Board of Education Passes Black Studies Resolution

At the regular Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, October 20, the board unanimously voted to approve Resolution No. 208-25A2 also known as the Black Studies Resolution. This resolution was authored by Commissioner Stevon Cook with the goal to create a curriculum that “honors Black lives, fully represents the contributions of Black people in global society, and advances the ideology of Black liberation for Black scholars”.

The Black Studies curriculum will include classes across all age levels and with a wide breathe of topics. Once fully implemented in the 2022-2023 school year, an SFUSD PK-8 student will be introduced to the concept of race, racial identity, African and African American history, equity, and systemic racism. SFUSD high schools students can choose from University of California a-g approved courses. Those classes include topics like African history, culture and geographies; African diasporic studies; African American history and phases of African American resistance; and classes on classic and modern African, African American, and diasporic literature.

During the public comment section of the meeting, the resolution received praise from multiple participants about not only the scope but the depth of the resolution. Community members loved seeing that it will be implemented not only in history classes but across all subjects and across all age levels.

The Board of Education recommends that the Superintendent secures participation from the Stanford-SFUSD partnership and the San Francisco State University Africana Studies Department to help guide design and development of the curriculum. They also ask that the Superintendent creates a Black Studies Fund to support the resolution financially. The resolution would like for there to be no less than 15 million dollars annually available for the Black Studies Fund with 80% of that money being allocated directly to site-based costs of implementation.

The resolution also calls for consulting with community based organizations who have been already doing this work. Some organizations in the resolution are Mega Black, San Francisco NAACP, San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators, to name a few. Commissioner Cook, after public comment, brought up adding a partnership with the African-American Parent Advisory Council to the resolution.

Public comment lasted for 30 minutes with each participant getting two minutes to talk. Almost all community members that talked praised the resolution and commissioner Cooks work to make it a reality. Community members are excited to see better representation of Black and African-Americans, curriculum looking at ancient and modern African civilizations, and having a fuller historical telling on both a local and national level.

The board then discussed the resolution. The biggest points of concern were ensuring that the work implemented from this resolution is appropriately tracked so then the wider SFUSD community can see what is going on and it can be determined what is and is not working. Regardless, the board voted unanimously in favor of the resolution.

To read SFUSD’s press statement about the passing of the Black Studies curriculum, click here.

To read the resolution, click here.

To look at the slides about the resolution, click here.