San Leandro’s Social Justice Academy teaches students to challenge and criticize capitalism and “disrupt systems of power and oppression.”

The Social Justice Academy, housed within San Leandro High School, teaches students to “interweave critical and decolonial theory and action to reach praxis.” The program for grades 10 through 12 features “Guiding Values and Desired Outcomes” which challenge and criticize “power, oppression, capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia,” and “transphobia.”

The curriculum “utilizes a restorative justice framework” to help students “thrive, heal, and build resilience.” It also teaches students the “importance of solidarity” and that they must “transcend mere symbolic and transactional solidarity” to engage in “true activism.” Students are also taught to “disrupt systems of power and oppression.”

San Leandro High School’s Social Justice Academy offers a “specifically designed curriculum that focuses on critical pedagogy, social justice, ethnic studies, gender studies, intersectionality, peer education, campaign development and activism.”

The Social Justice Academy, started in 2006, was not originally aligned with the “current guiding values and desired outcomes” of the current program. According to the current administrators of the Academy, the initial program was based in “multiculturalism and basic service learning” and lacked the “holistic humanization and critical consciousness.”