachers Association and ethnic studies faculty at the CSU and the UC, who have created alternatives to the state-approved framework. The bill would also have applied only to high school ethnic studies, not to all courses and grades.
The chairs of the Legislative Black Caucus, the Legislative Latino Caucus, and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus signed a statement endorsing AB 715. However, many of the groups against the ethnic studies standards bill are gearing up to fight this bill, too.
“Repackaging censorship under the guise of combating antisemitism does a disservice to the very real fight against hate. We already have laws protecting students from discrimination. AB 715 would effectively silence educators and erase Palestinian voices,” Hussam Ayloush, CEO of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, wrote in a statement.
In 2021, the Legislature passed legislation requiring that all high schools offer a semester-long course in ethnic studies, starting in fall 2025, and for all students to take it for a high school diploma, staring in 2029-30. But the law requires state funding to take effect, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has not appropriated any funding, and indicated he would not fund it in the 2025-26 state budget. Since AB 715 also would create a state mandate, it’s unclear whether Newsom would sign it.