HUSD moving forward to explore ethnic studies program

The Healdsburg Unified School District, with full support from the school board of trustees, is planning to explore how to create and implement a districtwide ethnic studies program for all grade levels. The creation of a new curriculum can take years, however, the process will soon kick off with a preliminary meeting with the Acosta Educational Partnership, a group that works with local schools to aid in the process of establishing ethnic studies, and with community outreach.

“We’ve talked about it here and there and I think the time is now to get a little more serious in our discussion,” said Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel.

While some district teachers have infused ethnic studies into their lessons, school counselors like Ever Flores, who’s also the president of the Healdsburg Area Teachers Association, have advocated for an ethnic studies program for years.

During a virtual “Community Conversation” event hosted by Corazón Healdsburg last week, Flores said for all of the years he’s worked in the district it was always just a topic of conversation.

“It’s always just been a conversation,” Flores said during the event. “I’d like the school board to take the initiative for them to say yes, ethnic studies is a priority.”

Locals, activists and Healdsburg High School alumni who were also part of the June 23 Corazón discussion also emphasized the need for an ethnic studies program. Vanden Huevel was also part of the discussion.

“I was fortunate enough to be part of a community conversation last week with Corazón Healdsburg and I am excited about what could be here,” he said. “I do really think we do owe it to our students, as a district that is almost 65% Latino, to look at our curriculum and how it serves or doesn’t serve them and how ethnocentric it may be in its approach.”

Vanden Heuvel said he doesn’t just want one high school-level course, rather a districtwide curriculum.

“Research is pretty overwhelmingly clear that for students of color, ethnic studies does a number of good things. Not only does it make them more engaged, it results in higher levels of achievement, graduation rates, GPA, etc. It is a win across the board and the research and evidence is pretty clear on that,” he said.

He said overall of the district’s journey through equality, they’ve taken some big first steps, such as combining the elementary schools to eliminate the separation of students. Now it’s time to take a hard look at the district curriculum to see how ethnocentric it is, how it has failed to represent the Latino community, and how they can find ways to better engage students, he said.

“The first step in that is getting our stakeholders to be involved in it… It’s all about consciousness raising and engaging folks in their own specific context to create change,” Vanden Heuvel said.

In terms of moving forward, Vanden Heuvel suggested working with Corazón, the Healdsburg Education Foundation, or other groups,to help identify potential funds and experts who could help guide the district in the process.

In putting words into action, the superintendent said he has a preliminary meeting with the Acosta Educational Partnership next week to discuss next steps. Acosta is the same consultant group that is currently working with Santa Rosa City Schools to establish an ethnic studies program throughout its schools.

The next step would be to adopt a co-participation process to partner with the community to have an ongoing dialogue about designing and implementing a robust program.

Vanden Heuvel pointed out that this will likely be a multi-year process.

“It is not something that is going to happen overnight,” he said.

Potentially for the first year, the district could create a stand alone class at the high school, or an ethnic studies graduation requirement and then work on a larger, all-encompassing curriculum from there.

“I think the high school is a logical place to start and then work backwards from there,” Vanden Heuvel said.

School board Vice President Aracely Romo-Flores thanked the teachers who have already infused cultural and ethnnic studies into their classes, but said an official program is long overdue.

“I am super excited about this, I think it is long overdue,” Romo-Flores said.

Trustee Jamie Kiff said she liked the idea of partnering with Corazón.

“Dealing with racism is not something the school district can do alone. We have to be doing this as part of a bigger community effort and this is a lovely way to start that process,” Kiff said.

Director of instruction and curriculum, Erin Fender, also said she’d be excited to partner with Corazon to work on making an ethnic studies program happen.

During public comment, resident Carolina Diaz opined that an ethnic studies class might not be enough to address the racism and inequalities in schools and said clubs or student activities could be a good way to further engage students.

“Besides a class, I would like to encourage and ask the board for interdisciplinary projects. Club activities might address this to enhance the overall participation,” Diaz said.

Healdsburg Elementary second grade teacher, Maria Hadley, said it would be nice for instance, to see the return of multicultural day.

“I’d love to see our multicultural day return with singing and dancing and all of that,” she said.

Flores said as the district moves forward in this effort it will be important to be cognisant of how the district got to this point.

“There’s been a lot of hurt in our community … There is a lot of work to be done here in Healdsburg in regards to equity. This is a great first step, but it’s one step of many to make sure that we heal in terms of what happened here in Healdsburg,” Flores said.