Healdsburg High School’s Ethnic Studies class focuses on institutional oppression, social construction of race and gender; requires students to teach elementary school students about social justice movements

Parents Defending Education has obtained documents via public records request detailing Healdsburg High School’s proposals for their Ethnic Studies curriculum. The request was submitted by Zachor Legal Institute.

The curriculum proposal form states that the intended outcomes for the course include student ability “to discuss identities, including race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and nationality and the ways these categories are socially constructed and how they affect students’ lives and the lives of other people” and “to explain institutional oppression of various marginalized groups and examine resistance to that oppression.”

The curriculum studies various minority groups in the United States, with required readings like Ibram X Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning. It also includes a unit on “Power, Privilege, & Uplifting Diverse Movements/Groups” which requires students to author a children’s book about a social justice figure or movement and read it to loval elementary school students.

According to Healdsburg High School’s course catalog, the course has been implemented and is a graduation requirement beginning with the class of 2026.