Derrick Chau said the Ethnic Studies Committee will start meeting again.

The Ethnic Studies Committee, which LA Unified unceremoniously disbanded last year, has been renewed by the district, and members agreed to meet for up to three more years with a goal toward incorporating ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, according to Derrick Chau, director of secondary instruction at LA Unified.

“We are moving ahead with districtwide ethnic studies, but there is not a clear timeline for when it would be a graduation requirement,” Chau said. “The committee is reconvening and we gave different options and they chose to meet for a period of three years.”

The committee was originally formed to look into creating a unified course curriculum that would make ethnic studies a graduation requirement. But last year, then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines voiced opposition to the idea and said it would be too costly, with estimates up to $72 million. Cortines scuttled the idea and the committee, even though the school board asked that the district make it a graduation requirement for the class of 2019.

“It’s a shame that this district was at the forefront of making ethnic studies a graduation requirement, and now has let it lag as if there is a lack of interest,” said Jose Lara of Ethnic Studies Now, who helped instigate the renewed committee meetings last week. Lara said that after LA Unified’s vote for the program in 2014, at least seven other districts in the state have made ethnic studies courses a requirement for graduation. He said that courses are already being taught in high schools throughout the district that could be the basis of a robust class.

For a year, the advisory panel tried to get the committee renewed while students protested and the school board even renewed their call to make it a required class.

Retired teacher Allan Kakassy, who was at the meeting where the committee was renewed, said it gave him hope that the district staff would finally be committed to the classes. Kakassy said he was disappointed though that only about half of the more than 50 former committee members attended the meeting.

“This is such an important class, especially in the political climate of the news of the day and the presidential election,” Kakassy said. “We should look at all sorts of classes like this, for example an Arab-American course.”

The district is encouraging individual high schools to come up with their own specific courses, such as ones involving Asian-American and Armenian-American studies, which some schools have expressed interest in developing.

Persistent protests have urged the district to revive the Ethnic Studies Committee.

Some high schools, in anticipation of this being a requirement, are already identifying teachers who may want to develop an ethnic studies class for their school, Chau said. He said the professional development training for the classes will be available over the summer online.

“In the fall it will be an option for some schools,” Chau said.

Meanwhile, the Ethnic Studies Committee, which was also called the Ethnic Studies Task Force, is opened to the public and will meet at least once a semester, with district staff in attendance, to discuss progress with the curriculum.

Chau said that the district is exploring ways to incorporate ethnic studies into other courses, such as English, arts, history and science. Meanwhile, they are continuing to move toward the class being a mandatory requirement, he added. However, they have dropped the idea of requiring it for the graduates of 2019.

Nolan Cabrera of the University of Arizona.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric going on in presidential politics and a potential state law have added a renewed emphasis on developing required ethnic studies classes in the LA Unified curriculum.

An expert from the University of Arizona spoke to an LA Unified school board committee this week to explain the importance of ethnic studies in education. He brought in some statistics to show the benefits.

“This is a very pressing educational issue,” assistant professor Nolan Cabrera told the Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee on Tuesday. “We need to know how to get along across differences. People like to knock these courses like it’s an easy class, such as basket weaving, but it’s not.”

In Arizona, pilot schools targeted low-performing students and gave them Mexican-American studies courses. The schools saw that attendance, class scores and graduation rates all improved, Cabrera said. Attendance went up by 21 percent, grade point averages went up by 1.4 points and students added 23 credits to their curriculum, Cabrera said.

School board members Scott Schmerelson, Steve Zimmer and George McKenna at the meeting all expressed support for the ethnic studies courses.

“I’m am continued to be troubled about politics in this country,” said McKenna, the only African-American on the board. “People who are running are running anti the concept of ethnic inclusion, and anti ethnic contributions and they are being celebrated for it. Now they have someone espousing with all the bombast that some people should be kept over here and some kept over there, and I know how that feels like because I rode at back of bus for the first 25 years of my life.”

McKenna said that he hoped that the Ethnic Studies Task Force starts meeting again, and asked to district to support the programs.

Derrick Chau, the director of Secondary Instruction for the district, said they are now developing a strategic plan for implementing ethnic studies across the district and are revising three English language arts classes to align with ethniic studies. Chau said the district is planning professional development for teachers, too.

Chau pointed out that the ethnic breakdown among the roughly 650,000 students at LA Unified is now 74 percent Latino, 8.4 percent African-American and 6 percent Asian. He said, “I turn to my own children who are of Asian and Latino decent and I think how beneficial it would be for the children of LAUSD and my own children to have access to these courses.” 

Jose Lara of Ethnic Studies Now is fighting for the classes throughout the state and said seven districts have already taken the lead in making the courses a graduation requirement. The LA Unified school board voted to do that in 2014, but the plan became stalled because of potential costs in training teachers and an estimated $72 million for textbooks.

“Those are bogus arguments,” Lara told the LA School Report. “Teachers are doing these courses with online resources and there are amazing classes going on right now throughout the district already. It doesn’t require developing a whole new training. LAUSD has been in the lead of this, but the implementation is stuck in the weeds.”

Lara and Cabrera were actually both students at UCLA graduate school and started the Raza Graduate Student Association together to support Latino grad students. “We would talk about one day bringing ethnic studies into high schools and look at us now, in two different states doing the same type of work,” Lara said.

Next week, Lara said he has meetings with district officials about starting the Ethnic Studies Task Force meetings up again. The classes are now in 40 high schools as electives.

After Lara’s presentation at the last school board meeting, Sylmar High School principal James Lee asked to bring ethnic studies to his school, and he contacted six east San Fernando Valley high schools about doing the same thing.

“It looks like this will be required for our ninth graders eventually anyway, so why not start as soon as possible? It’s a great idea, and the other principals are very excited about being part of the pilot program launch,” Lee said. “Next, I am going to ask for teachers who are interested in teaching the classes.”

Lara said another impetus for LAUSD is a bill sponsored by state Assemblyman Luis Alejo, (D-Watsonville) requiring every school district and charter school have a high school required ethnic studies course beginning in the 2020-2021 school year. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill very much like that last year because it created an advisory panel that duplicates the work of the state education department. Lara said the new bill will most likely pass.

The San Francisco and San Diego school districts have already started on the path to required ethnic studies, and Lara said he is doing a presentation next week in Fontana for all their schools.

“We need the commitment and funding to get this going in LAUSD finally,” Lara said. “It seems like there’s a momentum and willingness now to do it.”

Zimmer echoed Lara’s frustration and said, “Many of us are extremely impatient about our approach to the implementation.”

Jackie Parades, standing center, teaches game design

At a high school called the Critical Design and Gaming School, you’d think every student had a device on and was playing a game all the time. Not so.

In fact, during one recent morning lesson, students opened up boxes of traditional board games to play with each other.

“They find out pretty quickly it’s not about playing games the whole time,” said computer science teacher Nancy Se. But, the students do learn computer coding, build websites and design games on programs that have created their favorite apps and launched games like Assassin’s Creed. “I teach them that computer science equals wealth equals power, and that is what could happen if you become one of the producers making games.”

It’s no secret that computer gaming is a major segment of of the entertainment industry. It’s also no secret that the gaming field is dominated by white and Asian males.

That’s why, if the black and Latino population of south LA can be introduced to the world of computer design and gaming, then principal Andre Hargunani would have accomplished a major goal. Hargunani came out of school with a computer engineering degree, and he programmed games himself. He could pick any job because there was such a high demand. He chose academia.

Nancy Se teaches computer science

“I knew first hand that it’s mainly white and Asian males working in that field, and we could give the students of south central Los Angeles an opportunity of knowing about this profession that they would not have anywhere else,” said Hargunani, who is beginning his fourth year as principal of the new pilot school that has about 400 students. “It would be great if we could inspire African Americans and Latinos into that world where there is such a high demand in the job market.”

The new Augustus High School building has three pilot programs. The computer gaming program shares space with the social justice Responsible Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship School and the health-related Community Health Advocates School.

When the school opened, about half of the students came to the gaming program because they didn’t want to go to the other two schools in their neighborhood. But now, even more students are eager to join.

Hargunani first held community forums at the local public library to see if parents and students were interested in technology. “Of course, the students were very interested in gaming,” the principal said. “But we didn’t want to plant some foreign object into the community, we wanted it to be something that grew organically.”

And so, LAUSD’s director of secondary instruction, Derrick Chau, used Hargunani as an example of the importance of teaching computer science when he made a presentation recently to the school board’s Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee.

“When I was a child in Fresno, it was critically important it is to have exposure and access around computer science,” Chau said. In middle school he learned computer language and how to create things and be a designer. “It was a really great experience.”

Today the Critical Design and Gaming School is a one-of-its kind pilot program where all 9th graders learn computer science, and they progressively learn game design foundations over four years. The problem solving for English essays, the algebra they use for coding and science classes all fall into some area of computer design. A mother who works at the front office said her son is a rap musician graduating this year from the gaming school and is interested in the technology behind it, rather than performing.

“Ultimately, the students are becoming more engaged in school,” said Hargunani. “The students are interested in engineering and going for those degrees.”

Jackie Paredes, who teaches the advanced Computer Programming and Game Design class, had an electrical engineering major when Hargunani approached her to teach at his specialized school. She said she ended up buying an Xbox and playing games all summer before teaching the class.

“The exposure to this community is needed; there are so many creative students,” said Paredes, who came from a small rural town in Ventura County. “Programming is about procedures. If I make a mistake it does not work out, just like a math problem.”

Andre Hargunani, principal of the Critical Design and Gaming School

Having female instructors such as Se and Paredes helps attract girls to the program, but the school is mostly male.

The classes also involve special needs students, and English Language learners who have translators in the class. Some of the students don’t know how to type when they first come to the class, and many don’t have their own laptops at home.

“Just because everyone may have a cell phone and they text or look up things on social media doesn’t mean they are good at computer science,” Se said. “And sometimes, they feel like giving up because it is hard, but we show them how to look at the problem differently.”

Hargunani said he delights in having success stories, such as the UC Santa Cruz graduate two years ago now studying engineering.

“It is a major she never thought she would be doing,” the principal said. “But she is the only female in her classes, so obviously we need to expand.”

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